Okay girls and boy, the course is well over and many of you have graduated and it was wonderful to watch you all crossing that stage! and I am going to shut down this blog. It will remain on-line as an archive, but no-one will be able to post or comment. If you, the former students, or anyone else who has stumbled across this space, want to get in touch, you can e-mail me at mjones at unbsj dot ca.
Oh, and I just did something stupid; I took all your names off the authors list in an effort to clean things up, but this had the unforeseen (to me) consequence of stripping your names from your individual entries. I'm very sorry! Readers, anything authored by "webasst" was really authored by one of the students in this class.
Sigh.
You have been a great class. I have enjoyed our discussions immensely even when off-topic as well as reading your blogs and your other work.
I want to wish all of you the best of luck on the exam, whichever form you choose. And I hope that I see each of you again, perhaps in another course. Or on a book jacket. (Please, not on Jerry Springer!)
I feel that we really came together and made something interesting. Thank you.
This class was a great class to take. I didn't really know what to expect when i first signed up for the class. This class has been an eye opener. I never knew the struggles that female writers were put through. Each woman made it just a bit easier for the next. It amazes me how these women were able to stand up and not back down after the harsh critism they received. I, myself, would have been able to handle critism if it had to do with my writings but I don't think I would be able handle them critizing my life. All of these women were put through horrible critism and I think it only made them stronger and more determined. Theer determination to be heard made it so that other woman writers could be looked upon with more respect. Without these women putting up with what the did, we wouldn't have many of the amazing women writers we have now. Or many of us wouldn't have the freedom to write what we want to write. Each one of these helped push foward. Some made much larger contributions then others but none was unnoticed.
Just some final thoughts nothing real deep I guess.
I think it is really interesting that the course begins with a piece that is only presumed to have been written by a woman. This small detail paints a very vivid picture of the place of the female writer and women in general throughout the centuries. As the course moved on we saw The Book of Margery Kempe where she would not even admit that she has written the work (although that detail of course is sketchy we are at least aware she was not taught to write or could not admit it). Much later on we examined Margaret Cavendish who was badly looked upon by other women and practically considered a lunatic for wishing to write and contemplate scientific thought. Then there is Aphra Behn who is basically considered immoral and sexually impure for having picked up a pen and create drama. Manley is forced to defend herself with Rivella, Burney burns and hides her work at a young age, and Haywood firsts begins her writing career as anonymous. Over centuries women began with anonymous works and still often continued upon that path. Most of the works we have read began with an excuse of their writing or proclamation of the right to write. Overall this reading list gave me a greater respect and understanding for all these writers and those who came after. It was important to see where things begin, although these works were not always the most interesting or moving they were and still are quite important.
Am I the only person that is still shocked by what Alexander Pope wrote about in the poem we discussed in class? In class I thought it was a rather funny poem. However, today the more I thought about it the angrier I got. I thought the purpose of an education was to learn and become less ignorant to issues. By attacking women in The Dunciad he looks like a pompous arrogant stereotypical male. I am sure that in the time that it was written it was perfectly acceptable to treat women with blatant disrespect. It is literature like this that reminds me that women have fought long and hard to be appreciated as writers. I think it is great that the women writers that were not appreciated in their time are being recognized now. The women writers of the past are in reality getting the ultimate revenge on the men that slandered them when they were alive. The male writers like Pope are being seen for the arrogant twits that they really were and the women writers of the same time are emerging as literary geniuses.
I decided to read Margaret Cavendih's complete book "New Blazing World" for my paper. It was an extremly different read from alot of the other pieces we have read and will probably read the rest of the course. Alot of the book was very scientific and based around natural philosphy. It helped to have a tiny bit of background in some of Plato's ideas etc. The parts of the book where Cavendish outlines many of her hypotheses are in a much different style than many of the female writers we have read. At times it made the piece a little boring because it was similar to reading a dated article in a science journal. Still it is interesting how Cavendish blends science into fiction without taking away credibility to either the subject or genre.Cavendish was not only writing, which was considered distasteful, but also discussing male subjects and even openly rejecting some of their ideas and theories. No wonder Cavendish was considered an oddity and outcast. I would not reccomend this book to everyone to read, but I think it was important that its summary was in our course reading list.
First day of class tomorrow. The enrolment is really rising; all fall there were fifteen or so enrolled, and now we're up to 23! I'm very excited about this course; it's the first time I will be teaching it, and many of these texts. As some of you know, my area is 18th-century literature, so by the end of term we will be in familiar territory (for me, at least). But for the first weeks of the course we will be discussing less familiar texts, some of which I haven't read since my major comphrehensive exam in women's writing in graduate school. I am looking forward to revisiting them.
Welcome to the course. This is another place for us to have a dialogue (as well as via individual blogs, and in class, of course!). Working with a weblog ("blog") may seem intimidating, but once you get the hang of it you'll be blogging away in no time. I've been blogging for a little over seven months now (here is my blog, scribblingwoman; take a look and please feel free to comment via the convenient comment feature), and I find it addictive. This is the second class I have asked to blog; the first was English 3722: Contemporary Science Fiction: gender and sexuality, last term. The exercise was pretty successful and a real online community grew up (If you want to read some of the blogs from that class, they are linked from my blog). I hope we can build the same sort of community here. And who knows? Some of you may want to keep on blogging after April.