Month: March 2020

Quotation: “I can sympathize with everything, except suffering,” said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. “I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.”

Comment or Connection: This quote is a dark look into the sociopathy of the rich elite class. Similar to the famous Marie Antoinette quote “let them eat cake”  there is a fundamental disconnect between the ruling class and the poor class.

Question: Why is it that of all the Victorian monsters the ones which seem the most visceral evil are the ones which are also fully human.

Quotation: With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”

Comment or Connection: This section fully sumisses the core concept of Jekyll and Hyde, that no person is wholly good or wholly evil and this may be a good thing as the results of Dr jekyll’s experiments result in multiple people dead and injured.

Question: What would the story look like if the experiment had been a success and Jekyll and Hyde had actually been separated into two bodies.

Quotation: Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair and heard the burst of passion. By nine O’clock the next morning, I was punctually opening the school tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties of the day.

Comment or Connection: This excerpt perfectly captures what living with existential dread is like. Hopelessness and near mental breakdown before pulling yourself together to make it through the day.

Question: How would Jane Eyre have thrived in a modern setting or any setting for that matter where she was treated with dignity.

Quotation: “To attain this end are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom – a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?”

Comment or Connection: I think it is this quote which best explains the confines of Victorian society. The character knows that the only thing stopping them is “A mere conventional impediment” yet they are entirely helpless to overcome it due to their connection with Victorian society.

Question: How might the society react to a large number of people especially if they were upper class rejecting Victorian society. 

Quotation: “Loose Bessie’s hand child you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor artifice, particularly in children it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer you will now stay here an hour longer and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.”

Comment or Connection: It is in my opinion that this interaction shapes most of Jane’s way of interacting with the world throughout the rest of the book. She is taught early on that her aunt and by connection victorian society will not tolerate anything other then “perfect submission and stillness” so in her future interactions she often vails her beliefs with a false submission.

Question: How different would the story pan out if Jane completely rejected all concepts of submission and stillness?

Quotation:”Hateful day when I received life!…Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred”

Comment or Connection: This statement made by Frankenstein’s monster perfectly summarizes the conflict within the entire novel. It explains from the monster’s point of view that the monster is not a bloodthirsty killer but in fact a rejected and abused child who is only reacting to the cruel world around him. 

Question: my question is what would the story look like had frankenstein not been such a bad father, how would the monsters and frankenstein’s lives changed had frankenstein raised him with love instead of rejecting him with fear?

Quotation: “The nineteenth centuries political and literary revolutions did not completely redefine the monster. Rather they overlaid and inflected the monsters pre existing connotations which dated back to classical antiquity and beyond.”

Comment or Connection: This Quotation sets the structure for the argument of the whole article. The social and literary concept of the “monster” hasn’t been re-defined by cultural and political shifts through time but rather adapt and assimilate with the current societal beliefs of the moment, only to change and shift once again with the society.

Question: my question is that with knowing this information someone took a story from the current year about a monster and compared it to some of the earliest monster stories from human history how similar would you find them?