Tricia's Class Summary

=Class Notes Summary 02/15/2011= Dr. Foss began our class period on February 15th with another one of his exciting reward quizzes. After the class completed it, we moved straight into discussion of the second stage of British Victorian Literature that we will be studying: Middlemarch. “Middlemarch" is the title of one of Eliot’s poems and what Foss is calling the middle Victorian period that we will be studying. In contrast to the early Victorian period, Middlemarch was a time of great prosperity. The author featured on our first day of study for this time period was one of Foss’ favorites, Toru Dutt. An indo-Anglican writer who struggles with issues of identity, gender roles, and empire, Dutt will provide our class with insight into the different aspects of British Victorian society through a unique lens of a young, female, Indian writer. The uniqueness with which Dutt defines herself causes her writing to be the some of the most influential and relatable works of her time.

Critical Introduction
Foss began our discussion by relaying some of the more key points from the critical introduction, so that we could have a better contextual understanding about this author who the majority of us knew so little about. Dutt was born on March 4, 1856 in Calcutta, but was raised in a Christian home. The family moved to Europe when she was 13 and when Dutt was 15, they moved to Cambridge where she received an English education. When she was 17, the family moved back to India. Both her sister and brother died from consumption, the same disease that would claim Dutt’s life when she was 21. Dutt’s work caught the attention of an English editor, Edmund Gosse, who helped her to publish her poems and attract English society’s attention. Even after her death, Gosse published her unfinished works with the help of her father—Ancient Ballads, Bianca, and Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers.

Near Hastings
We next formed small groups with the task of examining what Dutt’s relationships to England and India, respectively, are. My small group began by discussing the first of the assigned readings for today, Near Hastings. It features two foreigners walking on an English beach after a tragedy; they are greeted warmly by a British woman who expresses concern over their loss, gives them a rose, and then proceeds on her way. The kindness shown surprises the speaker, who being Indian, did not expect a British woman to welcome her in such a way in her own country. We concluded that it is likely the speaker and her companion are Dutt and her sister Aru after their brother’s death. The praise she gives the woman and gratitude indicate that Dutt likes being able to claim England as her home as well as being an Indian citizen. Here you get a glimpse of her dual identity: Indian native, but British-raised; this allows her writing to reach a broader audience.

France 1870
In the poem France 1870, Dutt denounces England for not aiding France in the war against Prussia. She seems very sympathetic to the French cause and calls for a “good Samaritan” to aid the French, alluding to England already being the Levite who passed by but who could return to help. Our group found her immense passion for France odd, since she already has ties to both an English and Indian identity; was she also trying to claim a French one as well? It seemed that because she was not a native Englishman, she could detach herself enough to criticize their apathy to the French cause while still desiring a change because she does call herself British. Her Christian values are the most strong indicator as to why she feels such a strong affiliation with England and less so with India. During that time period, religious beliefs dictated society in the sense that Victorians were very quick to uphold Christian ideals while the Indians’ society would reflect their Hindu beliefs.

Tree of Life
Our group next moved on to the poem The Tree of Life, which is told from the perspective of a sick or dying person who is visited by an angel and blessed making a full recovery. The Christian underpinnings of this poem are obvious, but our group found it odd that the narrator, whom we presumed to be Dutt, was able to be blessed as a Christian woman but when she asked for her father to be blessed, who was Christian as well, the Angel declined. We wondered if Dutt was trying to say that God has a plan for everyone, because if she was instead making a jab at Christianity for being a selective religion, that would seem counterproductive to her writings we had read thus far.

Our Casuarina Tree
The last poem our group had time to discuss was Our Casuarina Tree, which is a reminiscent poem set fairly recently after the death of Aru. Dutt uses the image of the tree as a medium for the passing of time and the eventual journey to death. She impresses that death is nothing to be fearful of because you get to be reunited with the one’s you love and with whom you shared great memories. The tree itself is set in a heaven-like Eden that seems outside of reality and exists only in Dutt’s memories.

Large Group
After our small group discussions, we met back in large group for a quick recap of what we had just talked about. While our group did not actually discuss these two poems, one student brought up how in the two sonnets, Dutt is trying to blend Indian and England, but India is superior with its “lotus” over the English “rose.” And furthermore she pointed out the irony that Dutt describes India as better using the European convention of a sonnet. This would seem that Dutt was identifying with India far more so than with England. However, another classmate then stated Dutt identifies very strongly with the English because of her Christian affiliation (which is what my group had found in our poems). In citing this confusion, yet another student pointed out that Dutt was fresh off an English education, and wondered what would she have written had she been given more time to develop her own opinions? Then, in a great point, my classmate said that writing in Bengali didn’t appeal to Dutt, because as a woman she doesn’t have a voice among Indian culture (she is far too liberal for that); she at least has a voice in English, even if the target isn’t who she desires, and she can inspire future operations.

Conclusion
The class ended with hands raised and points not heard, because the question of whether or not Dutt considered herself more British or English or neither is so difficult to answer. Each poem reflects the emotion she was feeling at a particular moment in time, add that to the fact that she was a young girl still developing her own identity and we can never truly know how she felt. But in regards to her writing, readers globally can relate to the issues of identity, loss, and empire that she raises in each page.