T M 20 (382)

A.J. Allen

Class summary

On a lovely spring morning of March 20th 2012, students began to slowly fill up the empty seats in the class of BLSEH. Some students tried to prepare themselves for what was to come on Dr. Foss’s famous “reward quizzes”, while other sat staring at their cell phones or into space. Once Dr. Foss entered the room, students began to whisper to one another hoping there wouldn’t be a quiz or it would be a simple 5 points. Unfortunately Dr. Foss gave the class a rather tricky(for some students) reward quiz on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As Dr. Foss read aloud the answers, one could hear the groaning or cheering coming from the students, in response to the quiz answers.

Once Dr. Foss finished going over the answer, he then made an announcement to the class that on the class’s Wiki page, the preview for exam 2 was listed. Once again one could hear the mixed emotions coming from the students. Dr. Foss proceeded to explain to the class that exam 2 will be the same as exam 1, the only difference was this time the preview would say exam 2. A few students laughed at this comment. He continued to advise the students to look back into their notes and look over some of the prospective pages to refresh their memories on some key information about the Victorian Age that would help them with their essays. He also encouraged students to do a practice exam on their own if they choose to do so. There was one more announcement that class is cancelled on Thursday March 22, but Dr. Foss suggested to the students to do the reading assignment.

To officially start off class, Dr. Foss first had the class stay in large group to discuss the life of Lewis Carroll. Dr. Foss started off apologizing to those in the class who are Alice fanatics because most students who are tend to know more about Alice than Dr. Foss, and become angry at the pitiful excerpts that were chosen to be read. He began reading to the class a little bit on Lewis Carroll’s life, and how when you think of Lewis and Alice you should think of aestheticism-it is full of nonsense, and word play. Dr. Foss continues to talk about how aestheticism and decadence can be seen through out the text. After reminding the class to keep in mind about aestheticism and decadence as we split into small group. He also reminded us to please have fun while discussing Alice because it is a fun novel, and in about 15 minutes we would switch gears and talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

As we broke into small groups some of the students were sharing their opinions on the so-called reward quiz; most people-myself included-knew we did poorly on the quiz. We then turned our thoughts on to Alice, and Katie immediately pointed out the fact that the falling scene is actually scary if you think about it. Michaela chimed in saying that the falling could be a symbol for things changing in the world but you don’t stop to fully pay attention to it. While Alice is falling she sees exciting things around her but it is to occupied with the thoughts in her mind. Katherine pointed out that Dodgson is a little creepy for basically stalking a little girl and was inspired to write the famous book. Someone else pointed out that the whole book is an obsession with nursery rhymes, but they are all very dark and deal with death.

We then turned our focus to answering the question is Alice more about aestheticism or decadence; we agreed on it being both. It is more aestheticism because it is artful and creativeness with all of the different things going on in the story. Alice falling and the interesting things around her, and the strange events in Wonderland. It can also be decadence because there really isn’t a moral, and it can be viewed as a dark story. A little girl falls down a rabbit hole by herself, tries to not be killed by the Queen of hearts, and she must then defeat the Jabberwocky. Michaela brought up a point about how it’s perhaps a mask of aestheticism since the people of Wonderland are having fun, and in reality everything is crazy. It reflects on how the world is changing but nothing makes sense. From there we were about to discuss whether we thought it made a comment on gender or society, because the story is about a 10 year old girl. We didn’t get a chance to voice our thoughts because I was getting a little confused with some things that happened in the new movie and with our reading; leading into a 5 minute rant on who thought Johnny Depp was hot or not. Oops!

We finally pulled ourselves together and started to talk about Through the Looking Glass. Katie and Michaela both made interesting points about how the Walrus was a weird character, and thought it was odd he had young oysters working for him. I don’t remember who point out that it could have been a symbol about the Education system during the Victorian era. The Oysters aren’t educated and are a symbol of the lower class if they can’t afford school, then they must work. Just as we were about to continue, Dr. Foss called the class back into large group to transition into the discussion on Robert Lewis Stevenson.

Before we began, Dr. Foss announced to hopefully end the class in small group discussing Age of Doubt after an exciting large group on the topic of religion and science for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We first learned a little bit on how Stevenson came up with story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Starting of the large group, Dr. Foss asked the class if they thought the story was about Age of Reform. The awkward silence that felt like it was 30 minutes long was finally broken when a student mentioned how they didn’t see Mr. Hyde as lower class but in fact of higher class, and he is suppressing things in which he make not speak of. This lead into talking about class, and who was seen as lower class, and who was seen as higher class. It was also interesting that Time was running out so we had to quickly switch to the topic of Gender. Dr. Foss noted that there weren’t a lot of women in the story, and it would be hard to think of Hyde as a woman-unlike in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein-because Hyde is so masculine and women were viewed as weak. Another student stated and if there were they were the subjects of the man; their roles were either a maid, student, or a little girl who was trampled.

During the Victorian era, most writers didn’t write about sexual violence because it was something that the world was not ready for, and people would think the writer was crazy. According to Dr. Foss, Stevenson wanted the scene with the little girl and Dr. Hyde to be a sexually violent scene, but since no one would publish it for that reason he switched it to her being trampled instead.

The remainder of the class we left the larger group, got back into our small groups, and talked about religion and science in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Michaela introduced the idea that in the aspects of religion it suppresses the impulses of sin in Dr. Jekyll but with science the creation of Hyde releases the impulses. Someone else in the group pointed out that Utterson has a moral basis because he is an all around good guy and is the opposite of Dr. Jekyll. Continuing they also said that Utterson is a man of religion and he uses science for good, while Dr. Jekyll uses science for bad. We came up with the idea that the representation of religion and society in the end causes things to blowup for Dr. Jekyll. We also figured out the moral of the story is that everyone has a dark side to them, and if they let it out it can destroy you; Stevenson treaded lightly in science because there needed to be a balance between both sides. A few more minutes were left in the class we decided we had had a great small group discussion and ended the class with more random tangents.

Once I reread my notes from class today I took note on some key points that I felt really summarized what we learned in both large and small class discussion. Aestheticism and decadence are key factors in Alice and during the Victorian era, while Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde focus more on religion and science. There always seems to be a good vs. evil in every story, whether it’s in a fun book like Alice in Wonderland or in a dramatic, dark story like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There has to be both sides in order to keep balance in the world.