User talk:Samdi

Sam D's Class Summary Class began today with the typical Good Morning from Dr. Foss. Surprisingly there was no reward but after one ill advised student brandished the ever hated (feared?) Green Bay Packers shirt, Foss threatened the first ever “Punishment” quiz. Fortunately for all we managed to escape the classroom unscathed of quizzes, and continued our class civilly. We continued our on going discussion of how we read gender in the various texts as well as beginning to break into how we can read empire, in the same texts. In our discussion we found much of the rhetoric in the poems interchangeable in our discussion of gender vs. empire. The beginning of class started in large group, and we talked about Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall.” Instructed to find lines that illicit our thinking about gender the class began seeing how often the wife was compared to the husband, while the husband was never compared to the wife. The woman acts as a dog would act to a man, just as a companion who will never be as good as the man himself. Foss asked the question “What does this tell us about the marriage relationship?” Throughout the poem some sensed that there was a sense of entitlement for the narrator, that he had a right to get married and expect certain things from this wife. We then transferred our discussion into a search for empire within the text. The class saw a split between the language about England, and the language of the Orient. The oriental is new, idyllic, and a tropical paradise, but there remains no comparison between what they can offer, and what the English can offer. Just as we saw in gender, the man superior to the woman, England is placed superior to the Orient. Anything they have to offer, libraries for example, are incomparable to English Libraries. As I believe Dr. Foss put it, English rules. Sanskrit drools. England is set up as the man allegorically, while the class saw India set up more as the female. We have discussed previously in the class the burdenous women that men of this time have to take on. Now England also has the burden to educate the savage people of India. The superior is responsible for the faults of the in superior. Furthermore we have found in previous discussions that an English woman who has multiple accomplishments is still in superior to a man, simply because of her gender. This is equivalent to the relationship that has been established between India and England. No matter how great, or interesting India is, England will always be better. From this discussion we switched to the Mary Prince and small groups. We looked at the crucial parts in her narrative and how she represents slavery. We were also instructed to look at the role of religion in relation to the English, and how Prince countered that. My group found that Price referenced a lot of Victorian England’s appeals. Prince appeals to their sentiments by illustrating the relationship between slave mother and children. She tells the story of Hetty and the slave owner who beat her until she and the baby she was pregnant with died. Prince is separated from her mother at a very young age, and will probably never be able to see her again. The mother-child relationship seemingly doesn’t matter at all to the white slave owner. A crucial part of Prince’s narrative is that she is self sufficient enough to make her own money. She is savvy enough to go aboard a ship, buy a pig, and sell it for more on land. This is important because by illustrating that she does not need to be taken care of she is able to unravel the argument of the white mans burden. After we came back into large group we interwove Browning with Prince. After an awkward silence, we were told a little Browning fairy tale. The Elizabeth Browning were never supposed to get married, and there is a possibility that the reason for this was her fathers fear that the family had some black blood in its line, and that a marriage would result in a child who could reveal this minority blood. Browning also writes a poem that appeals to the sensibilities of Victorians. The most memorable part of Browning was easily the part when the slave woman decides to kill her child, in order to give it peace because slavery would be unacceptable for this possibly white child. By doing this Browning plays on the sentiments of the Victorian mothers. After moments of serious introspective thinking class wrapped up. We were able to weave in a lot from what we had learned in previous classes to today’s class. We were able to see that gender and empire are almost interchangeable in some of the texts, as well as the correlation between the white interpretation of the slave narrative and the black slave narrative.