115 Vernon Journal 2016

115 Vernon
The Journal of the Writing Associates
at Trinity College
Spring 2016
Editorial Board
Shannon Burke ’15, Forrest Robinette ’15, Elaina Rollins ‘15
with support by Jessica Henning and Tennyson O’Donnell
Table of Contents
1.
Economic Policy Causes and Consequences of the Subprime Crisis - Brendan Dowling
11.
Objectivity Created from Created Subjectivities - Caroline Howell
17.
Revisiting Educational Inequality in the 21st Century -Elaina Rollins
30.
Crossing the Line: Barriers in War and Peace - Emily Turner
38.
The Biogeography of Crassitegula C.W. Schneid., C.E. Lane et G.W. Saunders (Sebdeniales, Rhodophyta)
–Erica Quinones
50.
Artistic Representations as a Bridge between Slavery and the Modern Black Experience – Evan Turiano
67.
Nature as “Powerful Other” and Foil to Mankind in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Forrest Robinette
73.
Magic: The Aesthetic of Paul Delvaux – Griffin Hunt
78.
“life’s not a paragraph” A Series of Paragraphs Explicating Life According to ee cummings –Hannah Ho
81.
A Need for Regional Governance in Hartford - Joy Kim
88.
Virginia Woolf and the “Anxiety of Authorship” – Madeleine Kim
94.
Poem: DayREMing - Mya Peters
97.
Holiday Heart - Mya Peters
101.
To the Finish Line: Hanging on for the Ride of My Life – Sarah Beckmann
109.
Rethinking Biotic Resistance - Sarah Messenger
110.
Weisbrot Critical Review Paper – Shannon Burke
116.
Pasty White and the Seven Jerks - Kira Mason
126.
Gemitus: The Link Between Turnus and Troy - Lydia Herndon
135.
HERsteria and NeurastHEnia: Hysteria and Neurasthenia as Socially Constructed Diseases in
Nineteenth Century America - Madeline Burns
152.
A Study on Temperature Dependent Gene Expression of the Gene that Produces Prodigiosin in the Bacterial
Stain Serratia marcescens - Meliney Dorcin and Jordan Reid
159.
Position of Power - Haley Dougherty
A Note about this Issue
This issue of 115 Vernon offers a broad range of disciplines and topics assembled as a representation of the best
writing produced by many of the Writing Associates who participated in the Writing Associates program during the
2015-16 academic year. The submissions were wide-ranging and vibrantly creative, showcasing both academic
projects and personal writing.
About the Writing Associates Program
All Writing Associates are current Trinity College Students who exhibit excellence in the art of writing and share a
passion for improving the writing of their peers using a collaborative approach. Writing Associates are selected from a
wide variety of academic majors, and are identified by their professors as outstanding writers. Writing Associates
undergo a rigorous training curriculum that includes completing RHET 302, Writing Theory and Practice. The 27 year
old Writing Associates Program was created in 1989 to supplement faculty efforts and encourage a positive writing
culture at Trinity. The Writing Associates Program is housed in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric.
writingcenter.trincoll.edu
115 Vernon St. room 109
Hartford, CT 06106
(860) 297-2468
Economic Policy Causes and Consequences of the Subprime Crisis
Brendan Dowling
To say that causes and consequences of the Great Recession are at the forefront
of economic discussion is a gross understatement. Even 6 years removed from the
largest destruction of wealth since the Great Depression, economists, regulators, and
even the average citizen are analyzing what caused the crisis, and to what extent
economic policymakers reacted effectively to mitigate its effects. As with anything in
economics, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly one catalyst. As one might imagine for a
financial collapse with the international scope and totality of the Great Recession, there
are several policy culprits. Decades-old legislation aimed at encouraging innovation and
growth have been proven irresponsible, a rather lax approach to monetary policy
helped fuel a massive bubble, and a those tasked with protecting investors did the
opposite for many years.
In the aftermath of financial collapse in such fantastic fashion one might expect
that regulators and businesses pursued wide reaching overhaul. One would assume that
firms in the financial services industry, particularly those that are levered, would face
more stringent regulation reflecting their systemic importance. Unfortunately, though,
in many respects the financial crisis is a missed opportunity. Much of the policy
consequences are either making an implicit goal explicit or half-measures. In this paper
we will examine the economic policies that led up to the crisis, and we will also analyze
the extent to which the Great Recession has had policy consequences.
The Glass-Steagall Act was legislation that emerged out of the Great Depression
in an attempt to make the financial sector safer. It legally required that commercial and
investment banks operate as separate entities. These two categories of financial
institutions perform vastly different tasks; commercial banks accept savings and loan
them out in the form of instruments such as mortgages or loans to businesses. This was
traditionally a stable business, especially after the introduction of the Federal Deposit
Insurance Commission, as long as the banks made responsible decisions with their loan
portfolios. Conversely, investment banks engage in riskier activities such as market
making to facilitate trading securities, underwriting new securities and engaging in
innovative financing structures such as collateralized debt obligations. Separating these
two types of institutions was an important step in promoting financial stability, and it
also made the job easier for regulators. By classifying a firm as either an investment or
commercial bank, it was much more clear who should do the regulating and to what
extent that regulation should take place.
Enter 1999, during the Clinton administration when Glass-Steagall was repealed.
This meant “…commercial banks (could) engage with risky new financial instruments
such as derivatives that ultimately undermined their solvency” (Allington 2009). While
perhaps it was permissible for financial behemoths to exist as long as they engaged in
less risky, “thrift”, activities, what followed was consolidation between investment and
commercial banks. Rather than thrifts following the satirical 3-6-3 rule (borrow at 3%,
loan at 6%, on the golf course by 3:00pm from Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis), these
behemoths were engaging in derivative speculation, using off-balance sheet special
purpose vehicles to hide risk from their books and selling securitized products
collateralized by the very loans they underwrote. Massive financial institutions became
much more risky.
Adding even more risk to the situation was the fact that the regulatory landscape
was murky at best. As Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and Secretary of the
Treasury, stated after the crisis unfolded and he retired from public service, “we still
have five regulators falling all over themselves, competing with each other, with no
clear message” (Paulson 2013). These enormous institutions, wielding trillions of dollars
on their balance sheets, went lightly regulated because there were so many different
regulators that nobody knew who should regulate which part of the business. Take a
firm like JP Morgan Chase, which is the largest bank in the United States. It is involved in
so many different businesses from securitization to advisory to traditional savings and
loans, and no regulatory body in history has the tools or resources to monitor all of that
activity on its own. This means that the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange
Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Commission and an alphabet soup of other
institutions all regulate the business of this one firm. Each of these regulators competes
with each other for work, and as a result there is a race to the bottom. They rely on
work to maintain their levels of funding, so to get the banks to agree to let the FDIC
regulate part of their business instead of the CFTC, for example, the FDIC might agree to
look the other way or take it easier. This greatly undermines regulation’s purpose.
To make matters worse, financial regulation is constantly taking place and in a
search for profits and products that meet investor needs, investment banks are
constantly bringing new securities to market. Because there is so much ambiguity
towards the role of each regulator, it is often unclear which institution should regulate
which market and which new product. In the context of the financial crisis, the
mortgage backed securities and derivatives markets became so large and complex that
regulation was grossly underprepared. The lackluster (at best) regulatory policy left the
system vulnerable for the kind of bubble that had the potential to destroy the global
economy.
Similar to the conflict of interest in terms of the regulatory race to the bottom,
credit agencies, another group of critical importance, had motives that did not align
with society’s best interest. Just as regulators make money regulating, credit rating
agencies make money by rating credit. In a rather simplistic line of logic, more credit
products means that the rating agencies will rate more paper, and higher ratings mean
more issuances. If ratings agencies awarded higher ratings, they would have the
opportunity to rate even more products and make more money, and it became a vicious
cycle. Obviously this isn’t efficient or productive, but this was the state of affairs that led
up to the crisis. Lack of credit rating regulation meant that low-quality products
“earned” high-quality ratings, and led investors to believe that risky products were
unlikely to default, and were on the conservative side of the risk spectrum.
At this stage we understand that regulators and rating agencies failed to
promote stability and responsible behavior by the newly created financial behemoths
that permeated every avenue of financial services. Surely the Federal Reserve, behind
its legendary leader Alan Greenspan, would be the savior and behave responsibly. This
storied institution filled with the brightest minds in economics must exhibit the sanity
needed to restore stability. Unfortunately, as Taylor analyzes in great detail, this was yet
another area of policy failure. The chart below shows that the Federal Reserve kept
interest rates extremely low for too long following the dotcom bubble and all the way
up to 2006.
Low interest rates encourage businesses and individuals to borrow and invest,
and the Taylor Rule has long stood as an unofficial guideline for interest rate
adjustment. The idea is that by following the Taylor Rule, the Fed can maintain steady
and stable inflation, growth and unemployment. A rate higher than the Taylor rule
would suggest that policy is too tight, and a lower rate signals that policy is too loose.
Clearly, from the above graph, the Fed was loose for too long. With historically cheap
borrowing, businesses and individuals went on a borrowing spree. Asset managers like
hedge funds saw cheap leverage at every turn and used this tool to maximize exposure
while individuals saw this as an opportunity to purchase their dream home at a very low
interest rate. The problem is that for many, if not most, dream homes are dreams for a
reason: they’re too expensive. Enticed by teaser low rates that would eventually
skyrocket, consumers bought homes en masse for living and speculative purposes, and
the housing bubble gained steam. Without the Federal Reserve’s low interest rates, this
bubble would not have grown to its systemically risky size.
Again, there are other policies that exacerbated this effect. The Community
Reinvestment Act in place during this time “…required that financial institutions lend
more to this (risky) sector, mainly blacks and Hispanics to create a more inclusive
property-owning democracy” (Allington 2009). This means that the federal government
in the United States incentivized lending to risky borrowers. The government literally
rewarded banks for issuing riskier loans.
In an attempt to gather the information discussed so far, we can state that banks
got much larger and pursued riskier businesses while credit rating agencies conveyed a
false sense of safety and regulators stepped all over each other. Simultaneously, the Fed
kept interest rates irresponsibly low while the government incentivized banks to lend to
risker borrowers, encouraging the very loans that the risker banks would securitize after
getting a synthetically high rating from the credit agencies. Economic and financial
policy certainly failed in preventing crisis, and with these facts in mind it is not difficult
to believe that policy actually made the crisis inevitable.
As the meltdown unfolded, governments around the world were called to action
in order to prevent the Great Depression, particularly in the United States. The Treasury
enacted the Toxic Asset Relief Program as a means to inject quality capital into banks,
the Federal Reserve has pursued three different rounds of quantitative easing so far in
an effort to inject capital into the economy, and the Fed finally adopted an explicit 2%
inflation target as part of a policy of increased transparency. A liberal executive branch
extended unemployment insurance to cover those out of work for an unprecedented
tenor, and various institutions were either bailed out or left to fail. Policy makers called
upon creativity and experience to prevent the crisis from getting any worse, and many
hoped that they would use those same traits to enact measures preventing another
crisis. Let us now examine the extent to which this occurred.
Without question, financial institutions taking excessive risk using leverage need
to be closely monitored. Interconnectedness makes the financial sector systemically
important and these firms need to be regulated as such. After the crisis, these
companies undergo periodic “stress tests” to determine if they are adequately
capitalized for another crisis. Conducted by the Fed, these evaluations continue to
increase in terms of difficulty, and offer not only regulators but also investors a better
understanding of each bank’s financial condition.
Basel III, a set of rules and regulations for the global financial community, is
another important measure to promote stability. The key aspect of Basel is that it forces
banks to maintain liquid assets at a higher level than before. The idea is that with a
larger buffer zone, banks will be able to withstand a drop in the value of assets that are
less risky.
While both of these policies are important in promoting stability, they both seem
to be measures to protect the system after a crisis occurs. It is doubtful that there will
be any point in the future when crisis is no longer a worry, but surely as much, if not
more, attention should be paid to preventing crisis. Banks still engage in risky
securitization and trade opaque derivatives. Asset managers, particularly hedge funds,
use leverage to maximize returns at the cost of increasing risk. High-speed traders using
secretive dark pools trade securities at lightening speed and subject the system to “flash
crashes”. Even after the crisis, this behavior takes place behind regulators’ backs, or
perhaps a more appropriate metaphor, in their faces while they argue amongst
themselves whose responsibility it is to prevent the behavior in front of their eyes.
Furthermore, that almost every single financial institution facing a liquidity crisis
was bailed out introduces a dangerous amount of moral hazard. If firms like Bear Sterns
and American International Group can engage in risky investments with far too little
capital and still get saved by the government, then surely I can do the same without
serious repercussion. Many of the people engaging in this risky behavior earn such high
salaries and bonuses while they introduce the risk that the fear of insolvency isn’t a
deterrent. Credit rating agencies, whose ratings are treated as the final say in many
investment decisions, need some sort of mechanism to ensure accuracy. Regulators
need to make significant strides that prevent unnecessary risk taking, ensure that risk is
being taken only by those who can afford it, and make credit ratings systematic
decisions rather than “opinions”. Regulatory policy has a long way to go before the
economic community can consider the changes a positive consequence of the crisis.
An interesting and little-discussed aspect of radical policies in the wake of crisis is
the extent to which this abnormal economic environment will play a part in future
leaders’ decision making. My generation has become socially, academically and
intellectually aware in an age of zero interest rates, billion-dollar stimulus packages,
quantitative easing, forward guidance and almost routine debt crises. In several decades
when thinkers from the Great Recession years are in charge, perhaps quantitative
easing and forward guidance will be traditional policy tools. Perhaps a President who
admired Hank Paulson’s rescue of the financial industry will be more likely to inject
capital into investment and commercial banks. To those my age and with in a band of
about four years older and younger, low interest rates and a fed funds rate of 25 basis
points are normal. It is certainly possible that rates will be abnormally low going
forward, because to my generation, low is normal. This is a policy consequence that will
not come into fruition for many years, but will certainly be interesting to track.
With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to paint economic policy as one of the
causes of the Great Recession. The federal government encouraged banks to make risky
loans at the same time it encouraged consolidation, the regulators couldn’t decide who
should actually regulate, and credit rating agencies, acting essentially freely, falsified
ratings and did not do anywhere near the necessary analysis when deeming speculative
grade products as creditworthy. Moreover, the Fed kept interest rates low for far too
long, facilitating leverage and even more risk taking. When the crisis unfolded, the
government took steps to prevent the economy from falling off a cliff but introduced
even more moral hazard in the process. While stress tests and Basel III are significant
improvements to stability, the regulatory framework remains far from efficient. Moving
forward, decision makers need to use lessons from the past to prevent a similar crisis
from happening again.
Works Cited
Allington, N. F. B. (2009), “The American Sub-Prime Crisis and Its Consequences”,
Downing College Alumni Journal
Taylor, J. B. (2009), “The Financial Crisis and the Policy Responses: An Empirical Analysis
of What Went Wrong”, National Bureau for Economic Research, Working Paper
W14631
Lopez, Linette. "HANK PAULSON: We're Sowing The Seeds For Another Major Problem."
Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.businessinsider.com/paulson-on-post-crisis-mess-in-finance-20141?IR=T>.
Objectivity Created from Created Subjectivities
Caroline Howell
Despite popular views that gender is biologically innate, natural, and the same
across all cultures, the field of anthropology has allowed us to see it as a cultural
construct that is both local and changeable. Gender plays a role in our feelings about who
we are, how we present ourselves, who we associate with, and how we associate with
them. Conceptions of gender not only mediate our social interactions and internal
thoughts, but also impact our life standing, privilege, and opportunities from the day we
are born. An anthropological perspective shows us that our way of viewing gender is not
the only way, and allows us to avoid ethnocentrism. All cultures make a distinction
between the male and female body, but these distinctions do not all have the same
implications in terms of what gender one belongs to, and what it means to belong to a
certain gender. The ideas about how one’s body works in reproduction are crossculturally variable, as well as about the relationship between sex, gender, sexuality, and
sexual orientation. This calls into question the understanding that there is something
“natural” about gender or the way it is constructed. Genly Ai, a fictional character from
The Left Hand of Darkness, implicitly reveals his conceptions about gender as he
explores a genderless world, while the Brazilian Travestis recount their experiences and
share their opinions with Don Kulick, a Swedish ethnographer. By exploring how both
Genly Ai and the Brazilian Travestis categorize gender, what femininity means to them,
and what they see as the implications, roles, and status are of being a woman, one can
better understand what they believe to be true about women and femininity.
Before understanding what Genly Ai and the Brazilians Travestis believe to be
true about women and femininity, it is necessary to understand how they categorize
gender within their own cultures. Both Ai and the Travestis have culturally constructed
gender binaries, but the two categories on either side of the binary differ. Ai views gender
in terms of sexual dimorphism. This means that gender constructs are separated into two
categories- male and female. Ai assigns a gendered dualism to these categories,
associating males with strength, dominance, and protection, and females therefore as
weak, submissive, and protected. Brazilian culture, however, divides their binary into
categories of male and non-male. The Travestis see themselves as part of the non-male
category- not wanting to be a woman, but wanting to share a gender category with them.
Travestis are also constructivist essentialists. Being essentialist means they see their sex
as God-given, but also being constructivist means that the different morphologies of
genitalia allow for different gendered possibilities to be explored and occupied. This
differs from Ai, who follows a strictly essentialist notion of gender. This means that
genders are reduced to certain essential, fixed qualities. In other words, if you have
certain genitals, you will identify with that specific sex and gender, and that will
consequently determine how you think, act, and behave. Gender is seen as inherent and
biological, rather than cultural, a view that overlooks complexities and ambiguities.
In order to understand why the gender categories of Genly Ai and the Brazilian
Travestis are constructed the way they are, it is helpful to think about the cultural context
and where these gendered notions come from. The Travestis refer to God in terms of their
essentialist notions. They believe that there is a religious explanation to how people are
born, and that sex is therefore God-given. Although the Travestis assign certain essential
qualities to either gender, there is also room for gender fluidity. The constructivist notion
refers to the fact that gender is achieved. This is done through physical qualities and the
act of penetration. It is the act of penetration, rather than the gender of the person being
penetrated, that determines the gender roles in a sexual encounter. Therefore, the Travesti
notion of gender is more complicated than Ai’s notion of simply biologically male or
female. The male gender is performed through virility, while the female role through
femininity. A world without gender is appalling to Ai, because it is a cultural construct so
deeply engrained in him and central to a person’s identity. It is difficult for him to define
these roles because they are so embedded in him as a natural assumption. With these
cultural constructions, neither Ai nor the Travestis view people as strictly human. There
are roles, identities, and cultural implications tied to each gender.
Genly Ai and the Travestis have certain beliefs about what it means to be a
woman and what is true of femininity. Travestis see femininity and the female role as
something to be performed and perfected. Although sex is God-given, gender is not.
Travestis see what they do as improving upon the female body. This is what they refer to
as the Travesti Project, and reveals what they see as the ideal female attributes. The
Travesti Project begins with hormones, tweezing, shaving, dying their hair, dressing
correctly, disguising their male anatomy, and then moves onto injecting industrial
silicone into their bundas. They enhance their feminine aspects to be attractive to
masculine, heterosexual men, and in an attempt to achieve the ideal Brazilian body. This
involves being hairless, enlarging their bunda, and sometimes enlarging their breasts.
Being penetrated also gives Travestis the female gender they desire. This is because they
see the female role as that of the person being penetrated. Therefore, they need males to
make them feel desired, dominated, attractive, and to do the penetrating. They believe
that the man’s pleasure is primary, and that only the penetrator should orgasm. They need
males to feel their gender, because they need to be penetrated and to be dominated to feel
feminine. Travestis also have no interest in becoming parents. This is because
reproduction and child rearing do not determine the female gender or play a role in
femininity, at least the parts of it that they identify with or believe to be true. Travestis
see the obligations of motherhood as associated with the pitfalls of womanhood,
including the risk of being abandoned, being dependent, and having to be responsible.
This is why they want to be like women, but do not want to be women, because this
comes with the implications of being dependent, weak, and subordinate. Travestis also
perform the female gender role of domesticity by cooking, cleaning, and taking care of
their boyfriends. How feminine a Travesti feels depends on how masculine their
boyfriend is. This is another example of how they need males to feel their gender. For
these reasons, Travestis associate women with a loss of agency, as the property of men,
and as an objectified body.
Genly Ai also views females as subordinate, and has his own conception of an
ideal body. Ai sees males as strong and virile and, because of the gender binary, women
as weak and expected to be sexually docile. He sees femininity and the female role as
subordinate. This is because he views males as the dominant gender, and being
dominated as something negative. This contrasts with the Travestis, who view being
dominated positively because it gives them the gender they desire. Ai also has
conceptions of a body ideal for females that differs from that of the Brazilian culture. He
views women as shorter and less muscular than men, and even as having a different voice
than men (Kulick 235).
Both Genly Ai and the Travestis view females in an overall negative light, but for
different reasons, and demonstrate this view in different ways. The subordinate role that
Ai assigns to females is revealed by the context in which he uses the female pronoun.
While speaking to the Gathenians, Ai uses the masculine pronoun as his default.
However, he refers to anything unpleasant using the female pronoun. For example, he
refers to ignorance as feminine, and it displeases him because it is seen as a
submissiveness to the given (Kulick 228). By doing this, he is assigning gendered
qualities to irrelevant traits. The Travestis also reveal their feelings towards women
through the use of language. The Portuguese language is itself a gendered language, and
the word Travesti is masculine. While the Travestis will proudly wear the label of bicha,
a female pronoun, they rarely use the word travesti to refer to one another (Kulick 216).
They also describe one another as a viado, also a female pronoun. Travestis feel as
though women who are biologically female do not have to work to be seen as a female or
feminine because they have a buceta. However, Travestis believe that they perform
femininity better than biological females do. They are also glad they do not have a buceta
and do not desire going through a sex change operation because they believe this would
deprive them of sexual pleasure. This reveals that having a buceta does not mean that a
woman will be seen as feminine. Because the Brazilian conceptions of gender roles are
heteronormative, male focused, and patriarchal, this ideology assumes that women’s
bodies have to be regulated and controlled by a society that values maleness.
Both cultures have gender hierarchies that place certain genders, sexualities, and
sexual orientations above others, and there are implications for people of lower status. In
Gethen, Ai is othered for having a permanent gender, which they see as being in
permanent kemmer. People in permanent kemmer, such as Ai, are seen as perverted. This
compares to Ai’s own culture, where one is othered for being queer. Being queer has
societal, economic, and political implications. Therefore, there is mutual ethnocentrism.
Within the Brazilian culture, Travestis see themselves as superior to heterosexual females
because they perform gender better. They also most likely see themselves as superior
because they are males, even if they do not express that with their gender or sexuality.
Homosexuals are a second-class gender in Brazil because they have sex with someone of
the same gender, not because they have sex with someone of the same sex. Like other
Brazilian males, Travestis disparage women. They call each other out for feeling like
women, and do not want to be seen as lesbians. The male genital is ideal because it
allows them to have it all- they can both penetrate and give.
As a result of their differing cultural constructions of gender, Genly Ai and the
Travestis have different socio-sexual interactions, sexuality hierarchies, body politics,
and gender norms. They have different views regarding femininity, and these differences
reveal how there are various ways of constructing the female role. In both cultures, these
subjectivities give people a sense of self and place them into categories that are
meaningful from some objective statement. Whether we do so implicitly or not, a
person’s gender gives them an identity and determines how we can treat them based on
these subjective categorizations. Therefore, subjective distinctions that a culture creates
play a role in determining objective characteristics about a person.
Revisiting Educational Inequality in the 21st Century
Elaina Rollins
Over sixty years ago, civil rights activists rejoiced at the Brown v. Board of
Education decision that desegregated public schools. Black parents envisioned their
children attending the integrated, well resourced, and academically rigorous schools they
had dreamt of for so long. However, thanks to years of persistent white resistance,
pervasive socioeconomic inequality, and weak political action, the percentage of students
of color in white majority schools is lower today than it was in 1968.1 Even with Brown,
poor students of color in this country continue to attend racially and socioeconomically
isolated public schools with inadequate funding and inexperienced teachers. The key
difference between educational inequality during the civil rights movement and
educational inequality today is that during the early twentieth century, segregated schools
existed by law. Today, racially and economically isolated schools exist because of deepseated racist and classic attitudes that have encouraged political policy and the general
public to accept educational disparities as an inevitable reality rather than an urgent
constitutional grievance. The greatest civil rights issue facing our generation today is
educational inequality, because by denying poor students of color access to proper
schools, this country fundamentally limits the intellectual, economic, and social
opportunities for these children simply because of their race and class.
1
Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg, "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and
an Uncertain Future," The UCLA Civil Rights Project (Proyecto Derechos Civiles), May
15, 2014.
The United States likes to view public education as the “great equalizer” in
society, yet statistical data reveals that American schools are anything but equal. Schools
with high percentages of poor students of color fare significantly worse than affluent
white schools by a variety of different measures, including academic achievement,
intellectual opportunity, and resources. Based on a 2014 study of 97,000 American public
schools, the United States Department of Education found that not only do students of
color receive lower test scores than white students, black and Latino students are also at
least two times as likely than white students to attend schools where 20% of all teachers
fail to meet state teaching requirements. A quarter of all public schools with the highest
percentages of students of color also fail to offer math courses beyond Algebra I.2 Income
inequality intertwines with racial disparities as well, since students of color are also likely
come from low-income families. A 2015 study revealed that while 77% of adults in the
top income quartile earned a bachelor’s degree after graduating from high school, only
9% of adults in the lowest income bracket achieved the same.3 Even with the a
constitutional guarantee to legally integrated schools, the educational outcomes of poor
students of color fall below the mark, while affluent white students continue to thrive.
Beyond these startling statistics, research on broader cultural phenomena within
schools reveals that poor students of color also frequently struggle with low morale and
distorted perceptions of their own intellectual worth, simply because of their race or
class. Research shows that before minority students even step foot inside a school, many
2
Motoko Rich, "School Data Finds Pattern of Inequality Along Racial Lines," The New
York Times, March 14, 2014, U.S. sec.
3
Meilssa Korn, "Big Gap in College Graduation Rates for Rich and Poor, Study Finds,"
The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2015, U.S. sec.
struggle to relate to their academic performance in a positive way. Therefore, black
students’ underperformance in school may be due in large part to their parents’ past
experiences with discrimination, because black adults who have struggled to advance
economically in society due to their race may instill a sense of doubt within their children
as to whether education leads to social mobility.4 Along with this general distrust of
white authority, scores of educational research have shown that public schools often
disproportionately place poor children and racial minorities into low-ability classrooms
not because of academic ability, but because of negative stereotypes about perceived
intellect. This placement process can discourage poor students of color from pursuing
higher education or upper-level jobs, simply because teachers consistently relegated them
into remedial courses.5 The current landscape of American education reveals that while
“separate but equal” may be unconstitutional, the large majority of poor children of color
attend fundamentally unequal schools compared to white students, in terms of both racial
and economic composition and the academic environment offered to students.
Much of the current education reform agenda centers around “choice” schools,
such as magnet schools and charter schools, and some activists have even tried to link
educational inequality to the struggle for civil rights. However, while these reformers
attempt to draw compelling similarities between the two battles, the rhetoric of “choice”
oversimplifies both the civil rights movement and the struggle for educational inequality
this country faces today. Choice schools allow children to attend schools out of their
district, and supporters of this reform method have compared families fighting for access
4
Grace Kao and Jennifer Thompson, "Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Educational
Achievement and Attainment," Annual Review of Sociology (2003): 432.
5
Ibid., 434.
to charter schools to Rosa Parks fighting for her seat at the front of the segregated bus.6
This parallel not only oversimplifies Parks’ battle, which involved months of preparation
alongside hundreds of fellow activists, but also overlooks the deep, structural inequalities
involved with educational inequality today. Choice schools encourage students, who are
often poor racial minorities, to leave their “failing” neighborhood school without
addressing the structural inequalities that created those underperforming schools in the
first place, such as white flight to the suburbs, redlining, and state laws that link public
school funding to property taxes.7 The new civil rights movement, which must address
race and class disparities within American public schools, should use tactics from the past
civil rights movement without oversimplifying the battles activists fought to achieve the
progress they made.
The struggle for educational equality today resembles the original civil rights
movement because racial minorities and low income students are still fighting
predominantly white, affluent, privileged people who possess a societal advantage they
do not want to give up. During the era of Brown v. Board of Education, the plaintiffs used
psychological research to show that black students in segregated schools had lower selfesteem than students in integrated schools.8 However, even with a ruling in favor of the
plaintiffs, white Americans fought back vehemently to protect their daisy white schools.
Many white parents felt threatened or insecure at the thought of unknown black children
Ansley Erickson, "The Rhetoric of Choice: Segregation, Desegregation, and Charter
Schools" in Public Education Under Siege, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
7
Shaun McGann, "The Effects of “Redlining” on the Hartford Metropolitan Region,"
ConnecticutHistoryorg, 2014.
8
John Lewis and Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement,
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998, 397.
6
encroaching on their children’s classrooms, so much so that over one hundred Southern
senators released their “Southern Manifesto” in 1956 insisting that segregation was
“founded on elemental humanity and common sense, for parents should not be deprived
by Government the right to direct the lives and education of their own children.”9 Today,
white people use similar arguments to criticize issues such as affirmative action, claiming
that by favoring historically disadvantaged minorities, college admissions “illegally
discriminate.” The struggle for educational equality today encounters powerful whites
who see racial and economic inequality as a threat to their own privilege in the same way
that Brown supporters faced white supremacists who felt desegregation laws infringed
upon their constitutional rights.
A new movement against educational inequality will also be different from the
civil rights movement, because activists today must focus on de facto racial and
socioeconomic segregation, while many of the activists during the civil rights movement
fought outright discriminatory laws. During the 1950s and 1960s, people like John Lewis
focused on specific discriminatory laws, such as segregation mandates for public places
or voting requirements that withheld blacks from the polls, in order to bring about racial
change. Lewis practiced nonviolent civil disobedience to protest unjust laws, even when
white men and women spat in his face, calling him “the lowest form of humanity.”10
Civil rights activists broke overtly unjust and discriminatory segregation mandates until
people took notice. Today, activists must challenge de facto racial and socioeconomic
isolation in schools, or segregation that exists not because of outright discriminatory
9
Strom Thurmond, “The Southern Manifesto,” Washington, D.C., 1956.
John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, 312.
10
policy, but because of a larger set of circumstances and social patterns. Some education
reformers have already begun to address this issue by filing lawsuits against politicians
whose state school funding models inadvertently led to de facto racial and socioeconomic
segregation within classrooms.11 This distinction between overt and inadvertent
discrimination will distinguish the current struggle for educational equality from the past
struggle for civil rights, because education activists today must address series of laws that
may not be explicitly racist or classist, but have discriminatory consequences when
implemented.
Reformers fighting for educational equality today should model their protest
strategies off of the nonviolent civil disobedience used during the civil rights movement,
because this method allows concerned citizens to voice their opinions peacefully until the
message becomes so visible that the general public must pay attention. In his “Letter to
Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. argues that civil rights activists must
employ “nonviolent direct action [because it] seeks to create such a crisis and foster such
a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront
the issue.”12 Through the use of peaceful protests, activists like Dr. King forced white
people to confront the demands of the black community, even if this tactic made white
people feel uncomfortable. Nonviolent civil disobedience also ensures that activists retain
a moral high ground by loving their enemy with a love that “accepts and embraces the
hateful and the hurtful,” rather than fighting their oppressors with unkind language or
11
J. Aurigemma, "Sheff v. O'Neill: Memorandum of Decision," State of Connecticut
Judicial Branch, March 3, 1999.
12
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From Birmingham Jail," Historical Text Archive:
Electronic History Resources, 2001.
violence.13 A movement for educational equality must incorporate these tactics in order
to ensure that the protests are visible within communities while still remaining respectful
and kind to the parents or politicians who resist their efforts.
Another one of the reasons the civil rights movement garnered so much support
was because of black activists’ inclusion of concerned, white citizens, and any new
movement for educational equality today should also embrace affluent white people who
want to advance the cause. In the early 1960s, John Lewis and other members of SNCC
traveled deep into the dangerous South to encourage black citizens to vote. However,
group leaders like Bob Moses knew that SNCC needed white America’s “flesh-andblood” involved in the campaign if they were going to be successful.14 Subsequently,
hoards of Northern white college students boarded trains and buses down to Mississippi
and Alabama, thus increasing the overall number of volunteers while also heightening
white America’s concern for the activists down South. For any new educational equality
movement, poor citizens of color should still retain control and influence over the
involved organizations, since these people are the key victims of suffering and
discrimination. However, if white affluent students or parents want to support racial and
socioeconomic equality in schools, the movement should welcome their help, just as
black civil rights activists accepted help from Northern white students during the
campaign for voting rights.
While the use of nonviolent civil disobedience and inclusion of affluent white
supporters could help advance educational equality, the new movement must also focus
13
14
John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, 77.
Ibid., 248.
on structural elements of inequality that the civil rights movement did not fully address.
Because civil rights activists had so much to battle during the 1950s and 1960s, such as
outright segregation statues and uncontrolled white violence, their first priority was not
the racial biases intricately built into government organizations and social networks.
Before addressing issues such as residential segregation or unfair hiring practices,
activists initially needed to make sure they had a seat at the local lunch counter.
However, because racial and economic isolation in schools today does not exist because
of one explicitly discriminatory law, the movement cannot be successful without
addressing structural problems. In this sense, a new movement for educational equality
may resemble some of the calls for change made by Black Nationalists during the 1970s.
For example, in their 10 Point Program, the Black Panther Party stated, “We want
education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American
society.”15 This type of request extends far beyond the progress made in Brown, as the
Black Panthers were asking for fundamental changes within the traditionally white,
European curriculum. In order to alleviate the current educational inequality in this
country, activists must focus on the types of issues present within the Black Panther’s 10
Point Program while still remaining nonviolent and inclusive of all supporters.
The most pervasive and deeply engrained barrier to educational equality that
members of the movement will address is the process of funding local schools based on
property values. Public schools that are inextricably linked local home prices will always
result in poor, overburdened schools in poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods.
15
The Black Panther Party, "Platform and Program," The Black Panther, July 5, 1969.
Even with charter schools and magnet schools that allow students to temporarily transfer
out of their district, the unequal schools are still left behind. In this sense, education
reformers must address this problem head on rather than avoiding the issue because
income inequality is difficult to discuss in a capitalist society. Reformers can seek
inspiration from voices like Stokely Carmichael, who spoke out against poverty in black
communities, arguing that, “[White people] don’t want to face the real problem which is
a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: ‘cause he does not have money –
period. If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money – period.”16 While any
solution for educational inequality requires much more than simple dollars, this type of
direct, unapologetic attitude is the type of outlook activists should adopt. Members of the
movement for educational equality must peacefully protest unjust school funding
practices outside state government buildings until politicians and the American people
listen. Instead of the current school-funding system, activists must propose an alternative
model, such as policy that requires states to pool education tax dollars and then
redistribute funds depending on district need.
On an extremely local basis, teachers should take active efforts to incorporate
multicultural forms of education into their own classrooms in the same way that the
Council of Federated Organizations installed Freedom Schools in Mississippi during the
summer of 1964 to teach black Americans about black history and social change. These
Freedom Schools educated black Southerners about topics that truly mattered to them,
such as the philosophy of the civil rights movement and remedial reading skills to combat
16
Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power,” Voices of Democracy, October 26, 1966.
discriminatory literacy tests.17 Today, rather than simply incorporating a “diversity” unit
into the curriculum or celebrating Black History Month, teachers should seek to foster an
ethnically diverse educational environment throughout the year, where all student
viewpoints and backgrounds are consistently represented. When used in this manner,
research shows that multicultural education can be a “change agent” to reduce racial
prejudice in the classroom – a key step in opening the eyes of all students to what equal
education can be like if students from different backgrounds truly engage with one
another in academic settings.18 By banding together to promote active change, teachers
can inspire intellectual growth on a local level alongside the nonviolent protests against
large political policies that will take place outside the classroom.
The struggle for educational equality today will inherently address some of the
issues civil rights activists grappled with during the mid-twentieth century, such as white
privilege and the struggle for racial integration. However, the movement today will also
intertwine class and more pervasive forms of structural inequality into the protests that
civil rights activists could not fully address during their own time. The civil rights
movement brought this country to its current point by tackling some of the most
dangerous and pernicious forms of racism that hindered black Americans from living
their lives as true citizens. Today, the movement for educational equality must build off
of these successes, such as the Brown v. Board of Education decision, by respecting their
accomplishments while also acknowledging what was left unfinished. In order to
17
John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, 253
Sabrina Zirkel and Nancy Cantor, "50 Years After Brown V. Board Of Education: The
Promise And Challenge Of Multicultural Education," Journal of Social Issues (2004): 10.
18
fundamentally tackle educational inequality between poor students of color and affluent
white students, activists must address issues surrounding inadequate school funding and
school resourcing by pointing out uncomfortable truths: many rich white citizens will
seek to protect the status quo, in which their local schools significantly outperform poor
inner-city schools, because academic achievement represents privilege and opportunity.
Our movement must focus on grass-root efforts, such as multicultural education within
the classroom, as well as nonviolent protests at the places of political power, such as state
Capitol buildings or legislative offices. With this two-pronged approach and the
determination, will, and tenacity exhibited by past civil rights activists, educational
equality may exist in our future.
Bibliography
Aurigemma, J. "Sheff v. O'Neill: Memorandum of Decision." State of Connecticut
Judicial
Branch. March 3, 1999. Accessed May 5, 2015.
https://www.jud.ct.gov/external/news/sheff.htm.
Erickson, Ansley. "The Rhetoric of Choice: Segregation, Desegregation, and Charter
Schools" in
Public Education Under Siege. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
Kao, Grace, and Jennifer S. Thompson. "Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Educational
Achievement and Attainment." Annual Review of Sociology (2003): 417-442.
King Jr., Dr. Martin Luther. "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Historical Text Archive:
Electronic
History Resources, Online since 1990. Historical Text Archive, 2001. Web. 7
Apr. 2015.
Korn, Meilssa. "Big Gap in College Graduation Rates for Rich and Poor, Study Finds."
The Wall
Street Journal, February 3, 2015, U.S. sec. Accessed May 4, 2015.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-gap-in-college-graduation-rates-for-rich-andpoor-study-finds-1422997677.
Lewis, John, and Michael D’Orso. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.
New
York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
McGann, Shaun. "The Effects of “Redlining” on the Hartford Metropolitan Region."
ConnecticutHistoryorg. 2014. Accessed May 4, 2015.
http://connecticuthistory.org/the-effects-of-redlining-on-the-hartfordmetropolitan-region/.
Orfield, Gary, and Erica Frankenberg. "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and
an
Uncertain Future." The UCLA Civil Rights Project (Proyecto Derechos Civiles).
May 15, 2014. Accessed May 4, 2015.
http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-
diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertainfuture/Brown-at-60-051814.pdf
Rich, Motoko. "School Data Finds Pattern of Inequality Along Racial Lines." The New
York
Times, March 14, 2014, U.S. sec. Accessed May 4, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/school-data-finds-pattern-of-inequalityalongracial-lines.html?_r=0.
The Black Panther Party. "Platform and Program." The Black Panther, July 5, 1969.
Thurmond, Strom. “The Southern Manifesto.” Washington, D.C., 1956.
Zirkel, Sabrina, and Nancy Cantor. "50 Years After Brown V. Board Of Education: The
Promise
And Challenge Of Multicultural Education." Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 1
(2004): 1-15.
Crossing the Line: Barriers in War and Peace
Emily Turner
To what extent is the individual free? In the second epilogue to his novel War and
Peace, Russian author Leo Tolstoy proposes an answer to this philosophical question:
If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything around him, each
action of his seems to us free. But if we see his relation to anything around him, if
we see his connection with anything whatever…we see that each of these
circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some of his activity.
(1066)
Although this idea, that an individual is only free until he comes into contact with an
outside entity, is expressed most explicitly in this epilogue, Tolstoy progresses towards
this answer throughout the entirety of War and Peace. One aspect of this progression can
be identified in Tolstoy’s discussion of barriers, or “преграды.” Barriers, or the lack
thereof, are a recurring motif throughout the novel. In the episodes in which Tolstoy
employs the word “преграда,” he examines the concept of a barrier in relation to
morality, human will, individualism, and group mentality. In War and Peace, Tolstoy
demonstrates that group mentality and social pressures force individuals to cross moral
barriers, and that in the context of a group, an individual is deprived of his or her personal
morality.
Through the societally arranged relationship between Hélène and Pierre, Tolstoy
explores the concept of a barrier as a manifestation of Pierre’s individual morality. When
forced into the company of Hélène at Anna Pavlovna’s party, Pierre experiences a moral
dilemma. Tolstoy describes Pierre’s situation: “She was terribly close to him. She already
had power over him, and between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier
of his own will” (180). Despite Pierre’s malleable personality and Hélène’s “power over
him” (180), Pierre does not submit to Hélène’s charms immediately. Rather, “the barrier
of his own will,” (180) which exists only within his mind, protects him. This barrier is
able to exist because Pierre, as an individual, wills it. Because he possesses such strong
moral “conviction,” Pierre is “seized by terror” of being “bound” (181) to act in
opposition to his beliefs. In his individual thoughts, Pierre recognizes marriage to Hélène
as “unnatural”, “dishonorable”, and “something that was evidently wrong and that he
ought not to do” (181). Pierre is terrified to cross the barrier that separates him from
marriage to Hélène—that is, until he submits to outside influences and partakes in a
group mentality.
Social pressure from the guests at Anna Pavlovna’s party forces Pierre to cross his
internal moral barrier. Despite his obvious aversion to marriage with Hélène, he
acquiesces to the memory of, “her former words and looks…the words and looks of those
who had seen them together…Anna Pavlovna’s words and looks when she spoke to him
about his house…thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and others” (Tolstoy 181).
Once Pierre embraces the opinion of the larger community—that he should in fact marry
Hélène—he is able to appreciate Hélène’s “womanly beauty” (181). Although Pierre
possesses an individual sense of morals, he is unable to maintain allegiance to these
morals in the face of social pressure. He forgets that his union with Hélène is intimidating
and even “unnatural”(181); in fact, he begins to desire her. Through the transformation of
Pierre’s attitude, Tolstoy demonstrates the vital role of group mentality in the crossing of
moral barriers. As evidenced by Pierre, once one succumbs to the will of the group, one
sacrifices individuality and by extension, individual morality.
Whereas Tolstoy uses the pairing of Pierre and Hélène to illustrate how group
mentality can lead an individual to cross his or her personal moral barrier, he uses an
equally disastrous romance, that of Natasha and Anatole, to explore the conditions under
which such a barrier cannot exist. Tolstoy describes Natasha’s emotional process during
her first encounter with Anatole:
Natasha knew for certain that he was enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his
presence made her feel constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at
him she felt that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his
eyes so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking into his eyes she
was frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of modesty she had always
felt between herself and other men. (502)
In this situation Natasha cannot create a moral barrier; she can only recognize the lack
thereof. Like Pierre, who feels that his union with Hélène is “unnatural” (181), Natasha
experiences “horror” (503) and is “frightened” (502) by Anatole. However, Pierre’s is
able to create a barrier against Hélène “from his own will” (180), whereas Natasha has no
agency to build such a barrier. This lack of agency stems from Natasha’s condition when
she first meets Anatole—she is already under the influence of Hélène’s society. When
removed from society, Natasha ponders, “there in the presence of that Hélène it had all
seemed clear and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. ‘What is it?
What was that terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling
now?’” (503) Alone, Natasha expresses moral qualms about engaging in a romance with
Anatole. But, because she is part of a societal mentality when she meets Anatole, the
young and impressionable Natasha forfeits her individual moral agency. Whereas Pierre
merely crosses his mental barrier when faced with group pressure, Natasha is never
granted the opportunity to create a barrier. Tolstoy uses Natasha’s inability to form a
barrier while under the influence of society in order to reinforce the idea that moral
boundaries are powerless beyond the scope of an individual mind.
To simultaneously contrast the weak barrier between Pierre and Hélène and the
non-existent barrier between Natasha and Anatole, Tolstoy presents a moral barrier
between Pierre and Natasha that remains untouched by destructive societal influences.
Natasha observes the presence of this moral barrier between herself and Pierre; however,
she misunderstands this barrier. She believes the barrier will prevent romance, for she
does not yet understand love. Tolstoy writes:
It was not because Pierre was a married man, but because Natasha felt very
strongly with him that moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced
with Kuragin that it never entered her head that the relations between him and
herself could lead to love on her part, still less on his, or even to the kind of
tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which
she had known several instances. (585)
After her nearly ruinous experience with Anatole, Natasha naïvely associates love with
the absence of a moral barrier. Yet, she does acknowledge that Pierre’s behavior towards
her seems natural. Tolstoy describes, “nothing good on Pierre’s part seemed to her to be
an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in
his kindness” (585). In contrast to the “unnatural” (181) quality of Pierre’s relationship
with Hélène and Natasha’s “horror” (503) with Anatole, Pierre’s kindness towards
Natasha is genuine and nonthreatening. Pierre and Natasha’s relationship is never
subjected to a societal pressure; therefore, this naturally occurring moral barrier remains
intact.
This relationship is able to develop into a successful romance, because neither
Pierre nor Natasha forfeits his or her individual morality. When Pierre and Natasha’s love
finally takes shape in the final episodes of the novel, Pierre observes the difference
between his old and new romantic relationships. With Natasha, “There was now no
shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong”
(994). Pierre and Natasha’s love serves as a positive example of a moral barrier. Because
their relationship blossoms naturally, without the intervention of group mentality, their
love is genuine and morally sound. Thus, Tolstoy elevates naturally occurring love,
which does not require the violation of a moral barrier, to moral superiority over both
prearranged marriage and lust.
Although much of Tolstoy’s discussion of barriers focuses on romantic
relationships, Tolstoy also explores barriers in relation to life and death. This exploration
is exemplified in the brutal execution of the innocent Vereshchagin at the hands of a
Moscow mob. Tolstoy describes the scene:
But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from Vereshchagin he
uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was fatal. The barrier of human
feeling, strained to the utmost, that had held the crowd in check suddenly broke.
The crime had begun and must now be completed. The plaintive moan of
reproach was drowned by the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. (791)
As is the case with romantic relationships, individual morality cannot exist within a group
mentality. In this episode, the “barrier of human feeling” (791) is destroyed at the same
moment in which the crowd takes action. Tolstoy shows that individualism, without
which there cannot exist moral boundaries, is nullified by the crowd’s agency. An
individual forfeits his or her humanity by joining the crowd’s animalistic “roar” (791).
Once one partakes in the entity of the crowd, one forgets individual morals in frenzied
pursuit of a shared goal. In this case, the crowd’s shared goal is the death of
Vereshchagin. It is not until this goal is achieved that moral barriers are restored to
individuals. Tolstoy writes of the members of the crowd, “Each one came up, glanced at
what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and astonishment pushed back again”
(792). No one member of the crowd takes responsibility for Vereshchagin’s death,
because at the time of the killing each member only exists as a piece of the crowd; each is
beyond the “barrier of human feeling” (791) and has no sense of morality. However, once
freed from the mob mentality, individuals can experience remorse. Tolstoy, through this
barbaric execution, emphasizes that individuals are capable of morality, but this morality
disintegrates within a group context.
Tolstoy further develops the relationship between a moral barrier and life and
death through the dying thoughts of Prince Andrew, who takes refuge with the Rostov
family during the French occupation of Moscow. Tolstoy describes Prince Andrew’s
mental process,
During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he spent after he was
wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new principle of eternal love
revealed to him, the more he unconsciously detached himself from earthly life. To
love everything and everybody and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not
to love anyone, not to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with
the principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he
destroyed that dreadful barrier which—in the absence of such love—stands
between life and death. (868)
When Andrew is alone, “during the hours of solitude” (868), he begins to understand the
concept of eternal love. To experience eternal love is, “To love everything and everybody
and always to sacrifice oneself for love” (868). By extension, Andrew sees the necessity,
“not to love anyone, not to live this earthly life” (868). Andrew’s solitude leads him to
the discovery of this eternal love, which in turn leads him to the idea of self-sacrifice.
Self-sacrifice, or death, is the extreme of solitude. In short, eternal love drives Andrew
away from “earthly life” (868), from other humans, to the death. However, armed with
eternal love, Andrew does not fear death. In fact, it not death, but the barrier than
separates one from death, if one lacks eternal love, that Tolstoy defines as “dreadful”
(868). To the truly individual or solitary person, one whose thoughts are untainted by
social pressure such as Andrew in this episode, death is a welcome escape from the
influence of society. Tolstoy’s exploration of barriers culminates in this episode. Through
Andrew’s deeply individual discovery of eternal love, which allows him to overcome the
barrier between life and death, Tolstoy classifies death as a route to complete freedom
from the influence of one’s fellow men.
The question proposed at the outset of this analysis remains: To what extent is the
individual free? Through the recurring metaphor of a barrier, Tolstoy shows that each
individual is free to create a moral barrier within himself. Pierre does this in his effort to
resist the seductive allure of Hélène. Tolstoy defines to what extent an individual is free
by exploring to what extent he is confined. He develops the idea that when one is under
the influence of a social group, one is not free to live by one’s individual morality.
Although Pierre is free to draw a line between himself and Hélène, the persuasive will of
a larger societal group convinces him to cross this line. So too, is Natasha unable to
maintain a moral boundary around Anatole, for she is under the destructive influence of
Hélène’s social circle. And, such is also the case when each member of the Moscow
crowd succumbs to the mob mentality that leads them to brutally kill Vereshchagin.
Finally, Tolstoy implies, through the dying epiphany of Prince Andrew, that in death one
is truly free from the authority of group mentality. Only by departing from the largest
human community—the living—can one exist purely on one’s own terms. In other
words, it is impossible to live in this world and remain purely oneself, untainted by the
influences of others. The barrier motif is not the only tool Tolstoy employs in War and
Peace to explore this question of human freedom. However, to identify all the rhetorical
tools and intricacies of Tolstoy’s thousand page masterpiece could take a lifetime or
more. Perhaps this is why, since its publication in the 1860s, the overarching truth in the
epic War and Peace has evaded definition. War and Peace’s overall meaning is wrapped
in a veil of mystery—one that inspires critics, scholars, and students to revisit Tolstoy’s
longest work time and time again.
Work Cited
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace: The Maude Translation, Backgrounds and Sources,
Criticism. Trans. Aylmer Maude and Louise Maude. Ed. George Gibian. New
York: Norton, 1996. Print.
The Biogeography of Crassitegula C.W. Schneid., C.E. Lane et G.W.
Saunders (Sebdeniales, Rhodophyta)
Erica Quinones
Originally collected in 2006, the identity of an unknown specimen from Bermuda
presented a mystery to researchers. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that the specimen
was a member of the family Sebdeniaceae. However, analyses of gene sequences of the
small subunit rDNA revealed that the specimen was phylogentically distinct from
Sebdenia, the only existing genus of the family at the time. This distinction led to the
establishment of the new genus Crassitegula and the specimen was named Crassitegula
walsinghamii C.W. Schneid., C.E. Lane & G.W. Saunders (Schneider et al. 2006).
Since then, Crassitegula imitans G.W. Saunders & Kraft from Lord Howe Island
and C. laciniata C.W. Schneid., Popolizio & C.E. Lane from Bermuda have been described
(Kraft et al. 2011; Schneider et al. 2014). The genus Crassitegula is characterized by its
dorsiventral thalli, filamentous medullas, and nemathecial tetrasporangia (Schneider et
al. 2006). Morphologically, C. laciniata is the most distinct of the three known speces as
it is branched and dissected in comparison to suborbicular thalli in C. imitans and C.
walsinghamii. In early development, the blades of C. laciniata are oval-shaped and
angular later becoming long and narrow as it reaches maturity. On the other hand, C.
imitans and C. walsinghamii both produce suborbicular proliferations along their
margins, and this is not the case for C. laciniata (Schneider et al. 2014).
In addition to their morphology, the Crassitegula species also differ in the
habitats where they are found. In Bermuda, C. walsinghamii was found in inshore and
inland habitats, such as Walsingham Pond, at depths as shallow as 1.5 m deep as well as
18 m offshore (Schneider et al. 2006). Crassitegula laciniata was also collected in
Bermuda, however it was found on the north and south shores on reefs at depths
ranging from 7 to 12 m (Schneider et al. 2014). Crassitegula imitans was found on Lord
Howe Island on Malabar reef 15 m deep (Kraft et al. 2011). To date, these are the only
known locations of Crassitegula species, each being endemic to their island. There is one
additional locality of an unnamed species of Crassitegula found in Western Australia
(Fig. 1). The specimen was collected from the Basin on Rottnest Island (Kraft et al. 2011).
Given the distribution of Crassitegula as a genus, determining its biogeography
becomes a matter of connecting the region of Australia to Bermuda. Lord Howe Island is
located 31.5 °S of the equator and is located 600 km off the coast of New South Wales,
Australia. Water temperatures vary from 17-25°C depending on the seasons
(Anonymous, 2010). Womersley (1984) described the waters of this region of Australia
as warm temperate. On the other hand, Bermuda is located 32°N of the equator. The
waters are subtropical with mean sea temperatures between 17-28°C (Glasspool et al.
2009). Figure 1 shows the worldwide distribution of Crassitegula and it is important to
note the locations of each island, as Bermuda and Lord Howe Island occupy identical
latitudes in the north and south hemispheres. While connecting these two regions may
seem like a relatively straightforward task at first, it soon becomes clear that the puzzle
presented by the distribution of Crassitegula is missing several pieces. As a result,
determining which pieces are missing is essential to developing a hypothesis on the
biogeography of Crassitegula. To begin, the center of distribution for the genus must be
determined.
Based on the available molecular data on Crassitegula, I propose that this genus
has a center of distribution in Australia. Figure 2 displays the phylogenetic relationships
between each species determined by Schneider, Popolizio, and Lane (2014) using the
alignments of ribosomal 28S sequences. The “dark” Crassitegula species (C. sp. WA)
from Western Australia as well as C. imitans from Lord Howe Island are basal to the two
Bermuda species (Fig. 2). According to this data, the Australia species emerged first,
which is why it is reasonable to conclude that Crassitegula distributed from Australia.
This is a logical inference, as Hommersand (2007) suggested that Australia is more
important as a donor than a recipient. Though it has not been described, the existence
of a Crassitegula species in Western Australia that is basal to all other species in the
genus suggests that ancestral Crassitegula existed in this location. Therefore, I propose
that western Australia is the center of distribution of Crassitegula.
Hommersand (1986) suggested that species with a center of distribution in west
and southern Australia have ancestors that originated in the southern Tethyan Ocean.
From the northern edge of Gondwanaland, these Tethyan species migrated south upon
the northward movement of India to the south west coast of Australia during the
Cretaceous period approximately 118 mya (Phillips 2001). I propose that an ancestral
Crassitegula species migrated from the west coast of Australia to South Africa. This
migration occurred via the North Equatorial current of the Indian Ocean to East Africa
and then via the Agulhas current to South Africa sometime after the mid-Miocene (15
mya) when temperatures had decreased (Fig. 3). Hommersand (1986) stated that there
were numerous genera or species that seemed to have a center of diversity in south and
west Australia that also have a species or two in the East Cape or Natal. In 2007,
Hommersand extended his original theory by citing the discoveries of a new species of
the genus Calliblepharis in South Africa in addition to the known species in the North
Indian Ocean, Brazil, and North Carolina. Therefore, it is plausible that once in South
Africa, ancestral Crassitegula migrated up the western coast of Africa via the Benguela
current and to the western Atlantic via the equatorial currents of the Atlantic Ocean as
proposed by Hommersand in 2003 (Fig. 3).
Once in the western Atlantic, Crassitegula was able to migrate via the Florida
Current-Gulf Stream system. Due to Bermuda’s location on the eastern side of this
current system, it can receive seaweeds from southern tropical regions (Searles et al.
1987). As my theory begins during the mid-Miocene (15 mya) and Bermuda originated
nearly 33 million years ago (Glasspool et al. 2009), dispersal to Bermuda could have
occurred any time following the arrival of ancestral Crassitegula in the western Atlantic.
The emergence of C. walsinghamii and C. laciniata could have occurred any time
throughout the migration of the ancestral Crassitegula species. However, I speculate
that Crassitegula speciated once it arrived in the tropics of the western Atlantic after the
rise in temperatures near the equator. Once in Bermuda, Crassitegula speciated
sympatrically into C. walsinghamii and C. laciniata, effectively accounting for the
distributions of the Bermudian species. It is also possible to explain the current
distribution of C. imitans on Lord Howe Island. As can be seen in Figure 4, the dual water
movement of the West Wind drift and the Leeuwin Current would have allowed
Crassitegula to migrate eastward (Phillips 2001). Following the formation of Lord Howe
Island 7 million years ago, it is likely that Crassitegula migrated via kelp rafts from the
coast of Australia to Lord Howe Island along the lines proposed in British Columbia by
Saunders (2014). I propose that Crassitegula speciated allpatrically into C. imitans due
to vicariance on Lord Howe Island.
As previously mentioned, the limited distribution of Crassitegula leaves holes
that need to be filled while deducing a theory for dispersal. I believe there are more
species of Crassitegula that remain to be discovered not only in the western Atlantic and
Australia, but also in the Indian Ocean and South Africa. Hommersand (2007) proposed
that relicts of the migration of species from Australia through the Indian Ocean to
Southern Africa should be preserved in deeper waters. Species of Crassitegula may also
exist in the Caribbean but few collections are being made presently in water as deep as
the collections in Bermuda. It is possible that Crassitegula has been outcompeted in
these regions, however it is more likely that they exist and have yet to be discovered.
Louis Druehl (1981) suggested that phycologists should not accept disjunct distributions
without questioning the completeness of the record. He also wrote that phycologists
must distinguish between “the proof of absence and the absence of proof”. That is why I
believe it is safe to conclude that just because this genus has yet to be found, does not
mean it does not exist in these regions.
Based on available information, it is likely that Australia is the origin of
distribution for the genus Crassitegula. It makes the most sense that it migrated through
the Indian Ocean to the southern tip of Africa on to the western Atlantic where it
dispersed to Bermuda. In the past decade or so, three species of Crassitegula have been
described. It is my prediction that more species will be collected in the coming years.
Much remains to be seen when it comes to the complete biogeography of this genus but
with the current information, one can piece together the history Crassitegula.
Erica Quinones
Marine Phytogeography,
2015
Literature Cited
Anonymous. 2010. Natural values of Lord Howe Island marine park [Internet]. Hurtsville
(NSW): NSW Marine Parks Authority (New South Wales); [cited 2015 Nov 6]
Available from http://www.mpa.nsw.gov.au/pdf/Natural-Values.pdf
Druehl, L.D. 1981. Geographical distribution. In: Lobban, C.S. & Wynne, M.J. The
biology of seaweeds. Berkley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. p.
306-325.
Glasspool, A.F. & Sterrer, W. Bermuda. In: Encyclopedia of the natural world.
Encyclopedia of islands. London (ENG): University of California Press; 2009. p.
95-98.
Hickman, C.S. Lord Howe Island. In: Encyclopedia of the natural world. Encyclopedia of
islands. London (ENG): University of California Press; 2009. p. 568-572.
Hommersand, H.M. 1986. The biogeography of South African marine red algae: A
model. Bot. Mar. 26: 257-270.
Hommersand, H.M. & Fredericq, S. 2003. Proceedings XVIIth International Seaweed
Symposium Cape Town. In: Chapman, A.R.O, Anderson, R.J., Vreeland, V.J.,
Davison, I.R., editors. Biogeography of the marine red algae of the South African
west coast: A molecular approach. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. p. 325336.
Hommersand, H.M. 2007. Algae of Australia: Introduction. In: McCarthy, P.M., editor.
Global biogeography and relationships of the Australian marine macroalgae.
Canberra & Melbourne (AU): Australian Biological Resources Study & CSIRO
Publishing. p. 511-542.
Kraft, G.T. & Saunders, G.W. 2011. Taxonomic and molecular studies of the family
Sebdeniaceae (Sebdeniales, Rhodophyta): new species of Lesleigha gen. nov. and
Crassitegula from Hawaii, east Asia and Lord Howe Island. Eur. J. Phycol. 46:
416-441.
Phillips, J.A. 2001. Marine macroalgal biodiversity hotspots: why is there high species
richness and endemism in southern Australia marine benthic flora? Biodiv.
Conserv. 10: 1555-1577.
Saunders, G.W. 2014. Long distance kelp rafting impacts seaweed biogeography in the
Northeast Pacific: The kelp conveyor hypothesis. J. Phycol. 50: 968-974.
Searles, R.B. & Schneider, C.W. 1987. Observation on the deep-water flora of Bermuda.
1987. Hydrobiologia. 151/152: 261-266.
Schneider, C.W. 2015. Moodle. < http://moodle.trincoll.edu/course/view.php?id=8760>.
Accessed 2015 Nov 23.
Schneider, C.W., Lane, C.E., & Saunders, G.W. 2006. Crassitegula walsinghamii
(Sebdeniaceae, Halymeniales), a new red algal genus and species from Bermuda
based upon morphology and SSU rDNA sequence analyses. Eur. J. Phycol. 41:
115-124.
Schneider, C.W., Popolizio, T.R., & Lane, C.E. 2014. Notes on the marine algae of the
Bermudas. 14. Five additions to the benthic flora, including a distinctive second
new species of Crassitegula (Rhodophyta, Sebdeniales) from the western Atlantic
Ocean. Phycologia. 53: 117-126.
Womersley, H.B.S. 1984. The marine benthic flora of Southern Australia, part I. Marine
biogeography of Southern Australian Coasts. Aldelaide (SA): Australian
Biological Resources Study. p. 53-56.
Image Citations:
Ocean currents in Australia [Website]. 2015. Australia: Redmaps.org.au,
< http://www.redmap.org.au/article/ocean-currents-in-australia/ >, accessed 1
Dec. 2015.
Schneider, C.W., Popolizio, T.R., & Lane, C.E. 2014. Notes on the marine algae of the
Bermudas. 14. Five additions to the benthic flora, including a distinctive second
new species of Crassitegula (Rhodophyta, Sebdeniales) from the western Atlantic
Ocean. Phycologia. 53: 117-126.
Schneider, C.W. 2015a. Seaweed biogeography [PowerPoint presentation]. Hartford
(CT): Moodle, accessed 1 Dec. 2015.
Schneider, C.W. 2015b. Isocrymes, isotheres and other useful maps.
<http://moodle.trincoll.edu/course/view.php?id=8760>, accessed 1 Dec. 2015.
Disjunct Distribution of Crassitegula (Rhodophyta, Sebdeniales)!
______________________________________________________________________
C. walsinghamii
C. imitans
C. laciniata sp. n.
Crassitegula sp.1WA
Figure 1. World distribution of Crassitegula (from Schneider 2015a).
Figure 2. Phylogenetic tree based on the alignment of ribosomal 28S sequences
(from Schneider et al. 2014).
Figure 3. Ocean currents (from Schneider 2015b).
Figure 4. Ocean currents in Australia (from Redmaps.org.au 2015).
Artistic Representations as a Bridge between
Slavery and the Modern Black Experience
Evan Turiano
Artistic and narrative representations can allow us to more wholly understand
experiences than a fact-based or historical analysis. Philosopher Hayden White explains
that creative representations are “a meta-code, a human universal on the basis of which
transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted.”19 As
such, the connections between the plight of African Americans under enslavement and
that of the 21st century black community can be more universally understood through
art than through a purely historical or analytical approach. This piece will look deeply at
the work of visionaries such as Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon to try and piece apart how
specifically we carry the legacies of slavery in today’s society, and how today’s black
communities experiences with oppression are intrinsically tied with those of enslaved
men and women 150 years ago. Much of the work can be boiled down to attempts to
grapple with the complicated notions of fugitivity and violence within enslavement and
modern black life. A look at how representations of these two concepts change over 150
years reveals the duality of both. Fugitivity is simultaneously a liberator and a limiter in
the African American consciousness, and time has bestowed representations of violence
19
Hayden White, The Content of the Form (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987) 1.
with an increasing amount of cognitive dissonance and has deconstructed the power
structures commonly associated with it.
The conceptual artist Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) manages to, through artistic
representation, capture the oppression of slavery, its legacy in violence against, the
misappropriation of, and the criminalization of the black body. Ligon first reached
acclaim as an artist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the concepts of enslavement,
resistance against it, and the legacy of the institution were important to his artistic
formation.20 In Bound to Appear, art historian Huey Copeland looks at Ligon’s art as an
expression of fugitivity. Further, I think that the association of fugitivity and the black
body—as expressed within Ligon’s art—is a connecting factor between the era of
slavery and the modern black experience. A major theme in Ligon’s work—and thus a
theme that he sees as being essential to the African American experience—is that of
placelessness. Copeland writes that “The terrors of slavery—itself predicated on the
theft and inconsequentiality of black life—have not only rendered the black body the
ultimate signifier of negativity in modern thought and metaphysics but have also
determined the realities of placelessness as black folks in America have encountered
them from slavery though Jim Crow to the present.”21 This understanding—that
American slavery was an institution so pervasive that it managed to strip generations of
black women and men of value, bodily security, and a sense of belonging for 150 years
20
Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013)
110.
21 ibid., 123.
after its cessation—is useful in understanding a social structure that Eduardo BonillaSilva described as being built upon “racism without racists.”
The legacy of slavery can thus be understood as the institutional racism in
American society that criminalizes blackness and leaves an open door for violence
against the African American community. Ligon has, in his work, attempted to identify
institutional and cultural factors that contribute to this oppression. According to
Copeland, “Over the course of his career, Ligon has consistently engaged the postures
and visual technologies that produce blacks folks as runaways who define the limits of
belonging and productively figure the aporias of representation.”22 This engagement is,
in my opinion, most profound in his 1993 Runaways series. For this 10-piece series of
lithographs, Ligon asked friends to write dispassionate descriptions of him (without
telling them why), instructing them “to render him in words as if he had gotten loose
from languages grip.”23 He then printed these descriptions in a style similar runaway
slave advertisements (see Figures 1 & 2 for comparison). These pieces are striking in
how much they serve to depersonalize the artist, which speaks to the dehumanizing
power of connecting blackness to fugitivity. Further, the use of a generic sketch on the
advertisement that did not fit the description—as was common practice—has a
commodifying effect on the African American in question and strips them of a great deal
of their individuality. What these pieces reveal is the ease with which the connections
22
Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013)
114.
23 ibid.,136.
between blackness and fugitivity, and even more so fugitivity and non-humanity, can be
drawn.
Furthermore, the exploration of connecting fugitivity and criminality to blackness
begins to speak to the mechanisms that have historically subjugated African Americans
and how they may continue to do so. Copeland explains, “The runaway slave signified
the onus of property to be recovered and the threat of the peculiar institution gone
awry, its order undone and its objects restored to themselves, even if only momentarily,
Consequently, the fugitive is a figure who muddies and disturbs fantasies of the idyllic
antebellum South, leaving the confines of the plantation in order to inhabit a placeless
horizon.”24 Not only are fugitivity and placelessness both inherent to the African
American experience, but also as Copeland unpacks here, we see that the placelessness
is rooted in a fugitivity and criminality that has been intrinsic to blackness since the
Fugitive Slave Law. I think that Copeland describes best the connection between
placelessness and fugitivity in the black consciousness when he says, “Seen everywhere
and wanted nowhere, it is as if the black subject cannot proceed to where he is going
because his specter has always arrived before him.”25 This notion of placelessness—that
black Americans are unwanted in most sects of American life—can be found in much of
Ligon’s art, I think most notably in his 1993 piece Picky (see Figure 3). The piece is
consistent of a nondescript gray on black street map of Brooklyn, and a series of very
brief stories underneath. The stories are monologues by an individual, presumably
24
Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013)
138.
25 ibid., 121.
Ligon, telling stories of being rejected and otherwise discriminated against by white real
estate agents and landlords. In each story the protagonist faces an isolation that is
borne out of suspicion, in many ways the same loneliness and rejection that a black man
would’ve faced in Brooklyn 150 years earlier.
The suspicion and rejection that Ligon expresses—rooted in the criminality of
blackness—is reflected in 19th century narrative and artistic representations of black life.
This suspicion was a major contributor to feelings of placelessness among the black
community in antebellum northern cities, especially after the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law in 1850. Of the experiences of these African Americans, Copeland writes,
“Every dark figure might be searched for telltale signs of signs of fatigue, disorientation,
or foreignness that might transform an unattended person back into a fungible asset.”26
Copeland goes on to make reference to this sense of placelessness and fugitivity in the
narrative of Henry “Box” Brown (see Figure 2). Brown’s story and the artistic
representations that accompany it speak to the duality of fugitivity in the 19 th century
black consciousness, simultaneously reflecting solitude and liberation.
Brown’s remarkable flight for freedom entailed shipping himself in a crate—
three feet wide and two feet long—that he spent 32 consecutive hours cramped into.
Brown then spent the next decades using his colorful tale toward an abolitionist aim,
displaying “manic proliferation of autoexpressive media,” including a narrative,
26
Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013)
138.
performances, a panorama, art and other visual imagery, and a hymn.27 Some aspects of
this work express notions of solitude and placelessness that one would find to be in line
with Ligon’s work. In his narrative, after his heartbreaking separation from his family, he
writes, “no one seemed at that time to sympathi[z]e with me, and I began to feel,
indeed, that I really was alone in the world; and worse than all, I could console myself
with no hope, not even the most distant, that I should ever see my beloved parents
again.”28 On the other hand, in the context of the 19th century, Brown’s seizure of his
own freedom and control over his own story were a cause of pride and celebration, and
this is reflected in the artwork of the time. The illustration of Brown’s “resurrection”
from his shipping crate found in William Still’s The Underground Rail Road (see Figure 4)
shows him completing the ordeal with dignity and poise, without so much as a look of
fatigue or wrinkled attire. Portraying Brown with such dignity bestows upon him the
power associated with self-emancipation and fugitivity. Images such as this contributed
to the narrative surrounding Brown that did a great deal to illuminate cracks in the
formidable institution of slavery and to give hope and promise to the enslaved.
The highly symbolic nature of Brown’s escape from enslavement has lent itself to
a well-developed body of art in recent times, but much of this conveys very different
concepts and emotions than the 19th century of which he is subject. For example, Pat
Ward William’s 1987 installation 32 Hours in a Box…And Still Counting (Figure 5) trades
dignity for cruelty and oppression in showing Brown’s experience in the box, and
27
Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013),
147.
28 Henry Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, 1851, 20.
expresses the falseness of emancipation’s promises. Copeland writes that the piece
“weaves Brown and his latter-day avatar into a seamless narrative in which fugitivity
signifies only the promise of new forms of subjection.”29 In a general sense, comparing
19th century work and modern work that interacts with slavery shows the
disappointment in Emancipation’s false promises. Copeland explains that black
conceptual art that deals with slavery “marks out the disparity between instances of
American emancipation so as to materialize the distance between the realities of black
oppression and the myth of white freedom.”30 So while both eras of work interact with
similar concepts and forms of oppression, the benefit of historical hindsight has stripped
modern artists of the hopefulness seen in much 19th century work.
The duality of representations of Brown shows that, while fugitivity can preclude
criminality, distrust, and placelessness, it also has offered power and liberation.
Copeland writes, “Just as the runaway sought to move beyond his status as property, to
duck the system of surveillance and representation meant to curtail, restrict, and
ultimately cease his sojourn, his vivid absence remained a blight in the memory of his
own and bastion of hope for those still enslaved.”31 Self-emancipation was reliant on the
ability of the slave to subvert their enslavement in any way possible, and perhaps the
connection between subversion and control over one’s one fate is still strong within the
African American collective conscience. This interpretation of fugitivity as a symbol of
29
Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013),
146.
30 ibid., 109-10
31 ibid., 138-9.
hope and control can be see in some of the lithographs found in William Still’s 1872 The
Underground Rail Road. One excellent example of this is the piece A Bold Stroke for
Freedom (see Figure 6). This image depicts six Virginia slaves who, in their attempt to
flee for Canada with their enslaver’s horses and carriage, were ambushed near the
Maryland border. One of the men who attempted to recapture them threatened to
shoot, but the fugitives showed unflinching courage; as Still writes, “Their adversaries
[the slave catchers] seeing the weapons the weapons, and the unflinching
determination on the part of the runaways to stand their ground, ‘spill blood, kill, or
die,’ rather than be ‘taken,’ very prudently ‘sidled over to the other side of the road,’
leaving at least four of the victors to travel on their way.”32 To the white enslaver in the
antebellum South, the power and control associated with gun violence was to be
ubiquitously white, and facing armed fugitive slaves represented the greatest fear
among them and the greatest perceived threat to their institution. I believe that this
shows compellingly in the submissive reaction of the white men in the fear on their
faces in the lithograph. Stories of this type of subversion of white power through
fugitive violence would have been a tangible source of hope for many slaves.
Inherent to the notion of fugitivity, especially within an institution built upon
systemic violence, is the need to grapple with interracial violence, especially violence in
relation to liberation. Much of the depiction of fugitive violence in 19 th century artistic
representations bestows African Americans with a tangible justification for the violence,
32
William Still, The Underground Rail Road (Philadelphia, PA: Porter & Coates, 1872)
125.
as it is understood to perhaps be the only way to subvert the violence of slavery. The
lithograph Desperate Conflict in a Barn (see Figure 7), which depicts a conflict between a
group of runaway slaves and a group of white attackers in Virginia, addressed the
morality of violence within the peculiar institution when slaves appropriate it in order to
self-emancipate. In this picture the enslaved individuals are portrayed with bravery in
defending there own freedom, and their employment of fatal violence is shown seen as
being noble and justified. The steadfastness of the Wesley Harris, the leader of the
group of slaves, is contrasted with the fear, rage, and bewilderment easily read on the
faces of the white men. It is understood to the viewer that the violence committed by
the slaves is not drawn from malevolence and does not lend them to suspicion and
moral wrongness.
Conceptual artist Kara Walker (b. 1969) interacts with the two-way exchange of
violence in enslavement, as well as with the continuing legacy of enslavement in
American society. In his essay on Walker and her work, Philippe Vergne explains how
her work reveals that, “The past is just simply refusing to pass, and the disarray we are
facing is not easy to decipher. It is rooted in history; it is not a question of guilt or
innocence, for everybody is implicated. It is not a matter of morality, and morality might
actually muddy the water. There is not good and evil; it is not black and white.”33 Her
works primary purpose is to disrupt a popular notion of American slavery as a past event
33
Philippe Vergne, ed., Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My
Love (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2007) 7.
in which the victims and oppressors are clearly defined roles, with the victims serving
purely as passive recipients and the oppressors serving as ubiquitously powerful actors.
This complicated picture is best expressed in a piece some consider to be one of
her greatest, being the 1995 installation titled The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand
Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven (see Figure 8). This panoramic piece paints a
picture of the cyclical and unending nature of grief and oppression within enslavement.
This piece seeks to inject chaos into every understanding of the power structures of
slavery its legacies in modern race relations. It creates gray areas in the perception of
violence being passed down from white enslavers onto black slaves, between the
commonly understood goodness of children and corruption of adults, between the
sanctity of child birth and the foulness of defecation, and by doing so with a panoramic
piece and with silhouetted imagery, tells many narratives within one image that all lack
a defined begin, end, and central message. In this sense the primary role of Walker’s art
in the collective understanding of slavery and the modern black experience is that of a
disrupter.
Specifically in terms of the violence of slaves against enslavers, Walker’s work in
many ways updates the 19th representation of violence as a noble liberator to portray it
as a more sinister, yet still understandable, type of vengeance. The violence that Walker
depicts in The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven
seems to be on one hand senseless, but in many of the instances, especially those of
young black children committing the acts, the viewer does not feel scorn against the
violent actor. Kevin Young explains that, “[Walker’s work has] given us back some sense
of the revenge of those amputated selves—they have taken up arms, as it were, and
provided if not a vengeance against, then revelations about Massa’s desire; and if not
revelation, then at least a reveling in the polymorphous pleasure of it all.”34 Walker tries
to tackle all of the ways in with enslavement undermined the humanity of all of those
involved with it, and seems to convey that violence was the only natural answer to an
institution founded upon and rooted in violence.
Through artistic representations, the associations of fugitivity, placelessness, and
criminality with blackness and the complicated moral structures surrounding interracial
violence are identified as legacies of enslavement in modern America. Drawing
comparisons between 19th century representations and present-day representations
show that, as racial oppression has moved from outward legal structures to a more
nebulous social institutionalism, all of these notions have become fuzzier and less cutand-dry. What is reaffirmed by this project is the importance of artistic and narrative
based representations to the historical record, as art can convey complex ideas in a
mode that transcends the passing of time and the transformation of society.
Work Cited
Brown, Henry. Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, 1851.
Copeland, Huey. Bound to Appear. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Still, William. The Underground Rail Road. Philadelphia, PA: Porter & Coates, 1872.
Vergne, Philippe, ed. Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love.
Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2007.
34
Philippe Vergne, ed., Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My
Love (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2007) 37.
White, Hayden. The Content of the Form. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1987.
(Figure 1) Glenn Ligon Runaways (A Loner) 1993 (from moma.org)
(Figure 2) Anonymous Runaway Advertisement 1838 (From civilwarquilts.com)
(Figure 3) Glenn Ligon, Picky, 1993 (from Copeland, Bound to Appear)
(Figure 4) Anonymous, Resurrection of Henry Box Brown 1872 (from Still, The
Underground Rail Road)
(Figure 5) Pat Ward Williams, 32 Hours in a Box…And Still Counting 1987 (from
Copeland, Bound to Appear)
(Figure 6) Anonymous, A Bold Stroke for Freedom 1872 (from Still, The Underground Rail
Road
(Figure 7) Anonymous, Desperate Conflict in a Barn 1872 (from Still, The Underground
Rail Road
(Figure 8) Kara Walker, The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva
in Heaven, 1995, (from StudyBlue, Western Washington University)
Nature as “Powerful Other” and Foil to Mankind
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Forrest Robinette
After reading no more than the title of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a reader
could guess that the work is preoccupied with the subject of nature. The word “green”
conjures images of growth and vegetation. And, in fact, the Middle English word
“grene,” in addition to signifying the color, also literally means “to grow” (OED). The
title does not mislead us because nature recurs as central force throughout the poem. But
how is it depicted? In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the natural world is cast as a
“powerful other”—that is, an entity that is both separate from man and capable of
exercising control over him. The result is an antagonistic relationship between man and
nature, in which man struggles futilely against the supreme efficacy of the natural world.
This conflict is ultimately used as a means of exploring and exposing the flaws of
humanity. In nature—the “powerful other”—man sees his weaknesses and shortcomings
made manifest.
The Green Knight is a manifestation of nature, and, when he invades King
Arthur’s court, his power and his otherness are immediately apparent. At the beginning of
his long portrait, he is described as “an unknown rider, / One the greatest on ground in
growth of his frame: / From broad neck to buttocks so bulky and thick” (Borroff 136138). The word “unknown” communicates his strangeness in this setting, and the
description of his immense size conveys the extent of his strength. It is the Green
Knight’s power and otherness that enables him to expose the flaws of Arthur’s knights.
When the Green Knight enters the feast, the narrator describes the thoughts and reactions
of Arthur’s knights: “It seemed that no man might / His deadly dints withstand” (Borroff
201-202) and “For many sights had they seen, but such a one never” (Borroff 239). When
the Green Knight asks to speak with the master of the castle, “charry of answer was many
a champion bold” (241). The knights are petrified, and their cowardice is the result of the
Green Knight’s mysteriousness and perceived strength. Courage is a professed value of
the Arthurian knights, and, in this instance, no knight can summon it. The poet highlights
this failure on the part of the knights by using the word “charry” (“fearful”) so closely to
the word “bold.” This juxtaposition, between cowardice and courage, highlights the
knights’ hypocrisy. Therefore, in this scene, the Green Knight, himself an embodiment of
nature, exposes a flaw among the members of Arthur’s court through his otherness and
his power.
The Green Knight, during his intrusion into Camelot, manages to expose another
human flaw apart from cowardice. Through the contest he proposes, the Green Knight
reveals the court’s aggressiveness and bloodlust. This flaw can be seen in Sir Gawain’s
decision to decapitate the Knight. In her article, “Gawain’s First Failure: The Beheading
Scene in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Victoria L. Weiss draws attention to the fact
that the Green Knight never suggests to Gawain that he should attempt a killing blow as
part of the contest. Therefore, Gawain’s decision to chop off the Green Knight’s head
must be viewed as an active choice rather than Gawain’s only option. Weiss points out
that “the Green Knight’s statement seems to indicate that Gawain will receive the same
kind of blow as he delivers” (362). Therefore, Gawain’s decision to strike a killing blow
is deeply foolish because doing so means he must receive a similar blow in return.
Gawain’s quick arrival at his decision to behead the Knight is a result of the excessive
aggressiveness that pervades Arthur’s court. For Weiss, this value on aggression can be
traced to King Arthur himself who delights in games that, like jousting, “lay life for life”
(Borroff 98). The Green Knight’s otherness and power make him a threat to Gawain and,
as a result of the aggressive culture of the court, Gawain takes a course of action that
dooms him to death. Therefore, the Knight has once again thrown into sharp relief the
flaws of mankind, as embodied in Arthur’s court. He highlights those flaws by forcing
the humans in the story to suffer the consequences of their own fallibility.
In addition to highlighting weaknesses that mankind can control, such as
cowardice or aggression, nature also highlights those weaknesses that mankind cannot
control. For example, nature illustrates the ephemerality of human life. During his search
for the Green Chapel, Sir Gawain lives without shelter and is therefore forced to brave
the natural elements. The danger of the elements is conveyed most vividly in a
description of one of Gawain’s campsites where “from the crest the cold stream ran / And
hung in hard icicles high overhead” (Borroff 731-732). The otherness of the icicles is
established in terms of their physical distance from Gawain. Also, the process by which
the icicles formed—surely a slow and steady process—is a temporal contrast to the
rushed pace of Gawain’s journey in which he flies furiously from one locale to the next.
The power of the icicles is conveyed by their sharpness and the physical threat they pose
to Gawain’s life. The hard icicles emphasize man’s soft vulnerability. By being
everything man is not, the icicles expose the precariousness of human life.
Although Sir Gawain is dominated by many negative depictions of nature, such as
the hostile Green Knight or the icicles, the text includes several seemingly positive
depictions as well. These positive natural environments appear at Hautdesert, the castle of
Lord Bertilak, which Gawain stumbles upon during his quest. In a two-mile radius
surrounding the castle are hunting grounds upon which Bertilak chases game of various
kinds. In his essay, “Gawain’s Struggle with Ecology: Attitudes toward the Natural
World in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Michael W. George claims that Lord
Bertilak is a character that achieves a positive relationship with nature. He writes that
Bertilak’s hunting grounds denote “not domination but, instead stewardship—the careful
management of the environment” (37). George is right to deem Bertilak’s relationship
with his hunting grounds a positive one; however, he is wrong to claim that the hunting
grounds represent nature at all. The description of the grounds in the text emphasizes
their tameness. It is called a “linden-wood” (1178). Lindens, with their heart-shaped
leaves and soft wood, are idyllic trees. Also, the animals that roam these grounds are
described repeatedly in terms of their suppleness and abundance. Lord Bertilak’s hunting
grounds are analogous to the modern American lawn in which nature, deprived of its
essence, exists only to serve human desires. His hunting grounds are, therefore, a site of
destruction for nature.
From his hunting grounds, Bertilak wins three prizes in the form of a deer, a boar,
and fox. The capture of each of these animals is followed by a scene in which the
disembowelment of the animals is described in all-too-vivid detail. The narrator describes
the carnage after the deer is caught:
They flayed the fair hide from the legs and trunk,
Then broke open the belly and laid bare the bowels,
Deftly detaching and drawing them forth,
And next at the neck they neatly parted
The weasand from the windpipe, and cast away the guts…
They breached the broad breast and broke it in twain,
And again at the gullet they begin with their knives. (Borroff 1332-1340)
The savagery of the description is immediately apparent. The excessive detail we receive
regarding the sordid process can only be described as excessive. In his essay, “Aspects of
Grotesque Realism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Robert Levine argues that the
disemboweling of the animals is a means of highlighting human bloodlust. In this way,
we see a connection to the aggressiveness that forced Gawain to undertake his quest in
the first place. Levine writes, “the hunters perform a violently literal “uncrowning,”
beheading the hind… and returning to the castle where Gawain waits for them,
anticipating his own beheading” (68). Therefore, the savagery that one man dreads,
Gawain, is being perpetrated by his host, Bertilak. Here, nature again forces man to face
the consequences of his flaws—in this case, his thirst for blood.
Although nature figures prominently in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the
poem reduces nature to a mere tool for human use. The Gawain-Poet’s decision to
include nature so prominently in the poem is not the result of his/her desire to capture or
explore the essence of nature. Instead, nature is brought in only as a tool to explore the
Gawain-Poet’s more central concern: the flaws of mankind. As one critic, A. V. C.
Schmidt, said, nature is only “an analogue for the moral and spiritual life of man: a mirror
of man’s daily and hourly death in sin” (167). Therefore, the poem’s treatment of nature
is ultimately inaccurate. The nature presented in the text is warped by the needs and
concerns of the author. Yes, the depictions of nature in the text are undoubtedly rooted in
reality; however, nature in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as a result of the poet’s
goals, must ultimately be viewed as a constructed entity rather than a genuine one.
Works Cited
Anonymous. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Trans. Marie Borroff. New York:
Norton,
1967. Print.
George, Michael W. “Gawain’s Struggle with Ecology: Attitudes toward the Natural
World
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Journal of Ecocriticism 2.2 (2010): 30-44.
JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2015
"green, adj. and n.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 11
December 2015.
Schmidt, A. V. C. “‘Latent Content’ and ‘The Testimony in the Text’: Symbolic
Meaning
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The Review of English Studies 38 (1987):
145-168. Print.
Weiss, Victoria L. “Gawain’s First Failure: The Beheading Scene in “Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight.”” The Chaucer Review 10.4 (1976): 361-366. JSTOR. Web. 9 Dec.
2015
Magic: The Aesthetic of Paul Delvaux
Griffin Hunt
Despite painting images of remarkable photographic realism, Paul Delvaux’s
tendencies to transmute figures, to introduce unlikely elements, and to negate social
imperatives manifest images of radical intrigue. Paradigmatic to the work of Delvaux is
dramatic ambiguity to the mise–en–scène. The storytelling of the painter is wanting in its
reluctance to furnish a satisfactory conclusion. What we see in the work of the Belgian
artist is a willingness for the imagination of the viewer to mediate the narrative, to establish
meaning and resolution of the tension within the pictorial situation. Delvaux consistently
deposits his scenes fathoms below a deep fog of mystery. The painter’s hyper–detailed
photographic realism is plagued by unexpected juxtapositions which locate the normal in
abnormal scenarios, which appropriate the familiar and redeploy it as the strange. At once
eery and captivating, disturbing and simultaneously soothing, Delvaux’s paintings capture
the world of dreams.
The characteristic magic omnipresent in Delvaux’s work derives from his childhood
in Belgium. From a young age, he studied Greek and Latin and absorbed the poetry of
Homer and ancient mythology.35 The influences of mythology, divine figures, and Greco–
Roman religious and architectural conventions permeate Delvaux’s work. Nude women,
professorial men, diffuse lighting, classical architecture, and train stations populate the
vocabulary of Delvaux’s work. Though certainly influenced by his compatriot René
Magritte, Delvaux never became an orthodox member of the Surrealist group (though he
was respected by its leader, André Breton36) and certainly did not engage with the shocking
and outright absurd juxtapositions of Magritte. Delvaux leaned more towards the
35
Imaginary Museum, “Niceday’s wonderful ‘IMAGINARY-MUSEUM’: 12/2013,”
http://www.imaginarymuseum.net/2013_12_01_archive.html (accessed 2 March,
2016).
36 National Galleries Scotland, “L'Appel de la Nuit [The Call of the Night],”
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/d/artist/pauldelvaux/object/lappel-de-la-nuit-the-call-of-the-night-gma-3884 (accessed 4 March,
2016) .
anticipatory excitement present in Giorgio de Chirico’s work. Whereas Magritte’s work
are often immediately unreal, de Chirico and Delvaux’s works share an affinity for
delaying their shock in the viewer; their work requires exploration. de Chirico's The
Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914) only takes grasp of the imagination once the
viewer recognizes the impending threat of the sinister shadow as it seemingly approaches
the innocent girl playing in the street. Delvaux’s work operates in a similar manner.
Further, unlike Magritte’s works, those of Delvaux are routinely imaginative rather than
imaginary. In this way, Delvaux finds himself located not in Surrealism per se, but rather
in the exclusive category of magic realism, a quiet term in the field of art history, but a
category nonetheless and one perhaps first coined by H.H. Arnason in his History of
Modern Art. He writes:37
In general, the magic realists, deriving directly from de
Chirico, create mystery and the marvelous through
juxtapositions that are disturbing even when it is difficult to
see why. The magic realists, even though they may not
indulge in Freudian dream images, are interested in
translating everyday experience into strangeness.
As a magic realist, Delvaux does not craft images of impossible Surrealism, but rather of
the magical and the implausible.38 As Wechsler writes, “Put wings on a car and let it fly
about in the air … and you’re into fantasy and Surrealism. Even so, magic realism can
accommodate remarkable goings–on.”39 Delvaux reorders reality and expectations to make
scenes alien to our sensibilities. His images reject conventional social behavior and animate
unlikely — though not impracticable — phenomena. Delvaux extends a hand to the viewer
and brings her into the disaggregated world of dreams.
In L’Appel de la nuit [The Call of the Night] (1938), we see four nude women situated
horizontally across the frame at progressively longer distances from the viewer. They are
located in a desert plane, the brown earth cracking and fracturing in the oppressively dry,
barren environment. The oil on canvas painting strikes the viewer with its impressive
37
H.H. Arnason, History of Modern Art (New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd,
1977), 376.
38 Jeffrey Wechsler, “Magic Realism: Defining the Indefinite,” Art Journal 45, no.
4 (1985) : 293.
39 Ibid, 294.
clarity and obsessive detail, and the muted earth tones connote the dry haze of the desert
scene. In the background rises a chain of gloomy mountains that serve as a claustrophobic
wall, further contributing to the oppressive gravity of the scene. In the back right of the
landscape stand several Stone Henge–like monuments — relics of a previous society.
Erected as beacons in the desert are two apparently deceased trees, both utterly devoid of
foliage. Rather than leaves, the righthand tree sprouts candles, all aflame. The lefthand
tree’s branches are apparently snapped. However, the absence of limbs on the ground
below suggest that perhaps this tree has already had its limb–candles burned down in a
slow blaze. Whatever bizarre phenomena has transpired here is not a new incident — there
is a recognition of time and its passing. Littered about the desert is a complete skeleton
and, closer to us, a skull missing the rest of its body. What has happened to the bones? Just
like the limbs of the tree, we here recognize a disturbing lack in the scene — who or what
has removed the detritus and with what motive?
Against the right side of the frame is a portion of a sturdy stone sanctuary, a Greco–
Roman harbor for these women in this oppressive habitat. The women’s proximity to it
expresses an affinity to the structure, but the juxtaposition of its dark colors with the
women’s white, supple flesh connotes some unresolvable disconnect between the women
and their refuge. Draped over the face and breasts of the far–right woman is a white sheet
that flows down her back. Leaving her abdomen, pubic area, and legs exposed, this sheet
cannot be said to be serving as the robe of a chaste priestess, but it certainly bestows upon
her some authority and quasi–religious significance in the scene. Rather than standing
completely exposed, she hides her beauty (though notably the outlines of her eyes, nose,
and mouth are still discernible, as if carved of marble). She holds fast to a lit lamp, the
flame contained within a long glass flute. She wields dominance over the flame — the
flame with its erotic hallucinations, its poetic associations with unrestrained lust. A theme
for Surrealist activity was desire. “Its male practitioners believed that women were closer
to the irrationality of dreams and the latent portent of their significance within the
unconscious. They also believed that women held the key to understanding male desire
within that unconscious.”40 Operating under that understanding, the veiled woman here
40
Michael Robinson, Surrealism (London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2005), 262.
controls the very enigma men sought to grasp — desire. And so this woman exists both as
a sentinel and as a beacon of this sanctuary of modesty and restraint. Even without the
white sheet, however, there is nothing sensual about these women. Their poses are
mannered and they exhibit neutral expressions: “impassive and innocent look[s] that
[convey] no sensuality. We are unable to contemplate [their] status, [their] look completely
devoid of anecdote or emotion, resembling that of a mannequin.”41 These women are
depicted as in Renaissance paintings: matronly, regal, distant, and solely tranquil. Their
ambivalence shares a sense of contentedness: they look neither desperate nor do they
appear overwhelmingly pleased in their separation from a male dominated society (a
leitmotif of Delvaux’s other work) — a society that may have existed here before whatever
happened (though the skeletons might suggest war, famine, or disease).
Rather than locks of hair, the three women on the left parade dense ivy flowing from
their heads. And yet, this ivy is clearly sprouting from the desolate ground, not from the
follicles of the full–bodied women. Such a phenomenon is seen elsewhere in Delvaux’s
work, including The Man in the Street (1940), while similar transmutation occurs in The
Break of Day (1937). Dissimilar to The Man in the Street, however, is the women’s location
here in a desert scene. This plain of death is starkly juxtaposed with the women who
literally overflow with life — their hair metamorphosed into bolts of dense ivy.
The painting exhibits a sense of unnatural stillness and emptiness — a hallmark of
much magic realist art.42 The image is populated by four women, but only the middle–right
woman seems to have any kinesis. Even though she is apparently walking forward, ivy has
somehow had time to grow up to her head, suggesting that she has been frozen in her gait
for some time. The image subverts rational logic in favor of exploration of the deeper logic
of the unconscious. The image is serenaded by the pervasive forces of earth and of life and
death, but seems to be lacking the very hallmark of earthly living: dynamism. Like the
world of dreams, time here seems suspended in this illusion of timelessness. In the world
of Delvaux, time frays and a needle moves through it. The needle is the will of the viewer’s
subconscious. Is this an image of death and brutal survival, or do the full–bodied women
with their ivy hair, wide hips, and pronounced wombs suggest a scene of birth and
41
42
Ibid.
Wechsler, 294.
renewal? The overflow of life that spills up towards the women compounded by the full
female figures suggests the latter. This tension between the ambivalent sexuality of the
women and their capacity to bring life into this world accentuate the dilemma of Man’s
primordial urges or the patriarchal mentality vis–à–vis the growing modern consciousness
of women’s reproductive rights of Delvaux’s own time.
Delvaux “insisted that his work had no hidden meaning and that he was only interested
in creating mysterious, poetic images.”43 Perhaps the artist did not intend a sole meaning
within his images, but certainly his works invite deep thought. His paintings reverberate
throughout the cavernous space of our unconscious and animate some unmistakable
yearning to navigate the magical mystery of the images and to arrive safely on the other
side.
Works Cited:
Arnason, H.H. History of Modern Art. New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1977.
Imaginary Museum. “Niceday’s wonderful ‘IMAGINARY-MUSEUM’: 12/2013.”
http://www.imaginarymuseum.net/2013_12_01_archive.html (accessed 2
March, 2016).
National Galleries Scotland. “L'Appel de la Nuit [The Call of the Night].”
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/d/artist/pauldelvaux/object/lappel-de-la-nuit-the-call-of-the-night-gma-3884 (accessed 4
March, 2016) .
Robinson, Michael. Surrealism. London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2005.
Wechsler, Jeffrey. “Magic Realism: Defining the Indefinite.” Art Journal 45, no. 4 (1985) :
293-298.
43
National Galleries Scotland.
“life’s not a paragraph”
A Series of Paragraphs Explicating Life According to ee cummings
Hannah Ho
In ee cummings’ poem “Since feeling is first,” the division of stanzas mimics a
chronological progression of birth, growth, maturity, and eventual death; while
maintaining simple yet expressive diction, cummings conveys a poignant awareness of
mortality. The deliberate lack of punctuation and use of enjambment serve to further the
poet’s message. Two main themes are present: the triumph of romanticism over
intellectualism, and a disdain for conventional limits of communication as they relate to
the restrictive boundaries wherein people live. cummings emphasizes language’s inability
to fully express the spontaneity of passion.
The very first line sets the tone for the rest of the poem, and has added
significance as it also acts as the title. Intentionally ambiguous, “Since feeling is first” has
a variety of possible interpretations. Considering its confluence with later stanzas, the text
primarily signifies that feeling emotion, rather than adherence to the conventions of
propriety, is paramount. As a derivative of this interpretation, an infant’s first literal
experience upon entering the world is “feeling” – hunger, possible surprise or displeasure
at the sudden change of scenery, and so forth. The faculty of actually articulating such
things comes much later in the child’s development.
cummings continues the poem with a pointed enjambment of lines 2-4, allowing
“who pays attention / to the syntax of things” to act as both a rhetorical question and as a
statement: “(He or she) who pays attention […] / will never wholly kiss you;” implying
that one concerning him or herself solely with structure and rationality is incapable of
loving fully (ll 2-4). The word “syntax” is in itself ironic, as the term refers to the
arrangement of words or phrases for which cummings is notorious.
Transitioning somewhat to a more playful mood, the speaker makes mention of
Spring, a season often associated with idyllic charm and frivolity, introducing the
aforementioned theme of romance in the poem. The child, it seems, has grown into an
ardent young adult, full of headstrong sentiments. He feels things powerfully, so much so
that his very “blood approves” (l 7). Specifically, the lines “kisses are better fate / than
wisdom / lady I swear by all flowers” reveal the speaker’s conviction that logic and cold
reason matter far less than love (ll 8-10). Additionally, the immediate contrast of the
speaker’s solemn vow to flowers, a symbol of transient beauty, enhances the sense of
whimsy present in the stanza.
The final stanza takes the previously carefree attitude and finishes with an
allusion to the beginning of the poem, bringing the cycle to completion. Now mature, the
speaker reaches a culmination of happiness with his romantic partner; no longer in
flirtation with “eyelids’ flutter,” they achieve stability together in the phrase
acknowledging “we are for each other” (ll 12-13). The last two lines consist of a clever
play on words: “for life’s not a paragraph / and death I think is no parenthesis” (ll 15-16).
Again, the return to grammar and punctuation connects with the poet’s purposefully
vague phrasing. On a literal level, he suggests that life is not an individual component of
a structure, but instead consists of a unity of different stages. He also indicates that life’s
brevity should encourage the whole-hearted embrace of passion.
Consequently, death, unlike an actual parenthesis, is not a temporary pause.
Rather, it signifies a very permanent end; humans must live while they are able. They
should strive to emulate what the symbol of the ephemeral flower represents – that is, the
pursuit of beauty and romance within their lifespans. On a metaphorical level, the
parenthesis also depicts being trapped – death, to an extent, encapsulates the human
experience. The poet believes that people have to break free of these restraints, as he has
transcended the restraints of traditional syntax in the physical poem. The speaker tells his
lover to “lean back in [his] arms” and enjoy each other’s company, for they will be
separated all too soon by falling into the arms of death (l 14).
Short, moving, and often uncertain, mirroring the pattern of life itself, ee
cummings portrays the mortal existence – made fiercely beautiful because of its innate
impermanence – in “Since feeling is first.” The least assuming literary works have a habit
of leaving the deepest impressions, and in this little poem, it remains absolutely the case.
A Need for Regional Governance in Hartford
Joy Kim
In a city with the highest poverty rates in the region and in a state with the second
worst Gini coefficient nationwide, Hartford has striking disparities between its city proper
and suburbs.44 These economic inequalities and the lack of a regional government in the
Greater Hartford area suggest immense fragmentation between Hartford and surrounding
cities. Yet, it cannot be ignored that Hartford’s suburbs have a central city. They cannot be
a “suburb of nowhere.”45 To say that Hartford and its peripheries are not connected would
fail to acknowledge the vast number of people who commute in and out of the city, who
depend on the city to some extent. This raises the question of why a governing body is not
formally established in the Hartford metropolitan area to address and strengthen those
connections. Though Connecticut has moved away from or failed to successfully emulate
county governments, a regional governing body in Hartford can have the authority and
centrality to mitigate poverty and fragmentation in the metropolitan area.
Greater Hartford’s need for a formal regional government is largely due to
individual municipal governments’ lack of authority. Hartford’s history has seen multiple
occasions when local political authority was compromised. In 1868, the Dillon Rule stated
Louise Simmons, “Poverty, Inequality, Politics, and Social Activism in Hartford,” in
Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten
Cities, ed. Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 91.
45
Jason Rojas and Lyle Wray, “Metropolitan Hartford: Regional Challenges and
Responses,” in Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s
Forgotten Cities, ed. Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon (Lanham: Lexington Books,
2013), 238.
44
that local governments are “mere tenants at will of the legislature,” replacing the Cooley
Doctrine that asserted municipalities’ independence of state legislature.46 This idea of
home rule gave states increased leverage over local governments and was officially added
to Connecticut’s constitution in Article 10 at the 1965 Constitutional Convention.47 Though
home rule today is that a “city or town has authority under guidelines of the state legislature
to frame, adopt, and amend its charter,” it remains a debate as to whether Hartford and
other major cities should have special governing authority.48 Despite such discussions, a
power differential obviously exists between state and local governments in contemporary
politics.
Consequently, it is crucial for county governments to serve as a buffer between the
state and municipalities and between individual cities. Connecticut has not only debated
over the authority it should give municipalities, but also transitioned away from formal
county governments. When Democrats sought after the governor’s seat and legislative
majorities in the 1959 Election, they promised to abolish “inefficient county
governments.”49 As a result of their victory, the city manager and city council’s
responsibilities increased without a corresponding increase in authority or financial
resources.50 The authority that once existed in county government was not transferred to
municipalities, nor to new regional governing bodies. Such organizations as the
Clyde McKee and Nick Bacon, “A Tragic Dialectic: Politics and the Transformation of
Hartford,” in Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s
Forgotten Cities, ed. Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon (Lanham: Lexington Books,
2013), 222.
47
Ibid., 225.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid., 226.
50
Ibid.
46
Department of Community Affairs, Regional Council of Governments, and Regional
Planning Agencies had no authority over local governments.51 Without truly being above
cities in the hierarchy of government, these groups could not fully supplant previous county
roles. They were considered so inefficient that Republican Governor Thomas Meskill
terminated the Department of Community Affairs 1970 in an effort to reduce state debt.52
As Hartford saw the repetitive elimination of formal county governments or their
substitutes, a mindset of cities being independent of each other began to form.
Nonetheless, there have been more recent efforts to establish regional governing
bodies. In fact, 96 organizations seek to work on regional issues.53 However, these many
organizations do not have a single central entity. These organizations additionally lack
much of the authority a formal government would have. For instance, the Capitol Region
Council of Governments is unable to raise tax revenue or deliver local services, despite
being the “best positioned” of such organizations.54 Though these regional bodies strive to
accomplish government work, they are seldom in a comparable position of influence. In
other cases, there is resistance against expanding authority in a single organization or one
that may give Hartford precedence. The Metropolitan District Commission, for example,
has been delivering water and sewer services to the Hartford region since 1929, but has
been limited from growth. It is, however, an organization that successfully distributes
public services on a regional scale. Currently in the Hartford metro area, education,
emergency services, transportation, and other public services lack a central governing
51
Ibid.
Ibid.
53
Rojas and Wray, “Metropolitan Hartford: Regional Challenges and Responses,” 247.
54
Ibid.
52
authority like the MDC.55 Simmons said that although sharing resources regionally is ideal,
it is much more challenging to execute in social issues such as housing. 56 A single
organization or group of organizations, even if not in the form of official county
government, must efficiently provide public services to the entire region rather than in
individual cities.
Yet, Hartford also saw failed privatization efforts to create a governing body that
could alleviate the city’s poverty or find alternative solutions. One such example is the
Greater Hartford Process, Inc. and the Greater Hartford Community Development
Corporation, which sought to create a new community in Coventry instead of solve urban
sprawl in Hartford itself.57 The project ultimately failed, especially since these private
organizations had very limited power to implement ideas. Another failed privatization
effort was that of the Bishops, a group of corporates who lived outside Hartford but hoped
to influence the city’s aesthetics, residents, and employees. Considering that corporations
reaped in three-quarters of municipal property taxes, these men were invested in Hartford’s
success despite not being residents.58 The Bishops had potential to revive the city
economically since their own success depended on it. Nevertheless, tensions between the
rich and poor did not disappear. As members of third party “People for Change” were
elected to the city council, they created policies that were unfavorable to businesses and
partly influenced the movement of headquarters outside of the city.59
55
Ibid., 242.
Simmons, “Poverty, Inequality, Politics, and Social Activism in Hartford,” 105.
57
McKee and Bacon, “A Tragic Dialectic: Politics and the Transformation of Hartford,”
229.
58
Ibid., 231.
59
Ibid., 232.
56
Considering the Greater Hartford area’s hesitance with county government in the
past, it is unlikely that official county offices will be created in the near future. However,
this region can learn from mistakes in the past and continue to work towards more effective
metropolitan governance. Rojas and Wray state that metropolitan governance can be
accomplished without an explicit metropolitan government.60 Even as the central city in
the metropolitan region, Hartford is fixed in poverty and lacks a substantial tax base as a
financial resource. Creating a county government, or a governing body that has the
authority to collect tax revenue, will increase the tax base from which poorer cities such as
Hartford can draw resources. One can argue that tax revenue from suburbs should not be
used in an unrelated city. This issue already exists as seen in my experience researching
the Metropolitan District Commission’s Clean Water Project last year. West Hartford
residents were dissatisfied with the project as expressed in the Hartford Courant due to the
redistribution of tax revenue. Opposition often occurs when tax dollars are used for
regional projects, but unfortunately it is currently the main financial resource for
governments.
Moreover, even though suburban towns often believe otherwise, centralizing many
local services could actually prove more efficient. It is unnecessary, for instance, to have
more than 104 911 calling centers in the state.61 Finding a way to connect already existing
organizations to coordinate local services and pull from a more central pool of financial
resources could allow Hartford residents to partake in public amenities it could not before.
60
61
Rojas and Wray, “Metropolitan Hartford: Regional Challenges and Responses,” 239.
Ibid., 244.
It cannot be denied that Hartford and its suburbs are interdependent despite the
absence of their formal political connection. 83 percent of jobs in the city are filled by
suburban residents, and 65 percent of the city’s residents work in the suburbs.62 People
spend time in Hartford, and recognize that it has jobs and opportunities not necessarily
available in the suburbs, while the same can be said vice versa. Though Hartford is to some
extent an economic center, it is most certainly a political center as the state capital. Thus,
the existence of a central and regional governing body can further establish Hartford as a
center.
Since Hartford is the state capital, I fully expected it to be thriving upon applying
to Trinity College. I assumed any state capital would have an exciting culture and a diverse
metropolis of residents who feel connected to the central city. Once I visited Trinity,
however, I found downtown Hartford to be quite the opposite of what I envisioned. On that
Saturday, downtown felt deserted, while West Hartford’s Blue Back Square seemed to
have more life. At that time, I thought West Hartford and Hartford were the same
municipality, but I was also confused by the already visible dichotomy. It was not until I
took my first urban studies course that I discovered the lack of any governmental
connection between the two cities, other than their being in the state of Connecticut.
Hartford felt and still feels incomplete because of its seeming lack of relevance to
surrounding towns.
In order for Hartford to be less impoverished and maximize its role as a central city,
a regional government must play a larger role in establishing a larger tax base, providing
efficient local services, and creating cohesion between cities in the metropolitan area.
62
“Metro Hartford Progress Points: A Snapshot of Our Communities,” 2014, 3.
Organizations that strive to address regional issues must have the authority to utilize tax
revenue and stand in between cities and the state in the hierarchy of government. In cases
of privatization, governing entities must consider the needs of the majority of the people
instead of profit maximization. Especially considering Hartford’s small size, a regional
governing body could figuratively expand its borders and serve as an obvious connection
between Hartford and surrounding cities. Many of the problems that are thought to plague
Hartford—poverty, irrelevance, racial tension, monotony—will not be solved overnight,
but a county government or a similar authority can be one of the first steps.
Bibliography
McKee, Clyde and Nick Bacon. “A Tragic Dialectic: Politics and the Transformation of
Hartford,” in Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New
England’s Forgotten Cities, edited by Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon, 219235. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013.
“Metro Hartford Progress Points: A Snapshot of Our Communities.” 2014.
Rojas, Jason and Lyle Wray. “Metropolitan Hartford: Regional Challenges and
Responses,” in Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New
England’s Forgotten Cities, edited by Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon, 236258. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013.
Simmons, Louise. “Poverty, Inequality, Politics, and Social Activism in Hartford,” in
Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s
Forgotten Cities, edited by Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon, 85-109. Lanham:
Lexington Books, 2013.
Virginia Woolf and the “Anxiety of Authorship”
Madeleine Kim
In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf enacts her feminist criticism
by inventing hypothetical stories and then speculating how those stories would
interact with the literary and social environments of her time. For example, in
“Chloe Liked Olivia,” she imagines a fictitious novel in which “Chloe liked Olivia
perhaps for the first time in literature,” predicting that if such a novel were to exist,
“something of great importance [would have] happened” (899, 900). Although
Woolf’s writing has, since its publication, become widely known and largely
successful, one might question why she chose to write on the effects of a potential
story, rather than actually penning the novel she imagined. One possible
explanation is that her choice was fully intentional, that she saw theory as the most
effective vehicle for her message. As a pedagogical tool, theory can be a powerful
means of promoting social change, which is enacted little by little, by way of what
we as a society teach, and how we teach it. Woolf may very well have believed that a
speculative, theoretical essay about a hypothetical “Chloe and Olivia” would offer
more fuel for social reform than would an actual novel. Yet, another possible
explanation is that, given her patriarchal social context, the hierarchical power
structure which her society had conditioned her to internalize, she was unable to
produce a novel that would have been, for her time, so subversive. In The
Madwoman in the Attic (1979), Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar appropriate
Harold Bloom’s notion of the “anxiety of influence” to a feminist context, in order to
describe the female writer’s ““anxiety of authorship”--a radical fear that she cannot
create, that because she can never become a “precursor” the act of writing will
isolate or destroy her” (1929). While Woolf’s writings are inarguably rebellious and
anti-patriarchal, it is also possible that, lacking a female precursor who “proves by
example that a revolt against patriarchal literary authority is possible,” she was only
able to conceive such a story as “Chloe Liked Olivia” from the safer, metaperspective of theory (1930).
The tension between these two possibilities is stressed further in Gilbert and
Gubar’s explanation of the utility of the female precursor. They write:
The woman writer--and we shall see women doing this over and over
again--searches for a female model not because she wants dutifully to
comply with male definitions of her “femininity” but because she must
legitimize her own rebellious endeavors. (1930)
On one hand, Woolf is serving as that female model, paving the way for later female
authors to write “Chloe Liked Olivia.” By writing from the perspective of criticism,
she provides a theoretical backing with which her imagined female predecessor
could “legitimize her own rebellious endeavors.” Yet, on the other hand, by
providing only a theoretical, hypothetical version of her radical novel, rather than
penning the novel itself, she fails to “[prove] by example” that it is possible to
portray in literature “those unrecorded gestures, those unsaid or half-said words,
which form themselves, no more palpably than the shadows of moths on the ceiling,
when women are alone, unlit by the capricious coloured light of the other sex”
(1930, 900). It is possible that, having been reared to internalize the ideology of her
patriarchal world, she was psychologically unable to perform the deep act of
interiority required to construct “Chloe Liked Olivia” in the form of a novel.
From the very first paragraph of “Chloe Liked Olivia,” Woolf demonstrates a
keen awareness of the anxiety that afflicts women who are “tampering with the
expected sequence,” in a society where the patriarchal power structure is so deeply
ingrained (898). In the imaginary scenario she describes, she is reading a text by
the fictitious Mary Carmichael when she discovers a fundamental break from the
norm, a suggestion of rebellion. The essay begins, “I am almost sure, I said to myself,
that Mary Carmichael is playing a trick on us” (898). As the paragraph progresses,
this disbelieving sense of anticipation grows, resulting in an exhilarating desire to
follow the rebellious suggestion to its application in a real situation. However, as
soon as Woolf courageously commits to go down the rabbit hole, to read on, she
immediately begins to self-censor, unable to overcome the anxiety surrounding the
possibility of a male onlooker:
And, determined to do my duty by her as a reader if she would do her
duty to me as a writer, I turned the page and read... I am sorry to
break off so abruptly. Are there no men present? Do you promise me
that behind that red curtain over there the figure of Sir Chartres Biron
is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell
you that the very next words I read were these--”Chloe liked
Olivia…” Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our
own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women
do like women.” (899)
Here, Woolf demonstrates that even reading about reading a subversive text is, for
women in a patriarchal society, wrought with the anxiety of what Gilbert and Gubar
identify as the male precursor’s “reading of her” (1929). When Woolf instructs, “Do
not start. Do not blush,” it is unclear as to whom she is addressing, her female
readers or herself. In either case, however, it is obvious that both she and her
intended audience have so deeply internalized the logic of the patriarchy that even
the most minor acts of rebellion produce paranoia. In this way, Woolf’s choice to
present “Chloe Liked Olivia” only as a hypothetical story can be seen as a product of
her own anxiety of authorship.
Yet, on the other hand, criticism that identifies and then proceeds to
overcome the precise brand of paranoia that women feel in a patriarchal society is
intrinsically radical. In this sense, Woolf’s criticism anticipates Gilbert and Gubar’s
explanation of female diseases and, in particular, their discussion of agoraphobia:
Similarly, it seems inevitable that women reared for, and conditioned
to, lives of privacy, reticence, domesticity, might develop pathological
fears of public places and unconfined spaces. Like the comb, staylaces, and apple which the Queen in “Little Snow White” uses as
weapons against her hated stepdaughter, such afflictions as anorexia
and agoraphobia simply carry patriarchal definitions of “femininity”
to absurd extremes, and thus function as essential or at least
inescapable parodies of social prescriptions. (1933)
Female agoraphobia is rooted in “patriarchal definitions of “femininity”” that deem
the woman’s entrance into the public sphere a transgressive act that makes her
somehow less “feminine.” The “pathological fears” that Gilbert and Gubar describe
echo Woolf’s portrayal of the self-consciousness that female writers and readers feel
when engaging with literature; just as “public places and unconfined spaces” are
realms that women are specifically conditioned to fear, so is literature a maledominated discipline in which women are unwelcome intruders. Therefore, when
women such as Woolf and the female writers and readers she imagines begin
“tampering with the expected sequence,” they inevitably encounter psychological
barriers, deeply ingrained fears which they must overcome. Woolf, here, makes a
radical demonstration of acknowledging her own fears and then promptly
overcoming them by continuing to write her subversive essay. Her rebellion lies not
only in her hypothetical “Chloe Liked Olivia,” but also--and perhaps even more
powerfully--in the attention she calls to the “pathological fears” that often prevent
women from participating in literature. In this way, Woolf serves as a precursor, a
literary mother, to Gilbert and Gubar.
Woolf’s revelation of her own paranoia as a woman writer does suggest that
she was afflicted by the “anxiety of authorship” that Gilbert and Gubar
describe. However, this anxiety, the paranoia of transgressing the bounds of
femininity into the male-dominated realm of literature, was not what prevented her
from writing “Chloe Liked Olivia” as a novel rather than as criticism. In fact, it is her
poignant articulation of exactly how that anxiety manifests in the minds of women
that makes her subversive writing so powerful. By identifying, acknowledging, and
exposing her own “pathological fears,” she not only overcomes them, but also helps
pave the way for other women to do the same. For Woolf’s purposes, theory was
ultimately the more effective vehicle for enacting social change. Through her
criticism, she both offers a pedagogical tool that articulates exactly what a woman
writer must do to pen a novel such as “Chloe Liked Olivia” and suggests a way for
women to become more like Chloe and Olivia in their daily lives. At the end of her
essay, she imagines what might happen when Olivia “sees coming her way a piece of
strange food--knowledge, adventure, art”:
And she reaches out for it, I thought, again raising my eyes from the
page, and has to devise some entirely new combination of her
resources, so highly developed for other purposes, so as to absorb the
new into the old without disturbing the infinitely intricate and
elaborate balance of the whole. (900)
Through literature, she suggests, women can learn new ways of being in the
world. Woolf’s essay is empowering not only for female writers, but also for all
women whose patriarchal societies have purposely alienated them from one
another.
Literature Cited
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan. “The Madwoman in the Attic.” The Norton
Anthology
of Theory and Criticism: Second Edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leich. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2001. 1926-1938. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism:
Second Edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leich. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
2001. 896-905. Print.
DayREMing
Mya Peters
Chalk glazes my vision.
little light is able to pierce through
The hole of my pupil.
Itchy.
Irritated.
Where are my eye drops?
Who cleanses my lookers
To see all that is real,
And all that I imagine.
Dammit, I forgot to put them in this morning.
Again!
What is she writing up there?
Why did she chuckle at the board?
F of X doesn’t tell jokes.
F only tauns X.
Tells X that he must be what F wants him to be.
Tells X to think what F wants him to think.
That you are nothing.
Nothing without me.
Nothing with purpose as X stands alone
Blowing away in the wind like
Dandelions that endlessly separate into single particles
Of lent.
X has no brain.
And neither do I anymore.
It ran away.
It didn’t jog away slowly so I could jog alongside it
Able to hold its hand.
Able to taste the tears of anxiety running down it.
It didn’t jog away slowly so I could catch it.
Or even feel its presence next to mine.
Numb.
It ran away from me once I entered class
Slipping through my luscious wings.
Section 3.1 looks foreign.
What are we even learning?
F and X are starting to look like the darkness that fills my empty skull
That was once filled with life,
Is now vacant.
Rivers of glitter watered the skyline of grass
That lined the inside of my skull
Keeping my dreams breathing a fresh dose of oxygen
With every breath my heart took.
I stand in my skull.
Tiny,
But gravity pulled me into the center
Of my dream world
Even though physically,
I sat with cracked eyes in the center of the room
In a daze between notes
And my doodles.
My diary between the lines of trig
Cast upon the pages.
A flock of birds carry both F and X
Through my skull
Leaving room for the butterflies
That I feel in my tummy when I fly
Extending my arm into someones heart.
I want to feel hearts beat rhythmically paired with my own
Of rainbows and joy.
So I dream it.
I miss a brain,
But I am a blank heart
With powdery edges that come to shape point.
The walls of my heart extend to the world
So that I may write my diary in the air.
I close my eyes missing more of the lesson
Of why X must always be a composition with in F.
But why bother.
It is more important to know,
Believe,
And understand why I am a composition of you.
With pieces of starch white chalk still in my eyes,
I realize that my skull has woven my bad into my good
In order to make sense of my composition.
Hatred pierces through the sky of my dreams
Like a fresh flu shot needle.
No longer can the clouds depend on Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches to stay in the sky.
They hang,
Like my 15 pound head on my neck.
Dangling.
Dripping from my body like the blood of those who look like me.
It is foreign to think of hope shaped as a weapon
That may some day end the writing of my diary
-Math notes.
There goes that symbol.
I wonder what that means.
These eyes.
Boy are they heavy.
Bricks upon my face.
My pencil runs off the page.
It’s nice outside.
It is nice inside my skull’s fresh scent of
Blossoming flowers in the spring.
Holiday Heart
Mya Peters
Holiday Heart is a movie that was released in 2000 about a drag queen, Holiday, who
takes in a drug addict mother, Wanda Dean, and her 12-year-old daughter, Niki Dean, off the
streets (West, 2000). Holiday lets the two live with him for a year. During that time period,
Holiday and Niki try to help Wanda stay clean, but their attempts fail. With no father figure
around, Holiday and Silas, a drug dealer and pimp Wanda befriended, raise Niki when Wanda is
absent from Niki’s life because she is struggling with her drug addiction. With the circumstances
that Niki has been placed in she is demonstrates some of the characteristics of a child with a
neglectful parent. As Niki ages through puberty, she encounters some of the challenges that come
with menarche, such as being sexualized by older males. Niki’s cognitive development also gets
her in trouble with Holiday as he is trying to help her not follow in her mother’s foot steps.
Throughout the movie, it is clear that Niki is the daughter of a neglectful parent. Being a
neglectful parent is a parenting style that often times parents who are struggling with their own
personal issues elicit (Steinberg, 2013). Neglectful parents often time make themselves the center
of the relationship between themselves and their child (Steinberg, 2013). These type of parents do
not have standards for their children and rarely respond to the needs of their children (Steinberg,
2013). Sadly, this is not the best parenting style to prompt optimal and healthy development in the
children of neglectful parents. As a result, children of neglectful parents tend to be impulsive,
socially withdrawn, are at a higher risk for substance abuse, early sexual behaviors, and
depression. These children are also typically parenting or taking care of their parents instead of it
being the other way around (Steinberg, 2013). In the movie, Niki often time hugs Wanda when
she sees that Wanda is struggling with her addiction (West, 2000). These hugs are preceded by no
words, only Niki standing in front of her mother with a disappointed facial expression. After
Holiday and Niki helped Wanda get clean through religious activities, Niki catches Wanda
smuggling drugs from behind their church while service was in session. Niki hugs Wanda tightly
while Wanda explains that she is okay, then states that she is scared (West, 2000). This scene
demonstrates how Wanda’s neglectful parenting style has impacted Niki because it shows Niki
attending to her mom’s needs.
Niki is essentially the backbone for her mother. Niki does not show how she feels to her
mother. She holds everything she is feeling inside in order to keep her mother from feeling bad.
This portrayal of Niki shows adolescents and adults that adolescents are strong mentally because
they can hold in their emotions. (Holding in your emotions is not a positive attribute all the time.)
Niki is a resilient child. Despite her circumstances she is a straight A student. With Niki’s
academic accomplishments coupled with her strong persona, viewers of this movie may be led to
think that having an indifferent parent is not so bad when it comes to child development. This is
inaccurate compared to the findings of research. Typically, children who have neglectful parents
perform poorly in school (Steinberg, 2013). Research also suggests that children of single parent
households, where the mother is neglectful or unstable, have high risks for behavioral problems,
poor psychological outcomes (East, 2006). For the most part, Niki is an exception to the rule as a
child who demonstrates resilience in overcoming her circumstances, but this can give viewers the
wrong idea for adolescents in general.
At the start of the movie, Niki is only 12 years old. Girls typically reach menarche
between the ages of 10 and 16.5 years-old (Steinberg, 2013). Niki had her first cycle at the age of
12 while her mom was away, so Holiday and Silas helped her with this transition as best as they
could. Research has shown that girls do struggle with transitioning into puberty, but those girls
who have mother to help them through this stage of life tend to remember having more positive
experiences with puberty (Steinberg, 2013). With Wanda away, Niki does seem to have some
negative moments during puberty that her mother could have helped to prevent. Sadly, Niki does
face some of the challenges young girls often encounter when their have reached menarche, like
being sexualized by older men. At one point in the movie, Niki finds her Wanda prostituting for
drugs. A man receiving services from Wanda spots Niki, likes what he sees, and tells Wanda that
he will only give her drugs if she tells Niki to sleep with him (West, 2000). From Niki’s facial
expression after being told this, she seemed to be disgusted and confused. One of the three
reasons why girls have a difficult time transitioning through puberty is because of developmental
readiness (Holt, 2016). Girls get more sexual attention from the opposite sex, typically older, due
to their body changes. Girls gain larger hips and breasts during puberty. These are often times
seen as being attractive to the opposite sex. For Niki, this was a challenge because she often
found herself in situations where men wanted her, and not her mom for sex. This created a greater
divide between Wanda and Niki.
Adolescents watching Holiday Heart may get the idea that puberty is a rough time period
for both the child going through it and their parents. This is an accurate portrayal that the movie
presents for viewers according to research. Studies show that from childhood through the middle
of puberty, that parent-child conflict increases, especially between the child and their mother
(Steinberg, 2013). The emergence of Niki’s adult-woman-like figure could have added to the
tension in Wanda and Niki’s relationship creating an increased distance between the two of them.
As children enter adolescence, they gain more advanced cognitive abilities. They are able
to think abstractly, have the ability to reason and rationalize better, and more, which allows them
to be better arguers (Steinberg, 2013). Niki tries to use these cognitive changes to her advantage
when she decides to engage in risky sexual activity. Niki knows that Wanda had her at a young
age, but she stills decide to engage in sexual activity. She believes that this will not also happen to
her. This is an example of a personal fable, where the adolescent feels that they are special and
the consequences that could happen from doing a behavior will not happen to them (Holt, 2016).
When Holiday walks in on Niki engaging in sexual activity, Niki tries to rationalize her decision
to him and argues that she knows what she is doing (West, 2000). Holiday tells Niki that she is
not thinking about the full consequences of her actions and that he does not want her to end up
like her mother, Wanda.
An adolescent viewer may watch Holiday Heart and think that adolescents are not
capable of making great decisions for themselves. This portrayal is partially true. Adolescents are
just as capable to make sound decisions for themselves as adults are (Holt, 2016). Adolescents
have the same brain machinery as an adult (Steinberg, 2013). Adolescents and adults both engage
in personal fables. The difference is that research shows that adolescents struggle to make
emotion driven choices (Casey, 2011). Niki decided to have sex out of emotion. She focused
more on the reward she would receive from engaging in that behavior. She failed to consider the
consequences of sex.
All in all, Niki did face some challenges during her adolescence with being a child of a
neglectful parent, encountering sexualization, and gaining heightened cognitive abilities. Despite
her challenges, she is a good example that adults and adolescents can look at to see how resilience
can play in the favor of a child who is put in poor situations like Niki. By the end of the movie,
Wanda is killed, and Niki says that she is happy that her mother can rest in peace knowing that
she, Niki, will be taken care of by Holiday and Silas (West, 2000). This shows that Niki’s
circumstances have helped mold her into a selfless young lady. This can be regarded as a positive
or negative attribute, but in my opinion, this is a good thing for Niki to be able to do for viewers.
It shows adolescents that there is hope for them if they are in situations like Niki.
References
Casey, B. J., Jones, R. M., Sommerville, L. H. (2011). Braking and accelerating of the adolescent
brain. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21, 21-33.
East, L., Jackson, D., & O’Brien, L., (2006). Father absence and adolescent development: a
review of the literature. Journal of Child Health Care, 10, 283-295.
Holt, L. (2016) Personal & Social Responses to Puberty. Personal Collection of Laura Holt,
Trinity College, Hartford, CT.
Steinberg, L. (2013). Adolescence (10th Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill Publishers.
West, C. L., & Townsend, R. (2000). Holiday Heart. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television.
To the Finish Line: Hanging On For the Ride of My Life
Sarah Beckmann
What are your boundaries? What are you capable of? Are you strong enough?
Are you tough enough? Can you push beyond your comfort zone?
Who are you?
I confront these questions every day. I’ve learned that your mind and body can
do a lot more than you think they can. And I believe you can reach your full potential in
life by facing these questions head-on. It takes grit, but most of all it takes grace. Only
good can come from these experiences, because if you weren’t sure about the last
question, challenge yourself like I do and I think you’ll find an answer.
***
All my life I have been an athlete. I played sports constantly, from soccer to
softball, basketball, and field hockey. I even danced ballet from age four to eleven.
Staying active and being part of a team is important to me, so much so that, toward the
end of high school, the thought of joining the military—the ultimate, national team—
crossed my mind. But it wasn’t until college that I realized I was destined for a particular
sport. I had no idea there was something greater waiting for me, something fourteen
years of daily practices and games had only prepared me for. I had grown strong, but I
was about to become a whole lot stronger…and, literally, a boatload faster.
Because I was born to row.
I found a sport that gives me that militaristic feel, that prestigious sense of
command and grace and power—raw, physical power—in a way that other sports never
did. I fell in love with the culture, the people, the boathouse, the shells, the oars, and
the sound of the oarlocks snapping together. I was raised in a town by the sea, but I fell
in love with the water all over again, in a new way. I learned how to balance a boat, how
to feather the blade, how to make big puddles—and suffer through hand blisters. I
learned how to tame the erg machine. And, almost more importantly, I learned how to
trust in teammates who would become more like my sisters.
Rowing is not just a sport. It’s a way of life, a way of life for ordinary people who
have the choice to become extraordinary. The key step is whether or not they commit
themselves to reaching that excellence—if they have the physical strength, as well as
the strength of character to make good on that choice for self-betterment.
Rowing will take them there. It’s only a matter of hanging on for the ride.
***
My story arises from a number of experiences prior to Trinity College; all shaped
my identity into becoming a young woman. Without these building blocks of my
personality, I might not have been equipped for (nor eager to face) the challenges of
rowing and college life.
As a thirteen-year-old, I was severely impacted by the death of my grandmother.
I am the oldest of her grandchildren, so my grandmother had been a key figure in my
childhood. I experienced true grief for the first time. However, I learned how to channel
my emotions through a positive outlet: writing. I wrote endless poems about my
grandmother, and I still write about her today. While some teenagers use other, more
negative alternatives (like drugs and alcohol) to deal with their feelings—adolescence is
a dire time of transition—I learned early on how to manage challenges and accept
change through my writing. In both my middle and high school graduations, I wrote
poems about transitions and coming of age. They reflected my thoughts, but also
captured those of my peers as we prepared to step into our new worlds.
My dedication to learning has set a strong foundation for me as I navigate
college. Throughout late elementary, middle, and high school, my grades were a
number one priority, always above my performance in athletics. I’m really quite the
nerd. And with my concurrent background of playing sports, I came athletically inclined
to rowing, while also having the skill to balance athletics with academics. But more
importantly, my investment in learning allowed me to try new things and pick up a sport
like crew; I quickly grasped the mechanics and technique of the stroke, and the ability to
row at certain ratings came almost naturally to me—something unique for a walk-on
with absolutely no prior experience.
My growing confidence in trying new things became a theme in my life just
before entering college. For the first eighteen years of my existence, I had long hair. But
soon after graduating high school, I decided to chop it all off—all of it. It was a risk, it
was different, but it suited me. I look at the old picture on my ID card and barely
recognize myself. I continued on this path of change by signing up for the Quest First
Year Orientation Program, where I spent four days hiking on the Appalachian Trail with
other freshmen and upperclassmen instructors—something my old self would never
have imagined doing.
One of my instructors was on the crew team, and she encouraged me to join.
The truth was I had already begun to think about rowing. My father was asked to row in
college (he’s 6’4’’ tall; size gives you advantage in crew), but he’d suffered some serious
injuries from other sports, so he declined the offer. He told me he regrets that decision
today. And that’s why I kept rolling that story over in my head as I debated the
opportunities before me.
After getting back on campus for freshmen orientation week, an upperclassman
came up to me, gave me an up-and-down look, and asked if I was a rower. I remember
being surprised (as well as secretly gratified) by this remark. I told her, no, I was not a
rower. But, as opposed to my father’s response, in my head—in my gut—something
inside me was saying yes.
In the end, I found the courage to attend the first crew meeting during the fall of
my freshman year. But without my increasing abilities to learn, cope with, and
voluntarily seek change, I probably wouldn’t have sat in the McCook auditorium that
day, feeling excited and somewhat terrified about joining a new sport.
I never looked back from that moment on. Even my body changed in ways I
never imagined it could (I gained the freshman fifteen, alright, but instead of fat it was
muscle). I was beginning to train my body to become a machine. Yet as I was pushing my
body’s limits, I was also testing my mind’s limits—a crucial lesson that I know will guide
me as I face other types of boundaries in the future.
***
Rowing is known as a tough sport, but I don’t think people truly realize the levels
of adversity that rowers face (that is, unless they try it for themselves). A few quotes
from The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown, outline in more detail the physical
hardships rowers must face, and why they must prepare for them:
…races always begin, and usually end, with hard sprints. These sprints require levels of
energy production that far exceed the body’s capacity to produce aerobic energy,
regardless of oxygen intake. Instead the body must immediately produce anaerobic
energy. This, in turn, produces large quantities of lactic acid, and that acid rapidly builds
up in the tissue of the muscles. The consequence is that the muscles often begin to
scream in agony almost from the outset of a race and continue screaming until the very
end.
And it’s not only the muscles that scream. The skeletal system to which all those
muscles are attached also undergoes tremendous strains and stresses. Without proper
training and conditioning—and sometimes even with them—competitive rowers are apt
to experience a wide variety of ills in the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, ribs, neck, and
above all the spine…
The common denominator in all these conditions—whether in the lungs, muscles, or
bones—is overwhelming pain…It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how
much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while
pain has her wonton way with you. (Brown 40)
Rowers take the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” to an
uncomfortable level of reality, to say the least. But, despite sharing a mutual
understanding of deep physical and mental pain, I think rowers also recognize the
benefits of this sport in a way that others sometimes cannot see. In other words, I
personally think all the pain is worth the effort, in the end (I honestly wouldn’t be doing
it unless I saw a light at the end of the tunnel—no one would).
And what comprises this light, you may ask? Well, it’s difficult to describe in
words. People will watch us kill ourselves on the erg, or listen to our complaints about
having to get up for a 6 a.m. practice, or stare at the marks on our hands, but what all
this suffering amounts to is—is—
Is this: The feeling of putting on that uniform for the first time after a long
winter. The feeling of being watched by your parents, friends, and alumni as you carry
the weight of a vessel on your shoulder, a vessel powered by pure muscle—your muscle.
The feeling of dying on the water and coming back to life and never having felt so,
so…alive. It sounds cheesy, but these memories and sensations have value in a way that
others do not. Wesley Ng, the head coach of Trinity Women’s Rowing during my
freshman year, might describe this notion more accurately, all through the words of an
email:
As you improve upon your ergometer fitness numbers remember a couple of
reasons why we are doing it—so that we can practice the correct rowing motion
more and practice it at a higher intensity. But more importantly, and far more
importantly, we are getting fitter, more aggressive, and more proficient so we
can earn a moment that happens at the end of the race.
All those hours, all that hard work for simply one thing: to earn a moment. A memory.
And he’s exactly right. Other people might not be able to see the sense in this idea, but
it’s crystal clear to me. Well, sometimes it’s not so clear, especially once the river
freezes and we’re stuck erging indoors (which SUCKS). But the memories of racing on
the water, of being outside in the spring sunlight—those simple, powerful recollections
are sometimes the only things that motivate me.
That’s the main reason why I, among others, row. These are things that most
people just don’t experience everyday. I see the challenge in rowing as an opportunity
for self-betterment, and not self-destruction, though it may seem like that on the
outside. It might sound twisted to you, but then again, welcome to the rower’s mindset:
it takes a little craziness in order to push yourself beyond the borders of common sense.
And yet taking these kinds of risks proves to yield a special kind of reward. For life is full
of moments, but the ones we remember most? Well, more often than not, they’re
never ordinary.
***
That moment in a race. Not the hallelujah, I-love-rowing-so-much moment I was
just talking about. I’m talking about the moment when you really hate rowing—that
unbearable instance that stretches on for seconds upon seconds—that moment when
you know you’re dying.
I was feeling that way during the last six hundred meters of the 2015 New
Englands championship race. As a freshman, I was sitting stroke seat of Trinity’s Third
Varsity Eight; stroke seat is the girl sitting directly before the coxswain in the boat, the
girl who sets the rating and rhythm for the rest of her teammates.
We were racing on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Massachusetts, which
features a straight course of two thousand meters (the standard distance for spring
races). From what I remember, we were in position to win a bronze metal, with Bates
and Wesleyan a few seats ahead of us. Our coxswain, Sarah Duffy, a freshman like me at
the time—I remember seeing her foot start to tap in front of me. That’s when I knew we
were really contending. My legs and lungs were burning, my vision was hazy, but
through the last section of that race I’ll never forget Duffy’s voice screaming: “WE HAVE
THEM, WE HAVE THEM, WE HAVE THEM!” I’ll never forget how we pushed through that
pain using pure willpower—and how, as a crew of mostly walk-ons, we had edged
Wesleyan to win silver by a millisecond.
And I’ll always remember looking up at the sky after the race was over, my
insides churning like volcanic lava, and simply…breathing. Simply looking at the sun
through the shade of my black glasses, and finally knowing that all those hours in the
tank room, at the boathouse, on the erg—had not been for nothing. I had dedicated so
many months of training for this moment. To win a medal was great, given the low odds
of achieving victory in this sport, but somehow not as extraordinary as that feeling I had
as I sat in that boat, on that lake, on that sunny spring day.
So here is what I have learned…in a sense, crew races are excruciating and short,
kind of like life; I fought through the agony of seven and a half minutes, but I hadn’t
given up during that race. Shouldn’t we all be pushing as hard as we can to get the most
out of the limited time we have? Who cares if you come in last or first place—it’s all
about the experiences we have in getting there, to the finish line. Because once we’re at
the finish line, there isn’t much else we can do but look at the sky, wondering when the
next race will happen, wondering if we’ll be ready for it…
I know the lessons from this sport will guide me through the trials of the future,
a time ahead where I will no longer call the campus in Hartford and the boathouse on
the Connecticut River my home.
But I’ll still have those moments, those memories seared in my brain to remind
me of who I am and what I can do, and ultimately, to echo this:
Why the fight is worth it.
Rethinking Biotic Resistance
Sarah Messenger
In his 1958 work The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants Charles Elton first
applied the idea of biotic resistance as an important means of preventing invasions. In a nutshell,
biotic resistance is the idea that areas with high levels of biodiversity are less susceptible to
invasion by nonnative species than habitats with low levels of native biodiversity. This concept is
based on three ideas that can be traced all the way back to Darwin.
The first important component of the theory of biotic resistance is occupied niches.
Joseph Grinnell is credited for the original conceptualization of a niche as the biotic and abiotic
factors necessary for a particular species to survive in a given habitat (Cadotte 2006). Elton was
the first to redefine this idea as a specie’s “role” or status in its community. Niches are important
in relation to biotic resistance because it is extremely difficult for an introduced species to take
over a niche occupied by a native species (Cadotte 2006). Elton postulated that habitats with high
levels of native biodiversity will have few unoccupied niches for introduced species to fill.
Therefore, these habitats will be more resistant to invasion than habitats with less native
biodiversity and therefore more open niches (Cadotte 2006).
Niche theory is closely related to the idea of competition which was initially proposed by
Darwin. Again, Elton reinterpreted this theory and applied it to invasion biology. In habitats with
high levels of biodiversity, there are very few available resources for an introduced species to
take advantage of. Additionally, native species have evolved in this habitat making it likely that
they are more resistant to invasion due to increased competitive ability for limited resources
(Levine et al. 2004). Combined, these two factors make areas with high levels of biodiversity
difficult to invade.
A final component of Elton’s theory of biotic resistance is that invasions occur more
frequently on islands (Elton 1958). This relates directly to niche theory as islands, which typically
have less biodiversity, will therefore have more open niches. Thus, the fact that we do in fact tend
to see higher levels of invasions on islands could be interpreted as evidence supporting Elton’s
theory of biotic resistance.
Since Elton’s time, biotic resistance has been heavily researched and the theory has been
expanded (Levine et al. 2004). Besides competition, herbivory, species diversity, and fungi
present, have all been found to be important components of a habitat’s biotic resistance to
invasion (Levine et al. 2004). However, research has also shown that while these factors, in
particular competition and herbivory, may limit the performance and spread of an invasive
species, they are ineffective at preventing or stopping an invasion altogether (Levine et al. 2004).
Furthermore, contrary to Elton’s predictions, areas with high native biodiversity are actually
correlated with high levels of invasive biodiversity (Stohlgren et al. 2013). This could be because
areas with high native biodiversity represent habitats with favorable climate and plentiful
resources that may support the establishment of nonnative species.
The correlation between high native biodiversity and high invasive biodiversity suggest
that Elton may have been wrong about biotic resistance. This also represents a paradigm shift in
the way we think about invasion. There is an assumption that a given habitat can only sustain a
set number of species. Thus if the habitat is comprised of many native species, there is little room
or opportunity for nonnative invasion. However, the findings of Stohlgren and Levine suggest
that this view is incorrect, there may not be a limit to the number of species a habitat can sustain
(Simberloff and Von Holle 1999). Elton may have been the first to unify niche and competition
theories into a unified idea of biotic resistance however, subsequent studies have found that high
levels of biodiversity do not make a habitat less susceptible to nonnative invasion.
Weisbrot Critical Review Paper
Shannon Burke
In his two articles, Weisbrot and his co-authors offer academic perspectives on
the prospects of economic recovery for Greece, both before the installation of the bailout plan and three years later. The first paper claims that Greece needs to abandon its
pro-cyclical fiscal policies which seek to maintain the fixed exchange rate created by the
euro in favor of expansionary policies, a diagnosis similar to his analysis of Latvia. The
second paper focuses on the need for stimulus once economic adjustments have been
made, rather than preserve fiscal austerity. His arguments for Greece are incorporated
into recommendations for other periphery European states, and offer an interesting
comparison to initial analyses of the Euro for developing countries.
In the 2012 piece by Weisbrot and Montecino, the authors claim that the Greek
government should abandon its pro-cyclical fiscal policies, which have been
unsuccessful in their generation of an internal devaluation, in favor of an alternative
strategy. This strategy is the process chosen by Argentina at the end of their 1998
recession; a planned default on Greece’s debit and subsequent exit from the euro. The
authors organize their argument into six sections. The first section discusses how the
output loss of GDP could be greater than IMF predictions under the austerity measures
imposed by the ECB, the European Commission, and the IMF on Greece. Weisbrot and
Montecino point out that the downside projections for real GDP and unemployment
have been expanded several times, and that the IMF’s recovery plan is unrealistically
reliant on tax revenues from the privatization of public assets. The claim, “If even a third
of the privatizations do not happen in the next two years, this means that the
government would have to come up with another 5 percentage points of GDP in
revenues”63. Expectations of Greece operating below its targets also has detrimental
effects on consumer confidence. The second section deals with the complications
around Greece achieving its fiscal targets in the wake of a reduction in tax revenues and
an increase in pertinent government programs, such as unemployment insurance, as the
recession progresses. While Greece has been working to reach targets primarily by
revenue-focused measures, the impact of the GDP deflator may eventually force the
government into spending cuts. Section 3 looks at the social and human costs of the
current austerity program. Apart from unemployment problems, access to healthcare
has also reduced during the recession. The fourth section looks at the theory of internal
devaluation, where the authors point out, “it is not clear that internal devaluations are
ever successful, at least compared to feasible alternatives”64. Reductions in real wages
can easily be cancelled out by changes in the euro to prevent devaluation. The fifth
section examines the dynamics behind Greece reducing their public debt to GDP ratio.
The authors reject the IMF baseline projection of debt reduction based on a struggling
Eurozone, unrealistic PSI expectations, and overestimates in privatization gains. A
63 Mark Weisbrot and Juan Antonio Montecino, "More Pain, No Gain for Greece:Is the Euro Worth the Cost
of Pro-Cyclical Policy and Internal Devaluation," Center for Economic and Policy Research, February
2012, 7.
64 Weisbrot and Montecino, "More Pain, No Gain," 17..
predication after a “growth shock” of an increase in GDP loss in 2012 would put the
debt to GDP ratio of more than 20% above target. This prediction and debt servicing
costs prove that this is a very serious issue for Greece. Section six looks at the benefits
and likelihood of Greece’s default in the wake of economic and political pressure from
the Eurozone. The ECB would like to keep Greece in the Eurozone for the sake of
preserving creditor confidence, and make Greece’s political structure more liberal in the
process. They concluded that due to its high level of exports and substantial pressure
from their debt burdens, Greece would be very likely to benefit form a default/exit
strategy, and most likely recover at a faster rate than under the current program.
The 2015 Weisbrot et al article argues that the measured reduction of fiscal the
fiscal austerity program in Greece should be replace with a program of moderate
stimulus. While other influences, such as debt cancellation and low interest rates
through ECB quantitative easily, moderate stimulus is favored. The article is structured
in to three main sections. The first section is an examination of Greece’s economy,
which despite its account surplus and new growth, is still experiencing very high
unemployment. The authors claim that the current growth is a result of the end of fiscal
consolidation rather than the benefits of austerity measures. Furthermore, the current
growth is not assured, since non-performing loans and restricting conditions of IMF loan
targets are still present65. Supporting the claims of the previous paper, the authors claim
that recovery in the current account did not come from an increase in exports due to
65 Mark Weisbrot, David Rosnick, and Stephan Lefebvre, "The Greek Economy: Which Way
Forward?," Center for Economic and Policy Research, January 2015, 7.
internal devaluation, but rather a decrease in imports. The second section discusses
alternative recovery plans, which may be able to improve unemployment at a faster rate
than the current troika –sponsored plans. The author’s plan of moderate stimulus
involves cuts to sales taxes, temporary cuts to social contribution spending, and increase
in government expenditures from 2017 through 2019. The ECB’s quantitative easing
program could then contribute to the stimulus-based recovery. While debt forgiveness
is unlikely, it would free up government resources to conduct such a stimulus program.
Section three concludes that the moderate stimulus plan proposed could help avoid the
risks of a slow, prolonged recovery and potential collapse back into recession for
Greece.
Weisbrot’s plan for Greece, much like his commentary on Latvia, is based on the
success of Argentina’s behavior under fixed rates during crisis. In both the Latvia and
2012 Greece paper’s he makes the point that “Expansionary monetary policy runs
counter to the need to maintain the fixed exchange rate”66. For Greece, this implies that
the motivations behind the austerity programs included keeping Greece within a fixed
exchange rate, which is persevering the success of the Euro experiment. Latvia is a
similar mentality, since the government has worked to keep rates fixed, at the expense
of increasing unemployment and decreasing growth, in order to potentially join the
Eurozone. Weisbrot’s point that internal devaluations do not solve the problems of
over-valued real exchange rates is present in his argument for Latvia and the real case of
66 Mark Weisbrot and Rebecca Ray, "Lativa's Recession: The Cost of Adjustment with an 'Internal
Devaluation,'" Center for Economic and Policy Research, February 2010, 3
Greece, with the effective exchange rate being unchanged in 2011, despite declines in
wage levels”67.As such, the author clearly seeks to share theories of recovery among
developing European nations.
The categorization tool of developing vs non-developing European nations and
their reactions to the Euro are also prevalent in Lane’s work. In his assessments of
“periphery” states, Lane states, “First, entry into the euro was a much bigger structural
shock for peripheral member countries”68. Lane claims that these countries saw a much
greater decline in real interest rates. However, such s shock could be translated
politically as well, like in Weisbrot’s description of the austerity conditions as a method
of making Greece’s economy more structurally liberal. His point of asymmetric shocks is
also pertinent, since Greece’s attempts an internal devaluation can be negated by shows
of strength in the rest of Europe, due to the common external exchange rate. However,
Lane’s point that, “…the euro so far probably has acted to amplify cyclical divergences
across the member countries”69, clearly does not hold in Weisbrot’s work, as Greece and
Latvia are pressured into pro-cyclical policy’s which amplify recessionary trends on both
a domestic and external level. However, it is clear the looking at the effects of the euro
in countries at different stages of economic sophistication has some benefit in
establishing points of comparison on which to base productive analysis.
67 Weisbrot and Montecino, "More Pain, No Gain," 11.
68 Phillip R. Lane, "The Real Effects of the European Monetary Union,"Journal of Economic
Perspectives 20, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 49.
69 Lane, "The Real Effects of the European," 63
The overall tone of Weisbrot’s work and comparisons to Lane suggest that the
winding down of the Greek recession and initiation of recovery was not conducted in
the most efficient way possible. Pro-cyclical measures dragged the recession on for a
much longer period than necessary, and continued austerity could keep growth sluggish
and unstable. As such, it seems that Weisbrot and his coauthors generally call for
policies that abandon political goals of maintaining the success of the Euro experiment
and preferences for policies based in theory rather than empirical success, in favor of
unpopular policies which provide sustainable and measurable benefits for the struggling
country.
Pasty White and the Seven Jerks
Kira Mason
Once upon this time, there lived a virgin named Pasty White. At the age of eleven, she was
locked in a circular, windowless room with a ceiling of filmy, yet impenetrably dense fog, a
cold, plastic floor and walls made of rounded mirrors. Her only companion was the Queen,
and for seven years, she saw only their reflections.
Tall and slender, the Queen posed before the mirror with perfect posture, and Pasty was
more than content to gaze upon her reflection. The lovely woman’s complexion was
smooth, creamy and golden, like the butter that made Pasty’s thighs so thick and lumpy. Her
hair was as smooth as the fine, silky dresses that clung to Pasty’s bloated figure in all the
wrong places. Her eyes were large, glittering jewels, while Pasty’s were the tiny rock
fragments left behind from the mining expedition that retrieved the jewels.
And though she was delighted to fixate on the Queen’s reflection, there was no escaping her
own. Each morning, she would stand in the center of the room, clothed in only a translucent
nightgown. The Queen stood to the side, but her breathy, mystifying voice echoed
throughout the room as she chanted, “Mirrors, mirrors on the walls, who is the palest of
them all?”
“Pasty White,” a warbled, inhuman voice answered.
“Mirrors, mirrors on the walls, who is the fattest of them all?” “Pasty White.”
“Mirrors, mirrors on the walls, who is the most worthless of them all?” “Pasty White.”
Once the Queen was satisfied, she would leave Pasty alone with the mirror and allow her to
get dressed and do her makeup. She had a vast collection thanks to the Queen’s generous
birthday gifts. At twelve it was nail polish for her chipped nails. At thirteen, powder for her
greasy skin. At fourteen, lipstick for her cracked lips. At fifteen, eyeliner for her squinty eyes.
At sixteen, mascara for her wispy eyelashes. At seventeen, eyeshadow for her puffy lids.
Today, she was eighteen, and her stomach churned with anticipation at what she might
receive.
Her throat tightened when she saw the Queen’s reflection approaching her from behind,
empty-handed. The Queen placed her elegant fingers on Pasty’s shoulders, sending a tremor
up the back of her neck. “Today you are eighteen and a woman. Today I give you an entirely
different gift. Today, it is time for you to leave.”
The Queen lifted her hands from Pasty’s shoulders, and with a flick of those long, delicate
fingers, one of the rounded mirrors freed itself from the fog ceiling and lowered like a
drawbridge. Harsh sunlight scorched Pasty’s eyes and singed her skin. She thrust her arms in
front of her face and cowered from the light, seeking solace in the folds of the Queen’s satin
skirts. But chilling, bony fingers gripped her arms, yanking her to her feet, dragging her
across the room and shoving her into the abyss of light. Pasty slid down the rounded mirror,
her skirt twisting around her legs as she tumbled face-first into the dry, cracked earth.
She lay there, breathless, like she’d been punched in the lungs. She craned her neck back to
see a wasteland before her. Everything was gray: the dirt, the sky, the tree stumps that were
twisted and bent like deformed limbs. Why would the Queen have stranded her here? Pasty
had always done everything she’d asked with unfaltering adoration. But if it was time for her
to leave, then perhaps that meant it was too late for her to blossom into that beautiful young
woman that she was supposed to become. She was utterly hopeless, a complete
disappointment, and the Queen was giving up on her.
Inhaling sharply against the threat of tears, she gathered her skirt and pulled herself to her
feet. She turned back, facing a fortress of black cinder. Although it loomed over her from
the outside, she longed to be back inside those stone walls, safe from the piercing sun that
pressed down on her from its perch in that unnervingly empty sky. But she couldn’t. So she
turned back to the wasteland and forced her way towards the gray horizon.
The sun’s ferocity only grew as it raised itself higher above her. Her feet grew heavier with
each step until she noticed traces of rich browns and greens appearing in the landscape. The
land transformed into a forest with ancient, russet trees so gigantic that she wondered if she
had come upon a world of giants. Desperately seeking shade, she quickened her pace. But
the canopy of branches and leaves lacked the solidity that her fog had had. And so, she
wandered aimlessly, stumbling over twisted roots and jagged rocks that tore the hem of her
skirt.
“Are you lost?”
Pasty gasped and whipped around, both hands clenched against her rapidly rising and falling
chest. She forced herself to gaze upon the source of the voice, and her hands dropped to her
sides while the blood rushed to her cheeks. He was beautiful, like the Queen, but in a
different way, in a sort of way that made her skin tingly and her insides fluttery.
The young man raised his eyebrows, his earthy, hazel eyes awaiting an answer. Her lips
parted, but they flapped about like a dying fish as she struggled to make a sound. He took a
small step towards her and extended his hand. “Please, don’t be frightened. I can help you.”
She stared at those calloused fingers that hung gently before her. She moved to place her
hand in his, but her body tensed, and she panicked. It was too good to be true; he was too
perfect to be real, or at least to be talking to her. It was a trick.
And so she ran. She ran until that low, rich voice faded away into the mist. She ran until the
sun dipped below the tree-line, and all that remained was a hungry, burnt orange haze. She
ran and ran and ran until they reached a clearing that was slightly illuminated by little orbs of
light. At last, her brittle legs slowed, surrendering to a weary ache. They buckled beneath her
just as she entered the clearing.
Several moments later, one of the orbs floated out of its fixed position and bobbed towards
her. She watched with wide eyes as the outline of a glass jar containing the orb revealed
itself, followed by the copper frame of a lantern, and at last, the large figure that was holding
the lantern. The figure was moving quickly; it wasn’t running, but its strides were firm and
direct.
“Are you hurt?” The man asked in a strained voice. Pasty shook her head dazedly, staring at
the outline of his muscles and the angular features that were sliced by the shadows. He held
his lantern over her to see her response, and something flickered across those burning,
amber eyes. Perhaps it was just a flash from the lantern. “I’ll help you inside.”
Before she could process his words, he leaned over her, and she was overcome with a
pungent mix of flower and spice aromas that had an aftertaste of raw meat. He grabbed her
waist and lifted her to her feet in one strong jerk. She struggled to find her balance, and he
threw a brawny arm around her, both supporting and directing her further into the clearing,
towards what she now realized was a row of tiny cottages. They arrived at the one shrouded
entirely in shadow, and he swept her inside, letting the door slam behind them.
His sitting room had a finely crafted chair and table. The chair was luxurious enough to have
a cushion, but it was the only chair in the room. So he led her into the next room, which was
smaller but far better furnished, with a beautifully polished wardrobe made of cherry wood,
several small, round tables and a magnificent bed that filled most of the room. The man,
whose smooth, taught skin revealed his youth, left to fetch her a drink. She sank into the
mattress with an audible sigh, allowing herself to be engulfed by the plush, maroon
bedspread. But she jolted up when he returned and accepted the dark amber liquid, startled
by its burning sweetness.
“My name is Horny, by the way.” He didn’t ask for her name. And that was fine; she had no
interest in sharing hers. Horny sat beside her, gulping down his own drink with such ferocity
that she was sure his throat must be on fire. He rested a hand on her thigh, sending the same
sensation of burning sweetness throughout her entire body. His moist lips curled into a
playful smirk, “Has anyone ever told you how gorgeous you are?” He put his empty glass
down and slid his other hand around her waist.
His lips pressed against hers before she could answer, “no.” His tongue was in her mouth
before she realized what he was saying. He’d called her gorgeous. Despite her glaring flaws,
he thought she was gorgeous. And as his mouth devoured hers, Pasty determined that this
was what it was like to be wanted.
His fingers swiftly unlaced her bodice, and she tensed at the thought of her pale, fleshy form
being exposed. But he continued to undress her and kiss her hungrily, completely unaware
that she had stopped kissing back. And then it was too late. The biting chill of the room and
the scorching heat of his golden skin struck her flesh. She squeezed her eyes shut in
anticipation of his withdrawal, of his disgust. But instead, he clutched and grasped her the
way a victim of poverty would grasp fistfuls of gold from a treasure chest, letting out a
throaty moan of ecstasy as he did so. Yes, he wanted her. And she wanted someone who
wanted her. She took in clipped gasps of air as her heart pounded her blazing blood through
her body.
Horny wasted little time after that. A few sharp thrusts that sent an electric mix of pain and
euphoria shooting through her veins, and it was over. He would’ve taken her again, but her
fuzzy head fell backwards onto the pillow, her dark curls spilling out around her. Her lids
fluttered, then closed, and she fell asleep.
The next morning, or perhaps closer to midday, Pasty awoke shivering and tangled in the
scratchy, threadbare crimson sheets. She hoisted up her heavy head, placed her weight on
her shaky legs, got dressed and went into the sitting room. Horny was nowhere to be found.
Neither was food, unless brandy, whiskey and a few eggs counted.
A scrawny figure slinked in from a room that she had not noticed until now. His face was
guarded by greasy strings of dark hair. His head snapped towards her, and he immediately
slicked his hair back out of his rat-like face and fixed his beady eyes on her.
“Might you be the young lady my ass of friend, Horny, spent the night with?” She nodded.
He slid beside her and draped his arm around her shoulders. “Nevermind him, like I said,
he’s an ass.” His hand crept down towards her breast. “I go by Sleazy, and unlike some
people, I know how to treat a lady.”
Pasty’s stomach growled ferociously, and she bit her lip as blood rushed to her cheeks.
Sleazy withdrew his arm from around her, his ashen skin now just as flushed as hers, but his
expression held no trace of disgust. “Oh how inconsiderate of me; I completely forgot to
offer you something.” He rummaged through the empty cabinets with a skittish fervor, then
looked back to her with a tense grin. “Eggs and whiskey?” It didn’t sound appetizing, but
she the corners of her mouth strained upward.
Sleazy made a poor attempt of cooking for her, but she forced down the runny, tasteless
eggs. She thought to wash it down by gulping the golden liquid, but it was like drinking
smoke, and she nearly choked on it. She meant to leave the cottage when she was done, but
there was nowhere for her to go, and Sleazy insisted that she stay. For many tedious hours,
he did his best to entertain her in that empty sitting room until they heard gruff footsteps
outside.
“Horny must be back from hunting. It’s nearly dusk.” Pasty blanched, all her muscles
clenching at once. She couldn’t bear to face Horny. Sleazy understood perfectly and ushered
her into his own bedroom without a word, shutting the door behind them.
They sat on his bed, which creaked with every slight movement, and she absentmindedly ran
her hand along the velvety black bedspread as those beady eyes soaked her in. “Horny has
brought home many pretty girls before, but you are just,” he paused and leaned in to
whisper, “ravishing.” His sickly sweet breath caressed her neck. Followed by his lips. It felt
nice to be complimented, to be kissed, to be fondled. So she let him do all three… and then
a little more. He was slower and sleeker than Horny, though there was still a twinge of
hostility in his touch and a hint of sadism in his eyes.
Pasty awoke in the middle of the night, shaky and a little nauseous. Sleazy lay with his mouth
hanging open, drool oozing out the side of it and one hand flung across her chest. She didn’t
want to wake up next to him, and she didn’t want to wake up alone, so she slipped out of
bed, threw on whatever clothes she could find and tiptoed out of the cottage.
The forest was eerily peaceful at night, and a misty indigo light peaked through the trees in
uneven patches. Pasty hugged her goosebump-covered arms close to her chest and focused
on the crisp crackle of leaves and twigs beneath her feet, until the sound of laughter drew
her attention towards the glow of a distant fire. She drifted towards it in a trance and came
upon a young man who was lying on his back and gaping at the sky with a fixed expression
of bemusement.
He didn’t notice her until she was standing right over him, and then he offered her a sloppy
wave and slurred something in an airy voice that sounded vaguely like, “Come look at this.”
She returned his request with a blank stare, so he pulled himself up to meet her. His legs
were wobbly, and he steadied himself by placing both hands on her shoulders and making
intense eye contact with his glazed over, mossy green eyes. “You are the prettiest girl that I
have ever… in the whole entire…” His voice trailed off, surrendering to a childish grin. He
was cute, in a scruffy sort of way, with messy, sandy hair and an uneven layer of peach fuzz.
Doped-Up—that was his name, though Pasty never actually learned it—felt her shiver and
pulled her down to sit by the fire. He offered her some mushrooms, and her stomach roared
in approval despite her tongue’s protests at their chewy, rubbery texture. Soon her head was
floating and swirling, and she tried to follow the distant laughter again until she realized that
it was her own. They stared at the fire—now spurting colorful sparks—until it melted their
eyes, which slid down their cheeks and left a salty taste in the corner of their mouths.
He rambled. She giggled. He kissed her… or licked her, since his lazy tongue went
everywhere. She wiped her mouth with her hand and scrunched her nose at his foul breath.
He continued to touch her with his limp fingers. She didn’t know how to stop him. He
thought she was pretty. She thought he was funny. He took off his pants. She didn’t want
him to stop liking her. He couldn’t stay aroused. She tried not to blame herself. He passed
out on the ground. She was secretly relieved.
A beefy hand shook her awake the next morning. She yawned, then choked on the musty air
she’d just inhaled. The first thing she saw was a pair of bulging eyes the color of faded
denim. She groaned and rolled over, pressing the side of her face into the dirt and staring at
the pile of charred wood next to her. Everything was achy and fuzzy. Time jerked forward in
choppy images, from being pulled to her feet, to reaching the row of cottages in the clearing,
to standing on the doorstep of a particularly shambled cottage, to being escorted inside and
placed on a sofa that was covered by a heap of clothing.
She drifted in and out of a fitful sleep full of stretching and curving mirrors. The beautiful
face of the Queen contorted into the faces of Horny, Sleazy and Doped-Up, though she
didn’t quite remember the latter. At last, she jolted awake and looked about the cramped
cottage. The parts of the floor that weren’t covered by dirty clothes, shoes, hunting rifles,
scattered bullets, and half-eaten food were stained and scratched. Dirty dishes had colonized
every table and counter, which were also coated with an impressive layer of dust and grime.
“Oh! You’re awake,” a brawny but doughy-faced young man said, shaping his words around
a large spoonful of chunky, beef stew that dribbled to his chin and got stuck in his dirty
blonde beard. He took a long swig of ale straight from the bottle, since all of his cups were
strewn about the house, coated in a dried layer of whatever had once been in them. He
smiled at her. “I’m Sloppy. You can stay for as long as you want.”
And though the air in the cottage was stuffy and musky, Pasty had the impression that if she
stepped out into the clearing, there would be no air at all. So she forced herself to return his
smile and proceeded to stay for a few days. Sloppy needed someone to clean and cook for
him, and she liked being needed. So when, after the third day, he expressed a more physical
need for her, she gave in to that too. Even though he was rough and clumsy, and it was
painful. It happened again and again, and eventually, she was just too numb to mind.
But then there was Grungy, Sloppy’s elusive cottage-mate who would skulk out of his room
in the middle of the night, ransack the cabinets, then return to his room, slamming the door
behind him. Most nights, Pasty was too tormented with eerie, nonsensical dreams to sleep,
and the pair of them would meet in the kitchen area. During their first couple encounters, he
would nod to her with a crooked, close-mouthed grin. Then, he started to wink at her. And
at last, he spoke in a raspy voice, “Have you ever thought that maybe we are just plants and
that the trees are the true animals?”
She shook her head slowly, trying to grasp the words. They didn’t make any sense, but she
told herself that she must not be smart enough to understand his intellect. And so they
began to talk by the faint blue moonlight that danced on Grungy’s olive skin, which was
covered in strange markings, markings that Pasty loved to assign some deep, mysterious
meaning to. He did most of the talking, for he never held onto one train of thought long
enough for her to keep up. Besides, she was happy to drown herself in those eyes that were
like a rich, spiced rum.
He quoted broken lines of poetry in praise of her, and she was all too willing to express her
gratitude. Grungy was the perfect combination of passionate and gentle, and he made her
heart swell to the point where she thought it might burst. After seven nights of bliss, the
night came where he didn’t meet her in the kitchen, so she crept into his room instead. She
caught a flash of untamed red hair, a whiff of a citrusy perfume and a medley of highpitched sighs and moans before snapping the door shut. And then her heart did burst,
leaving it deflated and tattered.
Pasty fled back to the forest, her eyes burning with swollen tears. She saw nothing but a
glistening, green and brown blur until she rammed right into a hulking wall of muscle that let
out a grunt. Her eyes scanned up past the defined Adam’s apple and firm jawline to the eyes
that were like caves, to the prickly hair that looked like it may draw blood upon a single
touch. And then back to the black voids that were his eyes. She let herself fall into them
because she now lacked the strength to do anything but fall.
His name was Hateful, and he clomped about the forest, snapping twigs and shoving
branches out of his way, similar to his approach with people. He took one look at Pasty and
claimed her like he’d claimed his patch of land in the clearing. She told herself that she
wanted to belong to someone, that his possessiveness meant that he was committed to her.
She just had to remind herself of that when he blamed her for his failure to perform. It
became a mantra that she repeated throughout her weeks with him, the weeks that slurred
together into a blurry month, from the time that he shouted and banged his fists on the
table, to the time that he yelled and smashed his fist across the side of her face.
By the time Hateful took her to the tavern, the swelling on her left eye had gone down
enough for her to see out of it, and the discoloration on her cheekbone had faded to a stale
yellow. He kept a firm hand around her waist as he guided her through the feebly lit, smoky
room, sliding it down further whenever one of the men from the rowdy clusters turned to
look at her. The only time he drifted from her side was to order them beers.
But that was enough time for the young man sitting at the bar to turn around and offer his
hand to her. “I’m Dick. And don’t take this the wrong way, but your boyfriend over there is
one lucky son of a bitch. That is your boyfriend, isn’t it?” He lowered his voice, but only
slightly, “Because frankly, you could do better.” Not that Dick was anything special. He was
perfectly average: average build, average features and average brown hair. But Pasty shook
his hand and flashed him a strained smile.
Hateful turned back, a mug of beer in each hand. The mugs fell to the ground with a dull
clang, beer foaming out onto the cheap, wooden panels. “What the fuck do you think you’re
doing?” He gripped Pasty’s wrist, yanking it away from Dick and twisting it until she
whimpered. “You ugly slut, you fucking whore!” he barked. Hateful raised his hand, but two
of the larger men pulled his arms behind his back, restraining him. They dragged the
struggling, raving man out of the tavern, and his incoherent rant about all women being sluts
died behind the doors.
Pasty went to thank the men who had saved her, but Dick’s hand caught her arm. “Forget
him. Here, have some cider.” He offered her a mug, and she downed the crisp liquid so
quickly that it scalded her throat. He smirked. “Let me get you out of here.”
On the walk to his cottage, the forest began to spin, and she staggered about in zigzags with
Dick’s hands on her shoulders, guiding her forwards. Her head felt like it might fall to the
ground and float towards the stars, all at once. She didn’t notice that they’d entered his
cottage until she crumpled onto a mattress and found herself staring at the solid, white
ceiling, so different from the one she’d known for most of her life. A figure climbed on top
of her, eclipsing the ceiling and pinning her to the mattress.
Her thoughts were coated in molasses; they stuck to one another in one muddled mess and
couldn’t seem to move from one point to the next. That’s why it took so long for her to
realize what Dick was doing. But then he threw up her skirts and spread her legs. And she
grit her teeth. She was done. She didn’t want this. She tried to force her legs closed, but her
jellylike muscles were no match for his strength. No. She tried to speak, but it was like
completing an action in a dream and waking up to realize it hadn’t actually happened. “No.”
The word bubbled to her lips, nothing more than a mumble. Pasty pushed and shoved the
sound until it burst through so sharply that it scraped her dry throat.
“NO!”
Dick didn’t listen. He forced himself inside her. As he moved back and forth, she felt like he
was drilling into her. He was a miner chipping away at her and scooping out whatever he
could find. When he was done, he left her lying there, some parts of her full of holes and
other parts of her shattered altogether.
The next morning, her memory came back to her in horrific shots. Her body was nearly as
wrecked as her spirit, but she dragged herself back into the forest anyway. She walked for as
long as she could, then fainted against a tree and woke herself up with raw, choking sobs
that caused her entire chest to heave. How could she have let this happen to her? How could
she have been so weak, so stupid, so naïve? Mirrors, mirrors on the walls, who is the most worthless
of them all? Pasty White.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” The sound of a male voice sent a wave of nausea through her. She
pressed her lips together as the man knelt before her. There was something familiar about
him, and not a bad familiar either. She let her gaze travel to his hazel eyes. It was the young
man she’d met on her first day in the forest, the one who’d offered to help her, the one she’d
run away from. “Do you need someone to talk to?” he asked.
It had been a long time since she’d talked, really talked. The Queen had always told her that
she was stupid and silly and that her thoughts didn’t matter. And she didn’t have any
intention of speaking, but another sob came over her, filled with words that spilled from her
throat.
“TheQueensentmeintotheforestandIwassolostandoverwhelmedandImetthesemenandtheycall
edmeprettyandmademefeelwantedandneededandsometimesevenallbubblyinsidebuttheynevers
tayedthenightandtheyliedandcheatedandhurtmeandoneofthemevenforcedmeto… to…” her
breath gave out, her voice broke off, and she dissolved into tears.
He moved to put his arm around her, and she flinched, shrinking from his touch. Startled,
he withdrew. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“No, don’t apologize.” He locked eyes with her. Though it was difficult for her to hold his
gaze—that gaze as sweet and comforting as melted caramel—she did. “None of this is your
fault. You know that, right?”
She swallowed, trying to wash away the rough patches that coated her throat. “It is though. I
never should’ve given myself so willingly. Because deep down, I knew that they were…” She
paused to cough and clear her throat. “Scum. But they thought I was pretty. They desired
me. And I knew that no decent man ever would. I mean… I’m nothing special… not like
the Queen.” Pasty broke away, looking down at her stubby fingers and picking at the dirt
under her nails.
He furrowed his brows. “The Queen? Have you ever seen her in person?”
She was about to argue that of course she had, that she’d lived with her for seven years. But
she stopped herself. Had she ever looked at the Queen straight on, without the aid of a
mirror? Had she ever seen her any more directly than she’d seen herself? Now that she
thought of it, the Queen had always positioned herself so particularly that Pasty could only
see her reflection. It had become natural for her to rely on the mirrors over her direct plane
of vision.
“I don’t mean to be rude—and I only say this because I think she’s a wretched person—but
she’s a bit of a hag. And you—ˮ She looked up, and it was his turn to stare at his hands.
“Well you’re absolutely beautiful… if you don’t mind me saying so.”
There was a long pause as she caught her breath, struggling to put words to this fuzzy, tingly
feeling. He extended his hand to her. “I’m Princeton, by the way. And you are?”
She tentatively placed her hand in his, and put at ease by the gentle warmth of his fingertips,
interlocked their fingers. It was the most physical contact that she was comfortable with for
now, but he seemed to be more than satisfied with it. “I’m Pasty. Pasty White.” Ironically,
her fair skin grew rosy at the mention of her name.
Princeton grimaced, sucking in air through his teeth. “That’s really awful. But you can
change it if you want to. Plenty of people outgrow their names around here. Not everyone,
and some take longer than others, but most do. And I don’t think this one suits you.”
Pasty chewed her lip, considering that for a moment. She had always despised that name but
assumed that she deserved it. Now she didn’t necessarily think she deserved it, but she no
longer despised it either. It had an endearingly quirky ring to it. “No, that’s okay. I think I’m
going to keep it.”
He said that he was collecting herbs and wild berries and invited her to join him. Though she
trusted him, she declined. There was something she had to do first. With only the sun as her
guide, she journeyed back through the forest and into the wasteland. When she arrived, a
bloody sun smeared the horizon behind the fortress, giving it a crimson aura.
The tower was solid stone all the way around. But the trivial lack of windows or doors
wasn’t about to stop her. Pasty marched up to her former home and banged her fists on
those coarse, cavity-filled walls until the sheer force of will caused an entire section to
crumble at her feet, sending up a cloud of ash. Once it cleared, she stepped inside.
Before the mirror stood a cute, skinny girl of about eleven. She was so busy scrutinizing each
of her freckles that she didn’t acknowledge Pasty’s entrance. And now Pasty understood why
the Queen had let her go. It had been time for her to take in and indoctrinate another young
girl. Who knew how many girls had been in this tower? And who knew how many other
towers were scattered about this wasteland?
A heroic surge came over Pasty, and she swept in front of her, blocking her view of the
mirror as though it were the blade of sword. She took a deep breath and faced herself. The
distorted mirror no longer affected her; she could see now that she was beautiful. Her skin
was not pasty but porcelain, her body not lumpy but curvy and her eyes not rocks but
precious gems that absorbed the light and reflected back spectacular colors. At first, she
relished in the sight. But then she remembered the little girl behind her, so young and so
tortured by her own appearance. And she knew what she had to do. She removed the heeled
boots that had been pinching her poor feet throughout the entire journey and drove the
heels straight into the mirror.
“What are you doing?” the girl shrieked as shards of glass sprayed out at them.
Pasty tore her eyes from the shattered mirror and faced the girl. She didn’t know what she
was going to say until the words erupted from her lips. “These mirrors, they tell lies. You
can’t believe them. And even if they told the truth, what they said wouldn’t matter. Your
voice is far more important. Do you understand?” The girl’s forehead creased, but she
nodded. Pasty offered her a boot. “Do you want to help me destroy them?”
The girl bit her lip, tucked a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear, then clutched
the boot in her tiny hands and smashed its heel into the mirror. The glass cascaded to the
floor. The girl failed to fight back a grin, and Pasty smiled her first genuine smile in years.
Gemitus: The Link Between Turnus and Troy
Lydia Herndon
My interest in gemitus, an inarticulate groan or sigh of mourning, arose out of a
curiosity about Vergil’s characterization of Aeneas. To my modern sensibilities it seemed
strange to associate the protagonist of the poem and founding father of Troy with
sighing, moaning, lamenting, and weeping. However, as I explored the context of
gemitus, I discovered Vergil’s association of the word with non-Trojans to be more
remarkable than its use to describe Aeneas. Vergil closely relates gemitus to
descriptions of the fall of Troy in the first two books of the Aeneid in order to evoke
sympathy for Aeneas and the Trojan remnant. However, after carefully linking gemitus
with Trojan grief, Vergil uses the word to refer to the dying breath of Turnus, king of the
Rutulians, in the final line of the epic. Vergil’s use of gemitus at the end of Book 12
connects Turnus with the Trojans, which implies that Vergil writes to create an Italian,
not narrowly Roman, national identity.
Although Aeneas’ explicit retelling of the fall of Troy does not begin until Book 2,
gemitus is used three times in Book 1 to describe his response to the memory of his
fallen city and comrades. Vergil first uses gemitus when he describes the Trojan’s feast
celebrating their arrival at Carthage. “Nunc Amyci casum gemit et crudelia secum fata
Lyci, fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum" (Verg. Aen. 1.221-222). This translates as
“Now [Aeneas] groans for fallen Amycus and with him the cruel fates of Lycus and brave
Gyas and brave Cloanthus.” The memory of his lost Trojans provokes a gemitus from
Aeneas. Vergil describes Aeneas as pius in the previous line, 1.220, which lends a
positive moral connotation to his expression of grief through a gemitus.
The other two uses of gemitus in Book 1 occur when Aeneas discovers pictures
of the fall of Troy on the walls of Juno’s temple at Carthage. First, "Sic ait, atque animum
pictura pascit inani, multa gemens, largoque umectat flumine voltum" (Verg. Aen. 1.464465), or “Thus he speaks, and feeds his spirit with empty pictures, with much groaning,
and wets his face with a plentiful river.” Even pictura inani, or empty pictures, of Troy
trigger a hugely emotional response from Aeneas, complete with multa gemens. Aeneas
groans because of the memory of Troy, which demonstrates the depth of his grief about
the fall of his home and comrades.
Aeneas’ groaning in Book 1 culminates when he sees the image of Priam’s
ransom of Hector’s body. "Tum vero ingentem gemitum dat pectore ab imo, ut spolia, ut
currus, utque ipsum corpus amici, tendentemque manus Priamum conspexit inermis”
(Verg. Aen. 1.485-487). “Then truly he gives a huge groan from the depths of his heart,
as he sees the spoils, the chariot, and the body of his own friend, and Priam holding out
unarmed hands.” Aeneas’ sighing is modified twice in this description—the gemitum is
not simply ingentem, but vero ingentem, or “truly huge.” The intensity of Aeneas’
lament at this particular point in the passage seems to stem from the fact that he sees
the ipsum corpus amici, or “body of his own friend.” This indicates that Aeneas’ grief for
Troy is increased when he considers the memories of specific fallen comrades. Every
time Vergil uses gemitus in Book 1, he connects it to Aeneas’ grief in memory of the
destruction of Troy and its people.
In Book 2 Vergil uses gemitus to describe poignant moments of grief during the
fall of Troy and as a means of foreshadowing grief to come. In lines 52-3 Vergil
describes, “Stetit illa tremens, uteroque recusso insonuere cavae gemitumque dedere
cavernae,” or “It stood trembling, and, the womb having been struck, the empty cavern
resonated and gave a groan.” The womb in question is that of the Trojan Horse, and
Vergil’s use of gemitus to describe an inanimate object foreshadows the human gemitūs
that the horse will cause. The next usage of gemitus likewise describes something of
Greek origin that leads to the destruction of Troy. The Greek Sinon has approached the
Trojans and tells his falsely tragic story. "Quo gemitu conversi animi, compressus et
omnis impetus” (Virg. Aen. 2.73-74), or “By groaning our spirits were turned, and every
attack ceased.” Sinon manipulates the sincerity of true expressions of grief in order to
deceive the Trojans with his false gemitus. Additionally, in line 413 Vergil describes the
Greeks as “gemitu […] invadunt,” or “invading with a howl.” Although these groans do
not directly reflect grief over the loss of Troy, they are applied to the Greeks who cause
Trojan suffering and lament.
After Vergil thrice uses gemitus to anticipate the sorrow that would be caused by
the Greeks, he uses it to describe the grief itself in its remaining four instances. Line 288
describes Hector’s mourning as he appears to Aeneas in a dream: “sed graviter gemitus
imo de pectore ducens” (Verg. Aen. 2.288), or “gravely leading a groan from his deep
chest.” This gemitus from Hector precedes his warning for Aeneas to flee Troy. Lines
323-327 provide Panthus’ description of the fall of Troy:
Vix ea fatus eram, gemitu cum talia reddit:
‘Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus
Dardaniae: fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens
gloria Teucrorum; ferus omnia Iuppiter Argos
transtulit; incensa Danai dominantur in urbe’ (Verg. Aen. 2.323-327).
When I had scarcely said this, he replied with such a groan: ‘The last day
and inescapable time of the Trojans has come: we were Trojans, there
was Ilium and the huge glory of the Trojans; wild Jupiter has given all to
Argos; the Greeks are ruling in the burning city.
Panthus’ gemitus signals his following lament for the incensa urbe, or burning city of
Troy. Panthus’ sorrow in these lines centers on the former glory of Troy and how far his
homeland has fallen. Line 486 describes the mourning of Trojan women: “At domus
interior gemitu miseroque tumultu miscetur, penitusque cavae plangoribus aedes
femineis ululant; ferit aurea sidera clamor” (Verg. Aen. 2.486-487). This translates to
“But the inner home was mixed with a groan and a miserable uproar, and the innermost
sanctuaries of the rooms howled with female beatings; the shout hit the golden stars.”
The gemitūs of the Trojan women grew to astronomical proportions. Finally, line 679
tells of Creusa’s grief as she is separated from her son Iulus: “Talia vociferans gemitu
tectum omne replebat” (Verg. Aen. 2.679), or “Crying out in this way, she filled the
building with all her groans.” Vergil describes gemitus as having the ability to fill and
overwhelm even physical space. Each instance of gemitus in Book 2 either directly
responds to the horrific destruction of Troy or predicts its fall.
Gemitus appears more in Book 2 than in any other portion of the Aeneid until
Book 11 because Vergil is building a connection between the word and the concept of
sympathy for Troy. Vergil uses gemitus more frequently than any previous Roman
author (Crane). This means that he had the ability to influence his Roman readership’s
associations with the word. Only Statius’ Thebaid and Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica,
both of which were written after the Aeneid, use gemitus more frequently. This increase
in the use of gemitus indicates that Vergil’s frequent usage of the word influenced later
epic poets. By using gemitus in Books 1 and 2 exclusively to reference grief about the fall
of Troy, Vergil lends gemitus a particularly sympathetic valence. Donald Lateiner argues
that “Vergil develops his tableau of suffering by mentioning the horrible screams of the
dying” (Lateiner, 259). This “tableau” of words includes gemitus, and Lateiner suggests
that Vergil uses these words to better evoke the sympathies of his audience on behalf of
the Trojans. Vergil carefully uses gemitus in the first books of the Aeneid to refer to grief
about the demise of Troy and the Trojans. Although Vergil begins to expand his usage of
gemitus in the following books, his frequent and targeted use of it in the beginning of
the poem solidifies the connection between gemitus and the fall of Troy.
Given Vergil’s carefully structured tie between gemitus and Troy, his use of the
word to describe Turnus, Aeneas’ enemy, in the final line of the epic is worthy of note.
The last sentence of the poem is “Ast illi solvuntur frigore membra vitaque cum gemitu
fugit indignata sub umbras” (Verg. Aen. 12.951-952), or “But the limbs of that man were
loosened by cold and the indignant life fled below the shades with a groan.” Vergil uses
the same phrase, “vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras,” in 11.831 to
describe the death of Camilla, one of Turnus’ allies. Why would Vergil emphasize the
dying groans of two enemies of Aeneas and the Trojans? By devoting the final lines of
the Aeneid to Turnus and placing a gemitus in his mouth, Vergil primes his reader to feel
sympathy for the Rutulian king. This is surprising because Vergil uses a word reserved
for Trojans in Books 1 and 2 to define the dying moments of an enemy of the Trojans.
The use of gemitus in 12.952 suggests that Vergil is presenting a more complex
perspective of the Trojan and Italian conflict than can be seen at first glance. By
describing Turnus’ death as cum gemitu, Vergil asks his audience to consider whether
the Rutulian’s grief over his death and his conquered people is comparable to the
Trojan’s grief over the death and destruction of his people and home. Vergil’s portrayal
of Turnus’ death as cum gemitu signals that even the enemies of Troy deserve sympathy
from his Roman readership.
Carl P. E. Springer notes that the connection between Turnus and the Trojans
goes beyond the use of gemitus in 12.952. Although the ending of the Aeneid is often
discussed as startling and abrupt, its format is Homeric. “The conclusion of the Aeneid,
and in particular the last line, owes its inspiration to the ending of the Iliad. The last line
of Homer’s epic concentrates on the antagonist, not the protagonist, and represents
him in a somewhat favorable light” (Springer, 312). Vergil’s choice to mirror the ending
of the Iliad in the ending of the Aeneid strengthens the link between Turnus and the
Trojans and creates a more specific parallel between Hector and Turnus. Both men
symbolize the nations they fight for, and each is the subject of the ending of a poem
about his enemy. Perhaps more importantly, both Hector and Turnus die defending
their homelands against invading foreigners. In the Iliad Troy is being attacked, but in
the Aeneid Troy does the attacking. This shift in attacker complicates the connection
between Turnus and Troy because it identifies him with his present Trojan aggressor
through Troy’s past defeat. Why does Vergil make such a complicated literary
connection that blurs the boundaries between both sides of the Trojan-Italian War?
This strong link between Hector and Turnus is difficult to understand when
reading the Aeneid as a story about Roman supremacy, but Katharine Toll argues that
Vergil is telling a different narrative. Vergil was a Gaul, and therefore not a Roman
citizen until 42 BCE, only 13 years before he began writing the Aeneid. Italians from
outside of Rome gained Roman citizenship in 70 BCE. Vergil wrote the Aeneid during a
time when Rome absorbed enormous numbers of citizens from many distinct Italian
people groups, which weakened the sense of a united Roman identity. Toll argues that
Vergil wrote the Aeneid in order to provide a new identity that would encompass both
Rome and Italy (Toll, 41). This shifts the focus of the poem from a sense of Trojan, and
by extension narrowly Roman, greatness to a conception of a combined Trojan and
Italian heritage.
If Vergil writes to foster a dual Roman and Italian national identity, his link
between Italian Turnus and the Trojans through gemitus achieves his purpose rather
than hinders it. Because Turnus represents the native Italian people, he must contribute
to some part of the Roman-Italian national identity. James O’Hara argues that Vergil
achieves this contribution through his description of Turnus’ ethical code: “A superficial
reading of the poem suggests that only Aeneas represents Rome, but Turnus too is
driven by the gods' commands; he fights and dies for what in reality are Roman values”
(O’Hara, 84). By linking Turnus and the Trojans, Vergil suggests that the culture of the
Romans has its root both in Aeneas’ and Turnus’ pietas, or sense of unending duty to
family, comrades, country, and the gods. By tracing back “Roman” values to both
Trojans and Italians, Vergil closes the cultural gap between his contemporary Romans
and Italians. Turnus becomes another hero who deserves sympathy upon his death in
the same way that the fallen Trojans deserve sympathy.
By connecting Turnus to Hector and the Trojans through gemitus in the last line,
Vergil emphasizes “Italian-ness” and makes the distinction between the “good” Trojans
and the “bad” Latins more ambivalent. In Books 1 and 2 of the Aeneid Vergil uses
gemitus exclusively to express grief about the fall of Troy and the death of Trojans.
However, the final line of the poem describes Turnus’ death at the hands of Aeneas as
cum gemitu. By using gemitus in this line, Vergil asks his audience to feel the same
sympathy previously reserved for Aeneas’ homeland for Aeneas’ enemy. This shift in
sympathy is difficult to reconcile with a Roman supremacist reading of the Aeneid—why
would Vergil portray an enemy of Aeneas, the great Roman pater, in such a sympathetic
way? However, as Katharine Toll suggests, when the Aeneid is read as a poem
constructing a dual Roman-Italian national identity, Vergil’s link between Turnus’s grief
and that of the Trojans seems logical. By seeking sympathy for Aeneas’ enemy, Vergil
suggests that the Rutulian king is not so different from the Trojan leader. This link
between mythological leaders demonstrates that contemporary Romans and Italians
could also find common ground. Vergil’s connection between Turnus and Troy through
gemitus serves to reinforce the common “Roman-ness” of both Italians and Romans.
Works Cited
Crane, Gregory R. “Word Frequency Information for Gemo.” Perseus Digital Library 4.0.
Tufts University, 2007. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
Lateiner, Donald. “Affect Displays in the Epic Poetry of Homer, Vergil, and Ovid.”
Advances in Nonverbal Communication: Sociocultural, Clinical, Esthetic and
Literary Perspectives. Ed. Fernando Poyatos. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins, 1992. 255-269. Print.
O’Hara, James. Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil’s Aeneid. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990. Print.
Springer, Carl P.E. “The Last Line of the ‘Aeneid.’” The Classical Journal 82.4 (1987): 310313. JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2015
Toll, Katharine. “Making Roman-ness and the Aeneid.” Classical Antiquity 16.1 (1997):
34-56. JSTOR. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
Vergil. Aeneid Books 1-6. Ed. Randall T. Ganiban, et al. Newburyport: Focus Publishing,
2012. Print.
HERsteria and NeurastHEnia: Hysteria and Neurasthenia as Socially
Constructed Diseases in Nineteenth Century America
Madeline Burns
The word “hysteria” is mentioned frequently in American history, as it is used to
describe occurrences in which mob mentality created a sentiment of mass panic across
the nation, such as lynching in the South post Civil War, the Red Scare generated by a
fear of Communism, and the xenophobia generated after Pearl Harbor resulting in the
formation of Japanese internment camps. When “hysteria” is used as a medical
terminology, however, the history becomes distinctly female. Just as in the instances of
mass panic, the term hysteria illuminates the fears of the American public, and the way
that those fears manifest themselves in discrimination against minority groups. These
histories are often misrepresented in American history books, as the voices of minorities
affected by hysteria go unheard. In her essay, “Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender,” Elaine
Showalter explains that it hasn’t been until recently that stories about hysteria have begun
to be told by women in addition to men. She maintains that it is important that feminist
scholars begin to study the history of hysteria in America, as these perspectives move
away from the idea of hysteria as a legitimate medical condition, and instead towards the
idea that “hysteria is caused by women’s oppressive social roles rather than by their
bodies or psyches” and that its sources lie “in cultural myths of femininity and in male
domination.”70 Showalter calls this shift in the way scholars talk about the foundations of
70
Elaine Showalter, "Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L.
Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 287.
this disease as the “‘herstory’ of hysteria.” This paper serves as a contribution to this
“herstory,” as it seeks to prove that hysteria and neurasthenia in the nineteenth century
were socially constructed diseases meant to marginalize women.
One of the main differences in talking about the history of hysteria as opposed to
the history of other medical conditions is that the disease has never been explicitly
defined, and the symptoms have shifted according to changes in cultural norms. In his
essay, “‘A Strange Pathology’: Hysteria in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800,” G. S.
Rousseau asserts, “the history of hysteria is essentially a social history.”71 In order to
track the changes in the disease across history, one must look to gendered social norms at
the time as an explanation for the process of diagnosis, treatment, and list of symptoms
associated with the disease. Because hysteria has never had a set list of symptoms, the
symptoms of the disease are defined according to societal perceptions of women, and are
often the symptoms of other common diseases. In her essay, “Once upon a Text: Hysteria
from Hippocrates,” Helen King suggests that there are two impediments that prevent
medical scholars from discussing hysteria as a historically consistent disease:
The first is that, unlike tuberculosis, epilepsy, and gonorrhea, hysteria is in no
way a clearly defined disease entity for which most medical practitioners in our
society would draw up the same list of symptoms; the second, that an integral part
of the definition of hysteria often consists in its supposed ability to mimic
symptoms of other diseases.72
71
G. S. Rousseau, "'A Strange Pathology': Hysteria in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800." In
Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and
Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 182.
72
Helen King, "Once upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by
Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 9.
Throughout its history, hysteria has remained a medical inconsistency, changing its
definitions, symptoms, and forms of treatment according to societal norms about women.
Despite its medical inconsistencies, hysteria has an ancient history in the medical
world. In their article, “Women and Hysteria in the History of Mental Health,” Cecilia
Tasca, Mariangela Rapetti, Mauro Giovanni Carta, and Bianca Fadda state that hysteria is
undoubtedly, “The first mental disorder attributable to women.”73 They maintain that the
first depiction of hysteria dates back to 1900 BC, when ancient Egyptians identified “the
cause of hysterical disorders in spontaneous uterus movement within the female body.”74
Hysteria continues to be referenced throughout history from the ancient medical texts of
Hippocrates to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud.
One of the principal examples of the manifestation of hysteria in American
culture is in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The symptoms that were used to describe
hysteria during this time were, “starting and barred eyes, raucous noises and muffled,
uncontrolled jumps, sudden movements, etc.”75 These symptoms equate with the
Puritanical values of America at this time; the symptoms present as those that Puritans
typically associate with possession. Therefore, hysteria is linked to the idea of heresy, and
women are therefore linked with the devil through a diagnosis of hysteria. Often, the
young women in whom the disease presented were women who were seen as rebelling
against the ideals of the Church. As the “treatment” for hysteria at this time was hanging,
73
Cecilia Tasca, Mariangela Rapetti, Mauro Giovani Carta, and Bianca Fadda."Women And
Hysteria In The History Of Mental Health." Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health
8 (October 19, 2012), 110.
74
Ibid.
75
Ibid., 112.
as hysteria was associated with witchcraft, the disease effectively eradicated all women
who were seen as a threat to social and religious norms. In this instance, hysteria was
linked directly to female reproductive organs, as witches could only be female. It isn’t
until the eighteenth century that hysteria “starts being gradually associated with the brain
rather than the uterus, a trend which opens the way to neurological etiology.”76 This
move towards analyzing the brain can be seen in nineteenth century depictions of
hysteria.
Starting in the nineteenth century, hysteria is used as a means of men controlling
women’s bodies by pulling from outdated medical histories. The concept of hysteria was
a centuries old tradition that hadn’t been accepted as medically sound for many years;
however, despite the medical inaccuracy of the disease, it became inserted into medical
practices. Helen King describes this shift as a reemergence of the cultural practice of men
controlling women’s bodies:
The language may shift – the womb travels, vapors rise, sympathy transmits
symptoms through the body – but the message remains the same: women are sick,
and men write their bodies. Nineteenth-century hysteria, a parasite in search of a
history, grafts itself by name and lineage onto the centuries-old tradition of
suffocation of the womb, thus making Hippocrates its adopted father. It is time
that father disowned his hybrid child.77
This phrase “a parasite in search of a history” accurately reflects the trajectory of hysteria
in relation to nineteenth century America. In the nineteenth century, women’s roles were
beginning to shift as they became more integrated in professional and public spheres. The
76
77
Ibid.
Helen King, "Once upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by
Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 64.
rise of hysteria served as a direct response to some of the freedoms that women were
gaining in American culture. Hysteria was essentially a pushback against the idea of
women rebelling and becoming more involved in educational, professional, and other
major institutions. Elaine Showalter suggests that the rise of hysteria coincides, not
coincidentally, with a rise in women’s sovereignty:
That hysteria became a hot topic in medical circles at the same time that
feminism, the New Woman, and a crisis in gender were also hot topics in the
United States and Europe does not seem coincidental. During an era when
patriarchal culture felt itself to be under attack by its rebellious daughters, one
obvious defense was to label women campaigning for access to the universities,
the professions, and the vote as mentally disturbed.78
Showalter also suggests that concerns about the overall wellbeing of the nation were
addressed by confining women to these treatments where they were rendered sedentary
and essentially incompetent.
Along with these concerns about women becoming more involved in society,
there was a concern that women would not produce as many children, or be as active in
the household. Because of this, any possibility that women would leave the domestic
sphere was stifled, as they were forced for their health (but really for the health of the
nation) to remain at home. In his essay, “The Body and the Mind, the Doctor and the
Patient: Negotiating Hysteria,” Roy Porter argues that it was not only women’s role in the
domestic sphere that was men were trying to preserve through diagnoses of hysteria, but
also women’s role as a sexual object: “Gynecology and psychophysiology thus joined
forces to make female sexuality problematic, highlighting the role of the sexual organs in
78
Elaine Showalter, "Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L.
Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 305.
provoking hysterical conditions widely believed to precipitate moral insanity.”79 Making
female sexuality problematic shows that not only are women kept from abandoning their
role as domestic servants and caretakers, but that their sexuality is also seen as a threat.
Repressing their sexuality was suggested to be healthier for women, when really this
enable men to prevent women from expressing themselves sexually, thus maintaining
their status as sexual objects for men rather than sexual beings for themselves.
In the nineteenth century, practices for the treatment of hysteria varied according
to which doctor or psychologist’s method was being followed. Most physicians followed
Freud’s model for the treatment of hysteria, which essentially suggested that something
dark from these women’s pasts had been dislodged and resurfaced, causing her to
undergo fits of hysteria. The influence that hysteria wielded started to be seen in larger
institutions such as hospitals and sanatoriums: “Establishments—hydros, spas, retreats,
sanatoria, nursing homes—started catering to private patients suffering from hysteriform
conditions.”80 In his 1906 article, “Recent experiences in the study and treatment of
hysteria at the Massachusetts General Hospital; with remarks on Freud’s method of
treatment by ‘Psycho-analysis,’” James Jackson Putnam, of Harvard Medical School,
details his experiences treating female hysteria patients under Freud’s theories of
psychoanalysis. In each case, he attempted to find something from that woman’s past that
he could name as the cause of her hysteria. In an explanation of a specific case of a
79
Roy Porter, "The Body and the Mind, the Doctor and the Patient: Negotiating Hysteria." In
Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and
Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 251.
80 Roy Porter, "The Body and the Mind, the Doctor and the Patient: Negotiating Hysteria." In
Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and
Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 228.
twenty-year-old woman that he treated for hysteria, he cites an accident she had as a child
as the cause of her hysteria:
The only discoverable (or discovered) cause for these attacks, even through
careful searching with the aid of the method of Freud, … consisted in two
accidents, one being a fall down the cellar stairs when she was a girl of ten, the
other a still more serious fall into a hole near a railroad embankment.81
After he identified the cause of the hysteric symptoms, he would then submit the patient
to a set of treatments that were also designed according to Freud’s psychoanalytic
theories. He stated that they established a cheerful atmosphere at the hospital with the
institution of “occupations of pleasant and artistic sorts” and the “presence of a number of
children … to encourage a homelike atmosphere.”82 Within this “homelike” setting, he
then conducted a number of treatments, including “invigorating baths, high-frequency
electricity, and Zander exercises.”83 During their stay at this hospital, women were also
subjected to forced periods of immobility and rest, as was true in almost every treatment
of hysteria at this time. Women remained at this hospital until their symptoms were
“cured” or began to subside, which could take weeks or even months. During this time
they were away from their family members, and therefore away from their role as
caretakers and domestic servants.
This particular set of treatments in which women were essentially rendered
incompetent was directly correlated to the ideals of the nineteenth century. In her article,
“The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19th-Century America,” Carroll
81
James Jackson Putnam, "Recent experiences in the study and treatment of hysteria at the
Massachusetts General Hospital; with remarks on Freud's method of treatment by 'Psychoanalysis.'" Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1, no. 1 (April 1906), 33.
82
Ibid., 32
83
Ibid.
Smith-Rosenberg discusses the connection between the role of the ideal American
woman in the nineteenth century and the treatment of hysteria. She purports,
The ideal female in nineteenth-century America was expected to be gentle and
refined, sensitive and loving. She was the guardian of religion and spokeswoman
for morality. Hers was the task of guiding the more worldly and more frequently
tempted male past the maelstroms of atheism and uncontrolled sexuality.84
These principles that she refers to belong to the value system of The Cult of True
Womanhood – a term that Barbara Welter coined in her 1966 article, “The Cult of True
Womanhood,” where she outlines the attributes that a woman must subscribe to
according to this structure as “piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity.”85 These
values, Smith-Rosenberg argues, are what women were escaping by a diagnosis of
hysteria. Hysteria essentially disrupted familial and marital structures, making it so that
women were the ones being tended to while their families performed the everyday
household chores. In this way, Smith-Rosenberg suggests, “Through her illness, the
bedridden woman came to dominate her family to an extent that would have been
considered inappropriate – indeed shrewish – in a healthy woman.”86 This serves as an
example of women in American history taking something that was meant to marginalize
them and instead using it to their advantage. While women were, undoubtedly, restricted
by the diagnosis and treatment for hysteria, they used this diagnosis to reverse gender
roles within their family structure, if only temporarily. During this time of rest and
recuperation, women were rendered effectively incompetent, and their families were
84
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19th
Century America." Social Research 39, no. 4 (Winter 1972), 656.
85 Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood." American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966), 152.
86 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19th
Century America." Social Research 39, no. 4 (Winter 1972), 672.
forced to take on their workload. This allowed the men in the family to realize the full
extent of a woman’s work, and possibly value her role in the household more than they
had previously.
As hysteria has, since its origins, been identified as a feminine disease, seeing
symptoms of hysteria presented in male cases was considered ignominious and was often
suggestive of homosexual or feminine tendencies in that man. There were still cases,
however, where men exhibited these same symptoms, and so,
In the eighteenth century, there was a gender split in the representation of the
body, with the nervous system seen as feminine, and the musculature as
masculine. Doctors made a firm gender distinction between forms of nervous
disorder, assigning hysteria to women and hypochondria to men.87
While hypochondriasis started out as a socially acceptable illness that men were not
embarrassed to admit to having, it soon too became associated with this stigma of
femininity, and therefore, a new “masculine” version of hysteria needed to be established:
“In 1873, this gap in the medical lexicon was filled by the term neurasthenia. …
neurasthenia was first identified in the United States and was linked with the nation’s
nervous modernity.”88 Neurasthenia, like hysteria, was comprised of an extensive list of
symptoms, including “blushing, neuralgia, vertigo, headache, and tooth decay to
insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue, fainting, and uterine irritability.”89 But unlike
hysteria, this disease, which was known to affect both men and women, was said to be
87
Elaine Showalter, "Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L.
Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 293.
88 Ibid., 294.
89
Ibid.
caused by overexerting oneself in one’s occupation, and high levels of stress. For
working men, this meant that this disease had shifted from a diagnosis associated with
ideals of femininity to one associated with an elite lifestyle and good work ethic.
In an article published in a 1915 issue of The American Journal of Nursing,
neurologist Edward B. Angell discusses the symptoms and diagnoses of neurasthenia,
and the discerning characteristics of the disease. He refers to neurasthenia s the half-sister
of hysteria, and talks about the difference between the two disorders:
It is not a mental disorder, the nature of the disturbance being rather one of
weakness and lack of vigor than a clouded and perverted tone of the mind. In this
respect, it differs definitely from hysteria, its half-sister, insasmuch as the mental
tone of the hysteric is not necessarily one of weakness but of perversion, while
that of the neurasthenic is indicative of simple loss of power.90
While Angell does not explicitly discuss the gendered separation of these two terms, the
gendered ideologies are implicit in the explanation of the difference between the two.
Hysteria, which is only diagnosable for women, is considered to be representative of a
“perversion” of a patient. Neurasthenia, however, which men can be diagnosed with, is
associated with a “simple loss of power,” implying that their minds are still stable, and
they will return to their former selves after a period of time.
Although neurasthenia came out of a need to form a new masculine nervous
identity, this disease is often associated today with femininity. This is largely due to the
cultural products we reference today when we talk about neurasthenia. The most obvious
example is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In fact, there were just
as many cases of men diagnosed with neurasthenia as women: “In the United States,
90
Edward B. Angell, "Neurasthenia." The American Journal of Nursing 15, no. 5 (February
1915), 364-5.
equal numbers of male and female patients were reported in the medical journals.”91
Because neurasthenia is often viewed under the umbrella term of hysteria, modern day
scholars often assume that it held the same gendered diagnosis. The diagnosis itself was
not gendered; however, the way in which patients diagnoses with neurasthenia were
treated differed according to both gender and class.
The prevailing treatment for neurasthenia, an extended period of rest in which the
patient was immobile and prevented from leaving bed, was invented by Dr. Silas Weir
Mitchell. This treatment, known as the “rest cure” involved,
seclusion, massage, immobility, and "excessive feeding." For six weeks the
patient was isolated from her friends and family, confined to bed, and forbidden
to sit up, sew, read, write, or do any intellectual work. She was expected to gain
as much as fifty pounds on a rich diet that began with milk and built up to several
substantial daily meals.92
This treatment, however, was not used for all neurasthenia patients, but only for middle
to upper class women, as these were the only patients who could afford to give up six to
eight weeks of their lives to rest. This emphasizes the fact that this “treatment” was not
really a treatment, but rather a means to keep women inactive and restricted to the
domestic sphere.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of the
most well known cultural references to neurasthenia and the process of treating
neurasthenia in the nineteenth century. The short story is based off of Gilman’s personal
experience being diagnosed with neurasthenia (by her own husband), and the restrictive
91
Elaine Showalter, "Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L.
Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 296.
92
Ibid., 298.
nature of the treatment that she is forced to endure. Not only is she physically and
socially isolated from the world around her, but she is also forbidden from writing and
expressing her thoughts: “I am … absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again.
… I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good deal – having
to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.”93 In this way, she is forced to
reinvent herself as a woman who is entirely obedient to men, and has no mind of her
own. In her article, “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow
Wallpaper,’” Paula Treichler asserts that this is a forced development of “an artificial
feminine self who reinforces the terms of her husband’s expert diagnosis: this self
attempts to speak reasonably and in a ‘very quiet voice,’ refrains from crying in his
presence, and hides the fact that she is keeping a journal.”94 All of this isolation and
repression is framed under the idea that this was what was best for these women;
however, it is the men that benefit from this treatment, as women are confined to a
submissive state in which they are completely subservient to and dependent on the men in
their lives.
Although this “rest cure” is the better known of Mitchell’s methods (again, most
likely due to its popularity in cultural texts about neurasthenia such as Gilman’s “The
Yellow Wallpaper”), he also treated men diagnosed with neurasthenia. Where his
treatment of women diagnosed with neurasthenia was known as the “rest cure,” his
treatment of men was known as the “west cure.” In response to diagnoses of neurasthenia
93
94
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (Floating Press, 2009), 4-5.
Treichler, Paula A. "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow
Wallpaper.'" Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 3, no. 1 (Spring/Autumn 1984), 61.
in men, Mitchell would send them “out West to engage in prolonged periods of cattle
roping, hunting, roughriding and male bonding.”95 Showalter explains that this gendered
difference in his treatment of the same nervous disorder can be attributed to his
philosophies about the physiognomy of men and women. Mitchell was openly opposed to
the idea of higher education of women, as he thought that, “the female reproductive
system and the brain derived their nourishment from the same source.”96 Essentially, he
believed that if a woman were to strain her brain, she would also strain her reproductive
system. These misogynistic ideologies were clearly implemented in his treatment plans
for neurasthenia, and are only further emphasized by the differing treatment plans for
men and women diagnosed with the same disease.
Hysteria and neurasthenia became officially removed from the DSM in 1980, long
after they were used in commonplace medical practice: “We know that the concept of
hysterical neurosis is deleted with the 1980 DSM-III: hysterical symptoms are in fact
now considered as manifestation of dissociative disorders.”97 This removal of the disease
from the DSM, however, did not mean that all socially constructed feminine nervous
disorders were disempowered. There are still many examples of contemporary nervous
disorders that bear some sort of social stigma related to gender. In Jenifer Dodd’s article,
"'The name game': Feminist protests of the DSM and diagnostic labels in the 1980s," she
95
Stiles, Anne. "Go rest, young man." Monitor on Psychology 43, no. 1 (January 2012), 32.
96
Elaine Showalter, "Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L.
Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), 298.
97
Cecilia Tasca, Mariangela Rapetti, Mauro Giovani Carta, and Bianca Fadda."Women And
Hysteria In The History Of Mental Health." Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health
8 (October 19, 2012), 115.
provides examples of ways in which socially constructed psychological disorders and the
stakes of labeling something as a feminine disease can impact the status of women.
Specifically, Dodd examines feminists within the mental health field through their
response to the proposed addition of three allegedly sexist psychiatric disorders in the
1980s. Dodd suggests that it is not only contemporary feminine nervous diseases that
feminists should question for the way that they disadvantage women, but also male
psychiatric disorders:
For the most part, women’s opposition to psychiatry has been examined in terms
of disorders that disadvantaged women—hysteria, depression—but the 1986
protests reveal that disorders that targeted men opened up a new set of questions.
At issue was not just whether or not a diagnosis would disproportionately target
women, but how disproportionately targeting men would play out politically.98
What Dodd is suggesting here, is that feminist mental health professionals have been
questioning (and should continue to question) how definitions of masculinity and
femininity manifest themselves in mental health disorders, and how that in turn enforces
socially constructed stereotypes about gender in our society.
There are also many examples of strictly feminine psychiatric disorders that bear
a social stigma similar to that of hysteria and neurasthenia. Recently, there has been an
interest in the possible disturbances that premenstrual syndrome and other psychiatric
disorders like it can cause to a woman’s ability to make sounds decisions. In his book,
Corrections: A Critical Approach, Michael Welsh discusses the relation between PMS
and ideas about female incompetency: “Strong social resistance against women’s search
for equality still persists, and one of the primary mechanisms used to offset the upward
98
Dodd, Jenifer. "'The name game': Feminist protests of the DSM and diagnostic labels in the
1980s." History of Psychology 18, no. 3 (August 2015), 316.
mobility of women in society is to question their competence.”99 Just as hysteria was
used in the nineteenth century to oppress women and prevent their social movement, so
disorders such as PMS and post-partum depression are used to promote ideas about the
incompetency of women to rise in social and political positions today. Welsh goes on to
argue that this questioning of women’s competency in relation to feminine psychiatric
disorders is a societal mechanism used to ostracize women, and that even jokes made
about the disorders also demotes women: “Furthermore, sexist humor about PMS reflects
deep-seated anxieties about women in positions of political power.”100 This is particularly
relevant as women are running for president in this upcoming election; many of their
opponents reference feminine psychiatric disorders such as PMS as a reason why women
should not be president. The term “anxiety” that Welsh uses surmises the reason why
feminine nervous disorders still continue to be stigmatized: men are afraid of women
usurping positions of power.
As has been proven again and again throughout this paper, hysteria and
neurasthenia are socially constructed diseases designed to marginalize women. So then
why study the history of these diseases if they are not rooted in any valid medical
origins? The history of a disease that is not really a disease is essentially a study of a
social movement – in this case, part of a history of the marginalization of a group. It is
important to recognize the ways in which women were marginalized in American history,
so that we may recognize the ways in which they continue to be marginalized. Illnesses
such as PMS and post-partum depression have, in a way, replaced hysteria and
99
Welch, Michael. Corrections: A Critical Approach. 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011),
177.
100
Ibid.
neurasthenia as examples of culturally produced mental illnesses that oppress and
alienate women. By studying these diseases in juxtaposition with the treatment of
hysteria and neurasthenia in the nineteenth century, one can begin to move towards
removing the social stigma surrounding feminine mental disorders, and simultaneously,
the stigma surrounding mental disorders in general that pervades modern day American
culture.
Bibliography
Angell, Edward B. "Neurasthenia." The American Journal of Nursing 15, no. 5 (February
1915):
364-71. Accessed November 17, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3404057.
Dodd, Jenifer. "'The name game': Feminist protests of the DSM and diagnostic labels in
the
1980s." History of Psychology 18, no. 3 (August 2015): 312-23. Accessed
November 17, 2015. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/10.1037/a0039520.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Floating Press, 2009. eBook.
Golden, Richard L. "William Osler's 'The nervousness of American women.'" History of
Psychology 11, no. 1 (February 2008): 1-14. Accessed November 17, 2015.
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/10.1037/1093-4510.11.1.1.
King, Helen. "Once upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates." In Hysteria Beyond Freud,
by
Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine
Showalter, 3-65. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. eBook.
Porter, Roy. "The Body and the Mind, the Doctor and the Patient: Negotiating Hysteria."
In
Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S.
Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter, 225-66. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1993. eBook.
"Professor Freud and Hysteria." The British Medical Journal 1, no. 2454 (January 11,
1908):
103-04. Accessed November 23, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25276160.
Putnam, James Jackson. "Recent experiences in the study and treatment of hysteria at the
Massachusetts General Hospital; with remarks on Freud's method of treatment by
'Psycho-analysis.'" Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1, no. 1 (April 1906): 26-41.
Accessed December 9, 2015.
http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=68
273d90-1f93-40e4-aa131ec068119ae2%40sessionmgr4003&hid=4101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl
2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=1926-00765-001&db=pdh.
Rousseau, G. S. "'A Strange Pathology': Hysteria in the Early Modern World, 15001800." In
Hysteria Beyond Freud, by Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S.
Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter, 91-173. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1993. eBook.
Showalter, Elaine. "Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender." In Hysteria Beyond Freud, by
Sander L.
Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter, 286-336.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. eBook.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. "The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in19th
Century
America." Social Research 39, no. 4 (Winter 1972): 652-78. Accessed November
17, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970115.
Stiles, Anne. "Go rest, young man." Monitor on Psychology 43, no. 1 (January 2012): 32.
Accessed December 9, 2015. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/01/go-rest.aspx.
Tasca, Cecilia, Mariangela Rapetti, Mauro Giovani Carta, and Bianca Fadda. "Women
And
Hysteria In The History Of Mental Health." Clinical Practice and Epidemiology
in Mental Health 8 (October 19, 2012): 110-19. Accessed November 23, 2015.
doi:10.2174/1745017901208010110.
Treichler, Paula A. "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow
Wallpaper.'" Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 3, no. 1 (Spring/Autumn 1984):
61-77. Accessed December 9, 2015. JSTOR.
Welch, Michael. Corrections: A Critical Approach. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Routledge,
2011.
Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood." American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966):
151-74.
Accessed December 9, 2015. JSTOR.
A Study on Temperature Dependent Gene Expression of the Gene that Produces
Prodigiosin in the Bacterial Stain Serratia marcescens
Melindy Dorcin
Jordan Reid
Introduction
Gene flow occurs in bacteria, as in all other organisms, such that DNA is
transcribed into RNA which is then translated into proteins. It is through this
unidirectional flow of genetic information that that organisms are able to construct
proteins that help them to carry out life processes. However, organisms’ need for certain
proteins is dependent upon different environmental factors that the organism itself has no
control over. Therefore, the activity of the genes that code for such proteins must be
regulated. This regulation of gene expression occurs at three different levels in the cell:
Transcriptional, Translational, and Post-translational (Willey).
Accordingly, at the transcriptional level, regulatory proteins often work to control
the rate of the transcription of DNA into RNA (Willey 2014). Translation, however, is
most often regulated by blocking initiation (Willey 2014). Finally, post-translational
regulation is carried out through the use of molecules which bind to proteins that have
already formed (Willey 2014). These proteins work to alter the function of the proteins
that have already been formed in order to better suit the environmental conditions at a
given instance (Willey 2014 ).
Various environmental stimuli can trigger this regulatory response and many
different types of pathways mediate the response. In the case of Serratia marcescens,
temperature is seen to have an effect on gene expression that is clearly visual to a casual
observer. At certain temperatures, Serratia marcescens produces the cell surface pigment
prodigiosin. This surface pigment makes Serratia marcescens bacterial growth on a
nutrient agar plate appear red. However, according to Williams no other function is
currently being attributed to prodigiosin (1973). The pigment is thought to be a byproduct
of other biosynthetic pathways and, perhaps, to be a secondary metabolite (Williams
1973). While secondary metabolites are not necessary for survival in any capacity, the
absence of these metabolites can negatively effect an organism (Williams 1973).
In this study, one half of two separate nutrient agar plates were inoculated with
Serratia marcescens. These plates were then grown at two different temperatures: room
temperature and 37˚C, the temperature in the incubator. After 24 hours the plates were
observed before other half of plate that was left at room temperature was then inoculated
again with Serratia marcescens and placed into the incubator. The plate in the incubator
was also inoculated again with Serratia marcescens after 24 hours, but it was placed at
room temperature. Observations were once again made of the color of the bacterial
growth on either side of either plate. The observations of the colors at different
temperatures were used in order to draw conclusions about how the expression of the
gene for the cell surface pigment prodigiosin is regulated in Serratia marcescens and to
propose a possible mechanism by which this occurs.
Purpose
This study was conducted in order to determine the manner in which Serratia
marcescens regulates the expression of the cell surface pigment prodigiosin. Based on
observations of the production of prodigiosin by Serratia marcescens cultures at different
temperatures, this study aimed to propose a possible mechanism by which Serratia
marcescens regulates the gene that controls the production of prodigiosin.
Reagents and Cultures Used
Serratia marcescens (grown on nutrient agar)
2 Nutrient Agar Plates
Inoculation Loop
Procedure
Two nutrient agar plates were obtained and labeled as shown below using a
marker to draw the line depicted on either plate.
Figure 1: Labeling on Nutrient Agar Plates
Using aseptic technique, section A of the plate labeled #1 was then inoculated with
Serratia marcescens growing on a nutrient agar plate using an inoculation loop. Section
C of the plate labeled #1 was also inoculated with Serratia marcescens growing on a
nutrient agar plate using an inoculation loop and aseptic technique. The plate labeled #1
was left at room temperature and the plate labeled #2 was placed in the incubator at 37˚C.
After 24 hours, the plates were observed and compared to each other. Section B of plate
#1 and section D of plate #2 were then inoculated with Serratia marcescens using an
inoculation loop and aseptic technique. The plate labeled #1 was placed in the incubator
at 37˚C and the plate labeled #2 was left at room temperature. After 24 hours, the plates
were observed and compared to each other. These observations from each day were
recorded used in order to propose a mechanism by which Serratia marcescens regulates
the gene that controls prodigiosin production.
Results
The results show that the bacteria grown at room temperature (plate 1, side A) is
red in color. When transferred to the 37˚C incubator, however, the red color darkens at
the center of the bacterial growth and that the bacterial growth is white around the edges
of the growth. By day 2 hours the bacterial growth is also visibly denser on side A of
plate 1. The bacteria grown at 37˚C on plate 1 (side B) is white in the center, but slightly
pink around the edges of the bacterial growth. This bacteria is also smeared across a
larger area than was the bacteria on side A.
On plate 2, the results show that bacteria grown at 37˚C (side C) is white in color
with very few pink spots around the edges of bacterial growth. When this bacteria is
transferred to room temperature, however, it remains white at the center of bacterial
growth and becomes red around its edges. The bacteria grown at room temperature on
plate 2 (side D) produces very little red pigment. The pigment is smeared throughout the
bacterial growth and is not limited to the edges. This bacteria is also smeared across a
larger area than was the bacteria on side D.
Table 1: Plate #1
Day 1 (Room Temperature)
Day 2 (Incubator - 37˚C)
Photo
Description
of Color
A
A
All bacterial growth is uniformly Red color has darkened slightly.
bright red
Entirely white around the edges of
the bacterial growth.
Bacterial growth has grown
somewhat more dense
B
Bacterial growth is white.
Some pink regions around the edges
of the bacterial growth.
Bacteria spread out on a somewhat
larger surface area than it was before
Table 2: Plate #2
Day 1 (Incubator - 37˚C)
Photo
Description
of Color
C
All bacterial growth is uniformly
white with very few pink regions
around the edges
Day 2 (Room Temperature)
C
White at the center of bacterial
growth, red around the edges
D
Bacterial growth is very faintly red
with certain regions being more red
than others in random spaces on the
plate.
Bacteria spread out on a somewhat
larger surface area than it was before
Conclusions
Based on the observations obtained from this study, it may be concluded that
Serratia marcescens grown at room temperature produces the pigment prodogiosin
optimally. This conclusion is supported by the very saturated red color that is visible
throughout the bacterial growth in section A of plate #1 on day 1 of this study (Table 1,
Page 3). The observations obtained from this study also suggest that S. marcescens grown
at 37˚C does not produce the pigment prodogiosin optimally. This conclusion is
supported by the bacterial growth in section C of plate #2 on day 1 of this study (Table 2,
Page 4). This bacterial growth appears to be white at its center and very sparingly pink
around its edges (Table 2, Page 4).
The results of this study may also be used in order to support the conclusion that
S. marcescens that is transferred from room temperature to an environment of 37˚C will
stop prodogiosin production. This deduction is supported by the observation that the
bacterial growth in section A of plate #1 on day 2 became white around its edges after
being stored in the 37˚C for a 24 hour period (Table 1, Page 3). The loss of the red color
that entirely saturated the bacterial growth on section A of plate #1 is indicative of the S.
marcescens ceasing prodigiosin production (Table 1, Page 3; Table 2, Page 4). Similarly,
the saturated red pigment that formed a thick ring around the edges of the bacterial
growth on section C of plate #2 on day two suggests that S. marcescens that is transferred
from an environment of 37˚C to an environment at room temperature will commence
prodigiosin production (Table 2, Page 4). This may be concluded because this bacteria
was predominantly white after 24 hours in the incubator at 37˚C, turned a prominent
shade of red around the edges after 24 hours at room temperature.
The results also indicate that the red pigment, or prodigiosin is always present in
cells. Even at 37˚C when the temperature is above optimal for prodigiosin production the
red pigment is still present in small amounts as is indicated by the sparse red and pink
pigment visible on plates stored at 37˚C (Table 1, Page 3; Table 2, Page 4). This
suggests that the gene which controls prodigiosin production is always on, but is inhibited
to some degree at higher temperatures. This inhibition results in the suboptimal
production of prodigiosin which, in turn, results in the sparse pink and red pigment which
borders the bacterial lawn grown at 37˚C (Table 1, Page 3; Table 2, Page 4).
It is for this reason that the type of regulation of gene expression that S.
marcescens seems to use to control the gene responsible for prodogiosin production
seems to be negative transcriptional control (Willey 328). Negative transcriptional
control is one way in which gene expression is controlled at the transcriptional level.
Negative transcriptional control is mediated by regulatory proteins called repressor
proteins (Willey 328). These proteins bind to DNA to prevent the initiation of
transcription (Willey 328). However, the disappearance of the prodigiosin that is seen on
section A of plate #1 on day 2 suggests that some post translational regulatory
mechanism may be involved as well. While it is possible that prodogiosin simply
degrades quickly if it is not being produced at high enough levels, this is a subject that
could be explored in further studies.
It is important to note that both on section A of plate #1 and on section C of plate
#2 that the change in temperature was seen to effect the edges of the bacterial lawn of
growth first (Table 1, Page 3; Table 2, Page 4). This phenomenon could be due to the
fact that bacterial cells on the edge of a lawn of bacterial growth are most sensitive to
temperature change in the environment surrounding them. It is also possible that this
pattern is related to the manner in which the bacterial cells send out the signal to
commence or cease the production of prodigiosin. However, further observations would
be necessary before any conclusions were made regarding this observation. It is however,
presumed that given more time all of the bacteria on section A of plate #1 would turn
white so long as it was left at room temperature. Similarly, it is presumed that all of the
bacteria on section C of plate #2 would turn red so long as it was left in the incubator at
37˚C.
In addition to this, the results from section A of plate # 1 suggest that quorem
sensing plays some role in the production of prodigiosin in S. marcescens. From day 1 to
day 2, the density of the lawn of S. marcescens had increased significantly (Table 1, Page
3). The cells in the center of this bacterial lawn, which are presumed to have not yet
received the signal for the inhibition of the gene responsible for prodigiosin production,
grew darker over the course of that 24 hour period (Table 1, Page 3). This suggests that
more prodigiosin was being produced in these cells residing in the center of the bacterial
lawn of growth. This direct relationship between the increased cell density and the
increased production of prodigiosin visible in the results of this study suggests that
whether or not S. marcescens cells produce prodigiosin and how much prodigiosin is
produced is controlled by the S. marcescens cell population density.
Finally, the results from section B of plate #1 support the conclusions mentioned
above. The conclusion that S. marcescens grown at 37˚C does not produce the pigment
prodogiosin optimally is supported by the predominantly white color present on the
bacterial growth (Table 1, Page 3). The conclusion that the gene which controls
prodigiosin production is always on, but is inhibited to some degree at higher
temperatures which results in suboptimal production of prodigiosin is also supported by
the presence of some pink pigment on the bacterial growth (Table 1, Page 3).
The results from section D on plate #2 however, are slightly more troubling.
While the red pigment that is indicative of prodigiosin is certainly present, the pigment is
much less prominent and less saturated than that which is seen on section A of plate #1
on day 1 (Table 1, Page 3; Table 2, Page 4). In addition to this, the red pigment here is
not limited to the center or to edges of the lawn of the S.marcescens growth, but rather
distributed throughout the plate (Table 2, Page 4). These results seem incongruous with
the results from the other plate sections which uniformly indicate that prodigiosin is
produced optimally at room temperature, that prodigiosin is inhibited at higher
temperatures, and that prodigiosin production begins and ceases first at the edges of the
bacterial growth.
This abnormality could be related to residual warmth on the plate when it was
inoculated with S.marcescens which could have caused the idiosyncratic prodigiosin
production patterns observed. Alternatively, the fact the S. marcescens grown on section
D on plate #2 at room temperature was grown next to section C which is presumed to
have been producing a prodigiosin gene inhibitor could have effected prodigiosin
production on section D since no physical barrier existed between the plates and the
inhibitor could have travelled across the plate. Finally, this abnormality could be related
to quorem sensing. The S. marcescens growth on section C is seen to be much more
condensed in one area than is the growth on section D; This simply due to a slight
difference in streaking technique (Table 2, Page 3). Since the growth on section D is
more spread out, the red coloring is more sparse because bacterial cells are less
concentrated in a given area making quorem sensing more difficult for the cells and
thusly preventing the cells from producing more prodigiosin.
In any event, the results seen here make it possible to conclude that prodigiosin is
produced optimally at room temperature. It is also plausible to conclude that prodigiosin
production is inhibited at higher temperatures such as 37˚C. Based upon these findings,
as well as the findings that show that prodigiosin is always produced to some degree,
regardless of temperature, it is plausible to surmise that negative transcriptional control
regulates the expression of the gene that produces prodogiosin. The results also provide
the grounds for the conclusion that the expression of the gene that produces prodogiosin
is also mediated by quorem sensing. While there is some uncertainty about whether or
not post translational gene expression regulation plays a role in the disappearance of
prodigiosin moved from room temperature to 37˚C, further studies could serve to reveal
this information. Finally, the reasoning as to why prodigiosin production seems to begin
and end first around the edges of a lawn of S. marcescens is another topic that should be
further investigated in other studies.
References
Willey, J.M., Sherwood L.M., & Wolverton C.J. (2014). Chapter 14 Regulation of
Bacterial Cellular Processes. Prescott’s Microbiology (326-328). New York, NY:
McGraw Hill.
Williams, R. P. (1973). Biosynthesis of Prodigiosin, a Secondary Metabolite of Serratia
marcescens. Applied Microbiology, 25(3), 396–402.
Position of Power
Haley Dougherty
From the start of the transatlantic slave trade in 1501 until the end in 1875, more
than 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported from Africa to various disembarkation
points in the New World.i In 1772, however, Judge Mansfield in Britain ruled that slavery
was not supported by British common law, thus legally freeing James Somerset and
declaring a historic abolitionist victory.ii In 1776iii, abolitionist thought began to emerge
amongst philosophical thinkers, thus inspiring activists to call for an end to the slave trade.
Of course, this formal abolitionism was not the first form of resistance against the slave
trade. Indeed, Africans had physically and mentally rebelled against the slave trade since
its inception in 1501. Whether in Africa, along the Middle Passage, at disembarkation
points, or their place of work, enslaved Africans fought against the slave trade and slavery
at every chance they had, in every way they could.iv When considering the abolition of the
slave trade and slavery as a movement, the individual and collective acts of rebellion must
not be discounted. In fact, this paper argues that these acts of resistance created the
political climate necessary for legal action to be taken against the slave trade and slavery.
However, although resistance created a conducive atmosphere for change to be made,
ultimately, most acts of resistance alone did not achieve grand legal measures; in fact, in
cases such as the Haitian Revolution, resistance worked against the abolitionist movement.
Pragmatically, the Christian-led abolitionist movement played a greater role in the
eradication of the slave trade and slavery by utilizing the political, legal, religious, and
social capital amassed by its leaders. This power positioned abolitionists to effectively
lobby the British government for tangible legal action to be taken. Subsequently, due to
Britain’s powerful standing in international politics, it was able to organize an international
effort to officially suppress the slave trade. Although African resistance in Africa and the
Americas provided a hostile environment suitable for abolition, the Christian-led
abolitionist movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries contributed more
significantly to the eradication of the slave trade and slavery due to their access of power
within Britain—a diplomatically powerful country able to enforce international laws to end
the slave trade.
Firstly, the abolitionist movement’s connection to Christianity would contribute to
its credibility amongst the everyday British and American people. The formation of a base
network of Christian supporters would prove an invaluable asset to the abolitionist
movement—an audience enslaved Africans did not have direct access to. Originally, in
continental Europe, abolitionist thought derived from mid-eighteenth century
“Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu, Smith, and Rousseau” v which would
win “the support of part of the intellectual elite” vi but not the common people. However, in
Britain, a range of Christian denominations—primarily those of Quaker and protestant
belief—added a “strong religious element” vii to the exiting philosophical abolitionist
argument against slavery, thus making abolitionism more accessible to average people.
The effects of this addition could be seen in the spread of abolitionism to the masses
“through their network of churches.” viii This vast network would then form the
foundational audience for the British abolitionists to preach their arguments against
slavery, giving the abolitionists an advantage in the eradication of the slave trade.
In addition to a Christian audience of British and American citizens, abolitionists’
success was contingent upon their individual advantageous careers. The Society for
Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (SEAST) in Britain and the International
Coalition Movement in the United States were both formal groupings in which multiskilled advocates were able to form a syndicate of lawyers, politicians, economists,
clergymen, authors and military officers. For example, Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of
Nations”—now considered to be the foundational text of American capitalism—included
critiques of slavery from an economist’s perspective by claiming that it was not a
financially efficient enterprise.ix In Britain, SEAST leadership included Granville Sharpe,
who could contribute knowledge as a lawyer, and William Wilberforce, whose prominent
position in the House of Lords in British Parliament granted access to the insider political
knowledge needed to lobby the government.x Additionally, James Ramsey, a member of
SEAST, realized the importance of abolition while working as a British Navy doctor
aboard a slave ship in the late 18th century and could testify—as a trusted military man—to
the horrendous conditions on the Middle Passage.xi Thomas Clarkson, an international
traveler and professional lecturer also proved to be an enormous asset to SEAST through
his ability to spread their message from London across the world.xii
Furthermore, abolitionists’ strategy and access to resources made their advocacy
work more prevalent and accessible in British and American society. Founded in 1787 and
lasting ten years,xiii SEAST was created by Quakers with the intent to “organize a mass
political campaign against the institution [of the slave trade].”xiv In order to accomplish
this, SEAST made the strategic decision to prioritize an attack against the slave trade rather
than slavery itself.xv SEAST knew that “to attack slavery directly would make enemies of
the colonial planters, a group they considered too powerful to defeat at present.”xvi
Although SEAST considered slavery to be a great evil, they considered the Middle Passage
“the cruelest part”xvii of the slave system and that if it fell, slavery itself would follow.
Although the elimination of the slave trade would not come for another century, the
advocacy work of SEAST was “key to the movement’s rise and triumph”xviii through their
“formation of antislavery clubs (ultimately more than 1,000), organized massive petition
drives garnering hundreds of thousands of signatures, and engaged in high-level lobbying
within Parliament itself.”xix Due to their individual roles of prominence in British society,
SEAST was able to bring the horrors of the slave trade into the national spotlight.
Similarly, across the Atlantic, the Christian-driven International Coalition Movement
formed in the United States to implement numerous tactics such as legislation advocacy to
state governments as well as the publication of books, pamphlets, articles, and
newspapers.xx Additionally, the International Coalition Movement had the resources to
conduct field research in order to investigate the slave trade further by interviewing slave
traders and sailors.xxi The abolitionist groups SEAST and the International Coalition
Movement were able to garner an audience to lobby the government due to their access to
resources and a powerful audience of Christian citizens.
Most significantly, abolitionist groups included African-born men as well as men
born into slavery who could attest first-hand to the cruelty of the slave system. For
example, Fredrick Douglass, a man born into slavery in Maryland in 1813, went on to
become a prominent leader within the abolitionist movement with the publication of his
abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, as well as two autobiographies.xxii In Britain,
SEAST’s connection to the Sons of Africa—an abolitionist group made up of freed
slavesxxiii—legitimized their group by linking them to African-born men able to provide
personal accounts of the horrors of slavery. In fact, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, who was
enslaved in Grenada—the disembarkation point of at least 139,785 other enslaved
Africansxxiv—wrote an autobiography about his experiences in the slave system.
Subsequently, the publication of “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano” in 1789 by a fellow Son of Africa would prove to be a key abolitionist text
through its sway of public opinion.xxv Equiano’s kidnapping from Igbolandxxvi was
representative of another nearly 1,528,411 enslaved Africans embarking from the Bight of
Beninxxvii. The abolitionist movement’s inclusion of the African perspective was an
important element because it added legitimacy and authenticity to their message.
At the same time, African resistance in Africa and the Americas—both individual
and collective—was creating a hostile atmosphere conducive to the work of the
abolitionists in England and the United States. For example, individuals would protest
slavery by running away, learning to read or write, mutilating their bodies, destroying
machinery, or suicide.xxviii Although the symbolism of these individual acts carries a heavy
weight and their importance should not be disregarded, no larger legal changes to shut
down the slave system came directly from these individuals’ acts. Collectively, in Africa,
there is evidence of armed struggle and gun trading in an attempt to shut down the slave
trade.xxix In fact, in present day Angola, Queen Nzinga (1622-1663) participated in war
against Portugal to end the slave trade.xxx However, this violence would only be met with
more violence. The slave trade remained legal and countries would continue to kidnap and
enslave Africans for another two hundred years after Queen Nzinga’s passing. Similarly,
offensive resistance could be seen in the United States on multiple occasions: New York
Slave Revolt from 1712 to 1741, the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, Gabriel’s
Conspiracy in Virginia in 1800, Nat Turner’s 1831 Slave Rebellion in Virginia, Seminole
Wars in Florida (1835-1838), and Harpers Ferry in 1859.xxxi However, these acts of
resistance were not as successful as abolitionist strategies regarding official legal
intervention necessary to shut down the slave trade.
Although the 1841 Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Amistad resulted in the freeing
of Africans aboard the vesselxxxii, most uprisings along the Middle Passage were
unsuccessful.xxxiii In 1939, slave traders transporting Africans from Sierra Leone to the
Americas was taken over by the hostages; most of the white men aboard—except the ones
steering the ship—were killed by Joseph Cinquez.xxxiv In the year of the Amistad rebellion
(1839) alone, 4,388 other Africans were forcibly transported from Sierra Leone.xxxv
Although their success in the case allowed them to go back home to Sierra Leone, this was
a symbolic victory because no further legal action was pursued to cease the slave trade as
an institution. Shipboard insurrections such as this were not uncommon. In fact, one
occurred on approximately ten percent of all slave ships.xxxvi However, “unlike in the
famous case of the Amistad, these were usually unsuccessful, resulting in the death of
captives rather than their liberation.”xxxvii These failed insurrections were so common that
they accounted for the deaths of approximately 100,000 Africans.xxxviii Although these
deaths were not in vain and serve as evidence of African resistance, ultimately, they did
not accomplish the same societal, legal, and governmental shifts required to officially
cease the slave trade.
Despite the perceived success of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)xxxix, it hurt the
abolitionist movement in Britain at the time and thirty years later, would inspire failed
uprisings in Brazil. In San Domingue, a French sugar colony based on absentee land
ownership, a series of slave revolts led by Toussaint L’Overture took place during the
French Revolution.xl Although the revolution granted San Domingue the abolishment of
slavery in 1793, the violent uprisings “terrified American slave-owners, as well as
moderates in Britain who might have supported abolition before but now associated it with
revolution.”xli Additionally, any calls for abolition at this time now sounded like proFrench sedition due to Britain’s war with France; the coupling of the Haitian and French
revolutions forced abolitionism into a ten year hiatus.xlii Brazil, a Portuguese colony,
transported and maintained more Africans from West Central Africa than any other
country, with estimates as high as 1,347,728 disembarking at Brazilian ports.xliii The Malê
Revolt of 1835—inspired both by the Haitian Revolutions and the five slave revolts
occurring in Bahia from 1807 to 1830—was led by Muslim freedmen, most importantly
Bubakar Ahuna and Pacifico Licutan, who had opened secret mosques and schools to
convert others to their cause.xliv Unlike the success of San Domingue, however, Portuguese
authorities sentenced five of the freedmen leaders to death, imprisoned sixteen people, reenslaved any freed persons involved, flogged forty-five people, and deported some to
Nigeria where they would experience alienation.xlv Although this major revolt is thought to
be the start of the decline in slavery, Brazil would be the last country in the Western world
to abolish slavery in 1888; in fact, it reached its peak between 1801 and 1825 with 272,619
Africans disembarking in Bahia.xlvi Meanwhile, most other countries had already
significantly decreased the number of enslaved Africans at this point as a result of British
abolitionist efforts. After 1850, the British government’s international drive against the
slave trade effectively pressured Brazil—by use of force—to shut down the slave trade.xlvii
More tangibly, however, Britain’s abolitionism of the slave trade—“again spurred
by a massive petition drive”xlviii—in 1807 would “dramatically [alter] societal and
governmental attitudes—first toward the slave trade and then toward slavery itself.”xlix
By securing treaties with most major slave-trading countries, multiple countries came
together to set up Mixed Commission Courts to prosecute slave traders.l This
international legal mechanism has been hailed as “one of the most striking
accomplishments of this golden age of diplomacy.”li Although the British Royal Navy
freed only approximately 175,000 Africans (just 6% of the overall number traded in the
trans-Atlantic slave trade)lii, this official condemnation by the British government of the
slave trade would encourage other countries to do the same. “Ultimately, the transatlantic
slave trade ended only when the governments that had tolerated or even surreptitiously
encouagerd it made genuine efforts to suppress it. Once they did, the end came very
quickly.”liii From 1811 to 1870, data shows that the number of slave ship voyages
decreased by hundreds from 2,451 to 75 in 1870.liv “Change was not immediate, but the
rise of British abolitionism in the 1780s marked the beginning of the end of a particularly
inhuman era.”lv Although the resistance efforts of Africans in the Americas and Africa
created an atmosphere conducive to abolition, many of their strategies were unsuccessful.
British and American abolitionists had the strategy, the resources, and positions of power
to successfully open the minds of British and American citizens to abolition, as well as
lobby the British government for proper legal action to be taken.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Assessing the Slave Trade,” Emory University,
Copyright 2013. http://slavevoyages.org/assessment/
ii
Seth Markle, “Lecture 8: The Abolitionist Movement (1776-1865),” November 30, 2015.
iii
Ibid.
iv
Seth Markle, “Lecture 7: African Resistance to Transatlantic Slavery,” November 16-18, 2015.
v
Rafe Blaufarb and Liz Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015):
19.
vi
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 19.
vii
Ibid.
viii
Ibid.
ix
Seth Markle, “Lecture 8: The Abolitionist Movement (1776-1865),” November 30, 2015.
x
Ibid.
xi
Ibid.
xii
Ibid.
xiii
Ibid.
xiv
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 19.
xv
Ibid.
xvi
Ibid.
xvii
Ibid.
xviii
Ibid, 23.
xix
Ibid, 22.
xx
Seth Markle, “Lecture 8: The Abolitionist Movement (1776-1865),” November 30, 2015.
xxi
Ibid.
xxii
Ibid.
xxiii
Ibid.
xxiv
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Voyages Database,” Emory University: Copyright
2013. http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/
xxv
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Written by
Himself. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007), 7.
xxvi
Ibid, 58.
xxvii
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Voyages Database,” Emory University: Copyright
2013. http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/
xxviii
Seth Markle, “Lecture 7: African Resistance to Transatlantic Slavery,” November 16-18,
2015.
xxix
Ibid.
xxx
Ibid.
xxxi
Seth Markle, “Lecture 8: The Abolitionist Movement (1776-1865),” November 30, 2015.
xxxii
Seth Markle, “Lecture 7: African Resistance to Transatlantic Slavery,” November 16-18,
2015.
xxxiii
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 15.
xxxiv
Seth Markle, “Lecture 7: African Resistance to Transatlantic Slavery,” November 16-18,
2015.
xxxv
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Voyages Database,” Emory University: Copyright
2013. http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/
xxxvi
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 15.
xxxvii
Ibid.
xxxviii
Ibid.
xxxix
Seth Markle, “Lecture 7: African Resistance to Transatlantic Slavery,” November 16, 2015.
xl
Ibid.
i
xli
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 23.
Ibid.
xliii
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Voyages Database,” Emory University: Copyright
2013. http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/
xliv
Seth Markle, “Lecture 7: African Resistance to Transatlantic Slavery,” November 16-18, 2015.
xlv
Ibid.
xlvi
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Voyages Database,” Emory University: Copyright
2013. http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/
xlvii
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 32.
xlviii
Ibid, 24.
xlix
Ibid, 19.
l
Ibid, 25.
li
Ibid.
lii
Seth Markle, “Lecture 8: The Abolitionist Movement (1776-1865),” November 30, 2015.
liii
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 32.
liv
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. “Voyages Database,” Emory University: Copyright
2013. http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/
lv
Blaufarb and Clarke, Inhuman Traffick, 19.
xlii