So a couple of days ago in class we discussed Milkman's reaction to Lena's rant.  There were a lot of important points made, and I feel that they were all relevant.  But I think it is also important to consider that Milkman doesn't think very well of women.  All his life, the only source of discipline and power has been his father.  His mother is very submissive.  She herself says that she is a mentally and spiritually small person, who depended on her father and then on her husband her entire life.  She doted on Milkman, but Milkman never really saw her as a person.  Ruth never once stood up to Macon dead to defend herself or her daughters.  Magdalena and First Corinthians are also very subdued women. They never made Milkman do anything for himself, and they were constantly aware of Macon's power over them.  We the readers didn't even really see them as characters with personalities until later in the book, when F C meets Henry Porter, and Lena has her rant.
Aside from his immediate female family, Milkman knows very few other women while growing up.  His mother has some female friends, but he doesn't interact with them.  He meets Pilate, who is arguably the most important and strongest woman in his life, and he doesn't treat her very well at all.  He tries to steal gold from her, and she has to bail him out of jail.  He treats her granddaughter badly too.  When he breaks up with Hagar, who truly loved him, he sends her a note because he thinks that it's the nice thing to do.  The nice thing to would be to break up with her in person, to her face.  Sending a break-up note in a letter is very rude and demeaning, and the fact that he thinks that it was a nice thing to do shows both how little he knows about other people and how badly he treats women.  Even when he considers getting married, he doesn't think about it because he loves the girl.  We never even learn the name of the red-headed girl he contemplates marrying.
Milkman doesn't think very highly of women.  So when Lena rants at him about how he never did anything in his life and never thought of anything but himself,  I think he goes into shock.  Suddenly Lena has done something that upsets all his preconceived ideas of what women are like.  Sure, Pilate was strong and could stand up for herself, but Pilate was a very manly, strong and tall woman.  Lena doing this just blows Milkman out of the water.

A Dream-like Narrative

Recently, I had a dream in which I killed someone by stabbing them multiple times.  No one in my dream was upset by this.  When I woke up, I immediately thought of The Stranger, and how oddly dream like the narrative was.  For example, the main character, Mersault, seems to feel no emotions.  He doesn't cry at his mother's funeral, he kills a man with out hesitation, he says that love doesn't mean anything. Normally, this would make him a sociopath.  But Mersault does feel emotions--he is hurt by the people who obviously hate him, and he gets angry at the priest near the end of the book.  This is similar to dreams where tragic things happen and are ignored.  Also similar to dreams:

• The lack of a sense of time.  We don't know how long Mersault is in prison, and he himself loses track of time constantly. 
• Subtle eerie background happenings that don't faze Mersault very much but are definitely bizarre, like the newspaper article about a man being killed by his family when he tried to scare him, and the old people who all sit and stare at him before his mother's funeral.
• The way the court focuses on Mersault's perceived lack of feelings instead of the fact that he murdered the Arab for almost no reason.
• The constant influence of the sun on Mersault's actions, and the blinding heat that is described with feelings, textures and colors.
• The casual acceptance of violence, like Raymond's abuse of his girlfriend, and the old man's abuse of his dog.
• How Mersault casually accepts the fact that he's in court for having killed a man and tries to help the lawyers but doesn't try to lie or make up excuses.

So, obviously The Stranger is not a very long, bizarre dream.  That doesn't mean that it wouldn't make a lot of sense if Mersault was dreaming.  And really, who doesn't have weird dreams?

Spain vs. France (The Sun Also Rises)

I haven't posted a blog in a while, and the only ideas I had were about The Sun Also Rises.  In particular, I wanted to post more about the differences between Spain and France (more specifically Paris.)  In Paris, everyone is either a French native, a tourist, or an expatriate.  There are very distinct differences between the groups of natives and non-natives, and between the different groups of non-natives.  For example, Jake is often dismissive of the tourists, who he doesn't really like.  There's a definite "us vs. them" feeling.  The same goes for Jake's group of friends and Robert Cohn.  Either because he's Jewish or just not of the right mindset to fit in with them, Cohn is disliked by all of Jake's friends and even by Jake himself. Even the native French people living in Paris follow the "us and them" theme.  The only natives we see are employees, or patrons at cafes.  They don't interact with Jake and his friends in any significant way.

In contrast to the divided feel of Paris life, Spain is more of a "we as a whole" country.  In the tour bus, the Spaniards share their wine with Jake and Bill, and teach them the traditional way to drink it.  They refuse to let them pay for it too.  This would never happen in Paris.  In Spain, everyone is more open and welcoming. The people in the streets, the bullfighters, the bartenders- there are no groups of different people. Everyone fits in.  The "us and them" is replaced with "let's share wine from the same wine sack." The only person who doesn't fit in is Cohn, but he doesn't really fit anywhere.  It's kinda sad.

Septimus and Clarissa

I think this has been done before, but only briefly.  So, to expand:  Septimus and Clarissa.  Similar on multiple levels!
Someone else made the point that Septimus and Clarissa are both victims of trauma, Septimus due to the war and Clarissa due to... whatever.  I won't go further.  That's not the end of their similarities!  (And I can't believe no one has said anything like this yet.)  Septimus and Clarissa both had epic friendships that could have been something more with a member of their gender.  Clarissa had Sally Seton, who was good friends with her at school, and kissed her one night. Later in life though, Clarissa married Richard and drifted away from her friendships with Sally and Peter.  They were never as close as they had been again.  This is sort of similar to Septimus's friendship with Evans, which was probably not romantic in the way that Clarissa and Sally's could have been, but was still very defining.  Unfortunately for Septimus, Evans died right before the end of the war.
Clarissa has ascended, in marrying Richard, to high social importance.  She throws parties that the Prime Minister attends.  She's married to an important government figure.  Lots of people know her, and know of her.  Septimus could have had importance in his life.  He was described (before he went to war) as an okay poet and a good clerk- someone who could be excellent given time.  And, had he not enlisted in the war, he probably could have become famous and important.  Clarissa-and-Prime-Minister-party important.
Even their marriages are similar.  Septimus marries Lucrezia because that's what's expected of him, and he thinks that marrying her will help cure him of his emotional trauma.  Clarissa marries Richard (and probably loves him) and fulfills her "destiny" to become the perfect hostess.  Peter predicts, correctly, that Clarissa will marry Richard.  Both Clarissa and Septimus do exactly what is expected of them.
After their respective traumas, both cope by retreating.  Septimus retreats into himself, becoming obsessed and hallucinating of his war experiences.  Clarissa retreats into her mask of Mrs. Richard Dalloway, and throws parties where she hides her true self while making other people feel important.

How to Win Friends and Intimidate People

While reading Mrs. Dalloway, I was struck momentarily by the line "Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on.  If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred." I thought that was a little odd to mention, given that we never really heard more about this skill in the rest of the novel.  But then I read about Peter, and Miss. Kilman, and how everybody who Clarissa meets feels like they have been judged by her and found lacking. I think that maybe because Clarissa has this one talent that lets her look at someone and know them instantly, she intimidates the other characters by making them feel that she can see all their faults, or even into their souls.
 Peter is maybe the best example of this.  He thinks of Clarissa constantly during the novel, and criticizes her even as he remembers being in love with her.  Several times when he thinks of her he ends up feeling that she sees him and is looking down on him.  For example, he starts describing Clarissa to himself on page 48 "The way she said "Here is my Elizabeth!"-- that annoyed him.  Why not "Here's Elizabeth" simply?  It was insincere...There was always something cold about Clarissa, he thought," and then he suddenly transitions from looking down on her and her insincerity to feeling like he has behaved stupidly in front of her. "Overcome with shame suddenly at having been a fool; wept; been emotional; told her everything, as usual, as usual."  This is kind of abrupt for a man who, when he thinks of the woman he used to love, always remembers what he didn't like about her.
Miss Kilman also experiences the odd mirrored effect of looking down on Clarissa and then feeling judged by her.  On page 125 especially, Miss Kilman has a little outburst in which she thinks "Clarissa Dalloway had insulted her.  That she expected.  But she had not triumphed; she had not mastered the flesh.  Ugly, clumsy, Clarissa Dalloway had laughed at her for being that; and had revived the fleshly desires, for she minded looking as she did beside Clarissa." She continues along in that way for a little while longer, until Elizabeth interrupts her to ask what department she wanted.  Here we have Kilman, who pities Clarissa and finds all sorts of faults in her, feeling like Clarissa finds her unworthy and ugly.  It nearly makes Kilman cry just thinking about it. 
Even Richard feels the effect of Clarissa's soul gazing, although (maybe because he's been married to her for thirty years) he is not as intimidated.  When he gives Clarissa the flowers and fails to tell her that he loves her, he still feels that she understood.  "But how lovely, she said, taking his flowers.  She understood; she understood without his speaking; his Clarissa." (Page 115)  This is just kind of a really cute scene that shows how well Clarissa and Richard suit each other, and how Clarissa's weird people-vision isn't always terrible.
I would have more examples, but it's getting late and I have other stuff to do.  I'm also tired, so if this is totally unintelligible I'm sorry.  I guess I could be totally wrong about Clarissa's strangely mentioned skill intimidating people?  I just think that it makes sense, given that lots of the characters think vicious things about Clarissa and then feel like she looks down on them.  If she could know people at a glance it would explain how she makes everyone at her parties feel welcomed and important...