Great Cake

6 October 2022: From a bit earlier this week...me pointing to a tiny plastic rat sticking its head out of my student's reproduction if Miss Havisham's wedding cake. What a delight!

"against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness..."

1 October 2022: "According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection." --Pip, in Great Expectations

Reading this with my Victorian Lit class and find myself struck--as always--by Dickens' insight and understanding here. 

A Christmas Carol in 2020

15 December 2020: Gave a presentation today for the Scarborough Society, talking about A Christmas Carol. It was kind of amazing? Colleagues, community members, former students in attendance via Zoom--along with Vogel and my dad. Such a lovely reminder of my blessings. 

As I mentioned in my remarks, Dickens' little book is especially poignant and relevant this year. Here's what I wrote and shared: "A Christmas Carol strikes me as beautifully relevant this holiday season, at the end of a dark and painful year, when so many are suffering and we feel, like the reformed Scrooge, called to reach out to them, to the family of mankind, to address and ameliorate 'Ignorance' and 'Want,' memorably personified by Dickens as hungry and desperate children—our children, hiding under the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Moreover, in a year when many of us cannot be with our loved ones yet still feel those urgent bonds of love and connection, the promise of A Christmas Carol—that we can make the world better through active devotion and service to others (even if that means just staying home and staying apart)—inspires and gives us hope. We might not be with our loved ones, but we can show them our love. Dickens, drawing of course, on the ancient Christmas story from the New Testament, shows us that."

When I got home, I called my dad and talked for a bit. I finally said out loud that I wasn't coming home for Christmas and he immediately responded with love and understanding. Such a relief.  

"standing in the spirit at your elbow..."

29 November 2020: "The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow." -Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Perhaps because I've been thinking about narration a lot lately, this section from A Christmas Carol kind of leapt off the page as I reread the book this afternoon. I am sure folks have written about what Dickens is up to here, but it's a weird and lovely gesture, the author imagining himself as a spirit (in a book about spirits) standing right next to the reader. He couldn't have known that this book would endure the way it has, the way he would remain by the side of so many folks every year as they experience his story, but I really love it. 

"revise the boundaries of selfhood..."

25 November 2020: "Crucially, this conversion is not simply a reformation of character but a reimagining of how the self relates to others....Scrooge does not so much lose himself as revise the boundaries of his selfhood. Instead of a mode of enchantment that sees the reader as forgetting or losing track of him- or herself, we might think of enchantment as a method for self-opening. In suspending his suspicion, Scrooge undertakes a kind of enchantment that makes him permeable. Because he can read with enchantment, Scrooge is neither lost to himself nor nailed to himself. This particular mode of reading makes the self penetrable to influence and thus malleable, convertible, and, most importantly, recoverable." --Aubrey Plourde

I am preparing to lead a (virtual) discussion of A Christmas Carol in a few weeks and spent today reading about a text that has meant so much to me for most of my life. It's a bittersweet task in many ways, particularly given how different the holidays will be this year. 

Plourde's article, quoted above, moved me when I read it. It's a lovely point she makes, compelling and quietly uplifting and hopeful. 

So...she gets it?

29 March 2019:

Me, trying to explain a point about Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (how she just can't get over being ditched on her wedding day), using an analogy: "It's like that person you know who just can't get past someone who wronged her in 10th grade..."

Student, cutting me off: "That's me. I hold grudges. I hold other people's grudges for them."

Me: "Good to know."

On Mrs. Joe...

17 February 2019: "It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life, and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The figure of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and day. That the place could possibly be, without her, was something my mind seemed unable to compass; and whereas she had seldom or never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the strangest ideas that she was coming towards me in the street, or that she would presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, with which she had never been at all associated, there was at once the blankness of death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound of her voice or the turn of her face or figure, as if she were still alive and had been often there....Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have recalled my sister with much tenderness. But I suppose there is a shock of regret which may exist without much tenderness." --Pip, after his sister's death, in Great Expectations

On yet another turn through Great Expectations for me, this time for ENGL 341, the book continues to give me new gems to focus on. Pip's inability to imagine a world without his sister--such a dominant figure in his life--is well-rendered, right down to his seemingly unanticipated feeling of regret even though she was never warm towards him. Loss is complex, especially when the family member is someone like Mrs. Joe.

Great (Dating) Expectations...

3 April 2018: Today we finished up our discussion of Great Expectations in ENGL 311. As usual, the class had lots of smart things to say as we wrestled with the strange (and plural!) endings of this book. I asked them what they thought of (spoiler?) Biddy marrying Joe and joked that, "hey, he's got a job and he's nice." Somehow that got us talking about who we would date from the book (lots of "anyone but Pip!" responses...poor Pip!).

Half joking, half serious, I wondered aloud if that might make a good final exam essay prompt--something about having them write about which character (or writer?) from over the course of the semester would be a good spouse/match. It's certainly a different kind of prompt, but one that can trick them into doing some actual critical thinking. And, as someone who does a lot of exam grading, something fun might be more, well...fun to grade. I have to think about it some more, but the class liked the idea. We shall see...

More on Great Expectations

29 March 2018: "She's beautiful and unattainable and empty." --a student in my ENGL 311 class on Estella in Great Expectations, in response to my question about what it is that makes Pip love her. This was such a concise and smart answer. The class has done a terrific job with this book so far, including the complicated character that is Pip.

This re-read has me focused mostly on the "adult Pip" looks back on "young Pip" and "young adult Pip." His voice isn't the voice of someone who has made peace with his past or gotten "past it," whatever that means. He is so hard on himself and the very process of telling these stories and relating his earlier self's thoughts is painful. That adds a layer of pain that largely escaped me on earlier readings. Maybe that's a reflection of my current self looking back on the 40 years behind me and surveying how much peace I had made with earlier selves. I think (hope?) that I am somewhere beyond "adult Pip," but maybe not completely.

Back to Great Expectations

14 March 2018: "That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." --Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I spent part of today re-reading the open chapters of Great Expectations in preparation for my ENGL 311 class last week. The lines above always stand out to me, inviting the reader to contemplate how one small event can set a whole chain of events into motion.

Can't wait for this!

Check out the trailer for the new Great Expectations on PBS. Looks terrific...I have, ha ha, great expectations for it.