Victorian Women

            I woke up from a siesta on Tuesday afternoon to what sounded like the chanting of a monk, but it was the wind wailing through my partially opened window.

            A half hour after that I had to start getting ready for class. I started recharging my laptop but it had only climbed up to 25% by the time I needed to leave. I considered charging it in the classroom but decided that I didn’t really need the machine this time after all since I had nothing to copy. I left the portable computer behind and instead took a few extra sheets of paper so I could work on a poem.

            The snowstorm that hit us had not been as bad as predicted so the ride downtown was a little sloppy but not slidey and choppy.

            It was the first time I’d sat in the classroom since daylight savings time kicked in and the daylight in the windows felt fake and weird.

            I sat in my chair and assessed my mood, which was one of slight amusement, so I started making notes for my next ghazal to be built round that emotional state. It’s an interesting technique since it reminds me of method acting.

            George Elliot Clarke arrived, greeting us all but much more quietly than usual. He gave us back our papers, which I’d totally forgotten about.

            I was very disappointed in my mark, which was 15.7 out of 20 and so it’s merely a B+. George really didn’t like my attack on El Jones. There were some stupid mistakes though like putting the name of her book in quotation marks rather than italics. But he also ran lines through the capitals that I used for the preposition and article when writing out the title of her book, “Live From The Afrikan Resistance”. I assumed that she had intentionally broken the grammatical rule when she capitalized the “F” in “from” and the “T” in “the”, similarly to her deliberate misspelling of “African”. I wonder now if we are supposed to correct the deliberate grammar mistakes that authors. I emailed George about it and he said that wasn’t where I lost marks anyway.

            George also inserted several notes arguing that I should consider the poem in terms of its intention to be presented orally rather than in print. I always read poems aloud when I assess them but I strongly disagree that my critiques of her writing don’t also apply to her live performances. I’m certain that I kept in mind how the poem would sound.

            George additionally argued that my criticisms of Jones’s skewing of the truth should be seen as a literary trick. If that’s the case she executes it poorly. I think that when an author lies or exaggerates they have to create a context in which it works, like Ondaatje’s mostly fictional portrayal of Billy the Kid. Jones clearly makes statements claiming they are true when they are not, such as that all wicked sisters and witches in fairy tales a represented as darker in skin and hair than the heroine. That’s not even a common trope. Witches for example tend to be depicted as pale and white haired. I have no problem with her saying that she felt that was the case, or to set up a context in which it was true, but to claim something is common when it isn’t seems irresponsible to me.

            George’s final notes have the cryptic statement, “Remember Plato’s critique of poets and the harsh reviews of Dylan’s “Desire” (1975) and “Street Legal” (1978)”. I have no idea how these relate to my critique of El Jones.

            One thing he really liked, as I thought he would, was my pointing out that “aside” and “I’d say” is an amphisbaenic rhyme.

            George informed us that this was the one-hundredth anniversary of the Russian revolution.

            The work we studied this week was “Types of Canadian Women” by K. I. Press.

            In the book, Press intervenes in the texts of the stories of Canadian women. George expressed regret that he hadn’t scheduled this subject for the week before this one so that it corresponded more closely with international women’s day.

            Each poem presents a story about a different fictional Canadian woman of the Victorian era.

            History is not as one-sided as we may think. Along with the Victorian women who tried to be models of repression and good manners there were dissidents and there was dissidence as well. Remember that the suffragettes were active at this time.

            Press follows John Fowles’s “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” in presenting unconventional heroines, who are often independent and not sexually repressed.

            There is also a Darwinian tone to the book in referring to women in terms of “types” and categories as in a gallery or even a zoo.

            The book is anachronistic and disturbing. The influence of Michael Ondaatje’s “The Complete Works of Billy the Kid” can be seen here. They are both guerrilla raids on history. She wants to awaken, enlighten feminism through her protest against the theory of men and women’s social spheres.

            Feminism is nothing new. Even before the Victorian era was Mary Wallstonecroft who wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792. She died at the age of 38, eleven days after giving birth to the girl who would grow up to write the classic novel, “Frankenstein”.

            Press’s book is an integrated whole.

            George recommended “The Other Victorians”, which is about the sex trade during that era. Only in the 1970s did our modern western society exceed the Victorian era in the production of pornography.

            Then George repeated the joke, “If you want to see the queen’s beaver just pick up a nickel.

            We may think that we have freedom of speech now but maybe there was more fifty years ago. A lot of that speech though was hurtful and even hateful. We are more concerned now with the comfort levels of others.

            Be wary of presentism and the idea that the section of the time soup that we float in is the best of times.

            Press masks herself in her introduction as being a Victorian woman and refers to herself as K. I. Press, esquire, which means she is a land owner.

            We can also find the influence of Margaret Atwood in the book, particularly from “The Journals of Susana Moody” and “Survival”.

            George made fun of the 80s idea of people who are self-starters. He argued that just by getting up in the morning we are all self-starters. I mentioned that it ties in with the other 80s term: “Yuppies”.

            There is an irony in that the introduction offers thanks to an unnamed British man.

            George asked us to guess which female Canadian Nobel laureate haunts the book. I answered correctly Alice Munro but didn’t know which work by her was doing the haunting. It’s “Lives of Girls and Women”.

            Press ends her introduction with the location from which it was written, which was Hawthornden Castle, Scotland, which serves as the international Retreat for Writers. Wikipedia says that the property belongs to Drue Heinz, who publishes “The Paris Review”, but George claims that it was willed to Queens University. He might have mixed it up with Herstmonceux Castle in England, which is owned by Queen’s University in Kingston.

            George says that if you almost close your eyes while driving through Kingston it looks almost Italian. But you might also get arrested for driving with your eyes almost closed and take up residence in one of Kingston’s prisons.

            “Types of Canadian Women” is made up mostly of prose poems, which have less cadence and rhythm than poetry in general with an emphasis on imagery. George says that western prose poetry began with Baudelaire’s poems about scenes inspired by Edgar Allen Poe, after he wrote “Fleurs du Mal”. The sunstroke passage in Michael Ondaatje’s “The Complete Works of Billy the Kid” is an example. Prose poems narrate, explain and argue. They are dependent on beauty, skill and execution based on the idea that language is artistic in its own right. Other exemplars of prose poetry are Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens who descend from Stephane Malarmé. Often the prose poem is rich with superficial artifice even though the content does not make sense. Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” and Derek Walcott’s “Omeros” are examples. Lewis Carole’s “Jabberwocky” is a strong example of a beautifully written piece that makes no sense at all. A prose poem has more poetry and art than most prose. The prose poem is concentrated and its language draws attention to its own artifice. In the Oxford Book of Modern Poetry, W. B. Yeats as editor introduced excerpts from prose by Walter Pater.

            The first poem that we looked at from “Types of Canadian Women” was “Much That Reminds Us of Jane Austen”. There is feminism to be found in Austen’s writing. The male interlocutor in the poem declares that Canadians are vague and willowy.

            At this point we had our fifteen-minute break during which we discussed the requirements of the poetry manuscript option of our final project. Patrick asked if it was okay if he just submitted poetry that he wrote while taking the course even though he hadn’t consciously been inspired by any particular poet. I was surprised when George said it would be okay as long as he can justify it. I told George that I was more interested in styles that poets used rather than the poets themselves.

            After the break, George began by declaring that every writer is an intellectual. He added, “Get used to it, and own it!” I reminded George that Donald Trump wrote a book. Zack said that someone else wrote it for him and he is very sorry.

            George told us that Imagism was born in Saskatchewan.

            We looked at the poem, “Experienced a Nervous Collapse”. Up until the 1970s hysteria was still considered to be a women’s condition. Hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus.

            Richard S. Burton was a Victorian adventurer who translated the Kama Sutra, The Arabian Nights and “The Perfumed Garden of Sexual Delight” by Muhammed al-Nafzawi.

            The next poem was my favourite: “Her Horse Killed Under Her”, about a woman that has been transformed into a man after a riding accident.

            George said that in the Victorian era one only thought of Ontario as Canada.

            We looked at “Youngest Editress in the World”. Masque balls were often sexual events. George recommended “A History of Orgies” by Burgo Partridge.

            We looked at “Proposals of Marriage Followed” which begins with the line, “When I was a girl, I danced with Byron”. George said that Byron was mad, bad and dangerous to know.

            The influence of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton can also be found in the work of K. I. Press.

            We looked at “Born In the Parliament Buildings”, which has the line, “A dream recurs. I am Roxane … hearing the eloquence of men and swordplay … The walls are red, the ground is red, the swords are falling all around me.” Roxane is a character from the Edmond Rostand play, “Cyrano de Bergerac”. George claims that it influenced Pierre Elliot Trudeau. According to a biographer, Trudeau’s motto was from Cyrano: “I’ll climb not high perhaps, but all alone”.

            We looked at “Especially For Working Girls”. George said that if a girl in that era came to the city and could not find a job in a factory, prostitution was the only other option.

            George recommended “Victorian Halifax” by Judith Fingard. I find though that the full title is actually “The Dark Side of Life in Victorian Halifax”.

            George also mentioned the novel “Kamouraska” by Anne Hébert and the film adaptation by Claude Jutra.

            George mentioned that when the KKK had a presence in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan they ran an ad for a picnic and invited people of all races because there were hardly any white people there.

            As we were packing up, George surprised me by thanking me for my strong argument in my essay. I told him I was disappointed and he seemed surprised. He argued that a B plus is a very good mark.

            It had snowed again during class. George’s car was parked beside my bike. We discussed snowstorms in the Maritimes while he brushed the snow off his car.

            I had thought about stopping at Freshco on the way home but the journey was so cold and damp that I just wanted to get to my place as soon as possible. The tips of some of my fingers were numb when I got there.