On Wednesday morning I spent a couple of
hours researching my essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I finished
skimming through Violence and Crime in 19th Century England
but there’s not much there to support my argument. I re-read the opening
letters in Frankenstein that introduce Victor in the arctic just before
he begins to tell his story.
I
ran out of milk and fruit and so at midday I rode down to No Frills where I
bought the five bags of black sable grapes they had and three bags of milk.
I
finished listening to Kate Bush’s home demos from when she was a teenager and
before anyone had heard of her. Most of the songs are just her accompanying
herself on the piano and most of them are better than her later work. She sang
like a bird in those days.
I
skimmed the book The Ugly Laws and found it was another dead end as far as
research for my essay is concerned. The laws against ugliness the book talks
about were implemented in the United States so I can’t apply them to the era of
Frankenstein.
I
had one piece of toast with old cheddar and a handful of potato chips for
dinner while watching Rawhide.
In
this story the trail drive comes across a preacher named Brother Bent sitting
by himself and reading the Bible in the middle of nowhere during a drought. He
tells them he was driven from town for preaching against greed. It turns out
that Brother Bent is an expert drover and so Gil hired him on. Brother Bent
carries in his pocket a chunk of gold larger than any the men have ever seen
but he refuses to say the name of the town from where it came. Some of the men
get Bent drunk and he reveals the name. Meanwhile a group of cowboys without a
herd are following Gil’s drive. When he confronts them their leader says they
lost their herd to Texas fever and he admits that their intention had been to
steal some cows from Gil. Gil takes away their ammunition and lets them go.
Most of Gil’s men, after they find out the name of the town where gold is
supposed to be, quit the herd. Gil finds the outlaw drovers in the nearest town
and offers them jobs but their leader says he wants to buy Gil’s herd but at a
price by which his backers will be at a loss. Gil has no choice but to take the
deal. That night though as he and the handful of men he has left are sleeping.
The money is stolen. Rowdy suggests they go to the town that Brother Bent had
named. It turns out to be a ghost town. There he finds the men that had
deserted him asking to be taken back. They tell him that Wishbone’s helper
Mushy has gone missing from their group. The men go after the outlaw drovers
and his lost herd. There they find mushy being forced to work as their cook.
Mushy tells Gil that they stole the money and so Gil declares the deal off and
reclaims his herd. Their leader though, who used to work for Gil aims to shoot
him. Brother Bent, who was part of the scam all along steps between the gunman
and Gil. He throws his lump of gold at him and that gives Gil enough time to
shoot the outlaw. It seems all of Brother Bent’s fake preaching have turned him
into a real man of “god” and so that’s what he goes off to be.
Before
bed I started reading some of Gretchen Henderson’s Ugliness: a Cultural
History, and I think there’s stuff in there that I can use for my essay. It
may be that for new art to come into being it must contain elements of ugliness
to challenge and redefine our understanding of beauty.
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