The Literature Blog

The Theme of Time in Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear

“He was filled with horror at the thought of what a child becomes, and what the dead must feel watching eh change from innocence to guilt and powerless to stop it.”
–Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear, p.65.

The protagonist of The Ministry of Fear, Arthur Rowe, is haunted by the mercy killing of his wife. Set in World War II, Greene presents the city of London as a physical manifestation of Rowe’s past. On one hand, London reflects his childhood past through the fete, the vicar, and the books which remind him of his boyish innocence. On the other hand, Rowe’s recent sinful past is visible in the shops and restaurants near his home which remind him of his life with his wife. In an attempt to escape his fear of the future and present situation, Arthur Rowe attempts to both retreat to and erase the past. Firstly, Rowe searches for his childhood in a local fete which ‘called him like innocence; it was entangled in childhood, with vicarage gardens and girls in white summery frocks and the smell of herbaceous borders and security’.1 The imagery of vicarages, white dresses and security reflects Rowe’s longing to return to his childhood where he can avoid his future. However, this description of the fete is concluded by Greene noting that the fete would have to close early ‘because of the blackout’ (p.11). This brings the protagonist back to the present, failing to allow Rowe to blissfully ignore his problems. Simply, Greene implies that retreating to the past and ignoring the present is not a realistic option for dealing with fear. This can be applied to the context of the text as Greene suggests that the Blitz cannot be ignored and must be acknowledged.

Choosing to stay in London during the Blitz, Rowe watches the city being destroyed and ‘notes with a kind of hope that this restaurant or that shop existed no longer – it was like loosening the bars of a prison cell one by one’ (p.22). Rather than escaping the Blitz, Rowe relies on the bombing to help him escape his recent past. After losing his memory and finally becoming a ‘happy man’, Greene momentarily separates Rowe from his recent past (p.107-109). As well as losing the memories of his marriage, the bomb also results in Rowe losing any memories or knowledge of the war and Blitz. ‘Digby’, the name Rowe is given when he wakes, is taught about the historical past by Dr Forester who he notes was ‘more than ever the headmaster, and Digby a pupil’ (p.114). Therefore, Rowe has been detached from his personal past and the historical present. While this memory loss provides Rowe with a happier life, Greene forces the knowledge of his recent past onto the protagonist at the very end of the text. Once again Greene fails to provide Rowe with the comfort of ignorance. Greene continuously creates and destroys various escapes for Rowe in order to emphasise the importance of the past on the present and future. In this way, Greene indicates that the past must be acknowledged and accepted in order to move forward.

References
Featured Image: Cover Image created by Peter Edwards for Heinemann’s 1960 Library Edition of the novel.

1. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (London: Vintage, 2001). All further references to Greene’s text are to this edition and will be given parenthetically.

Written by Dionne Rowe.
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Language as a Method of Control in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange

‘These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulliver and my plot,’ I said, ‘that’s what it is.’
‘Quaint,’ said Dr Brodsky, like smiling, ‘the dialect of the tribe.’
-Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, p. 91.

Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange is narrated by protagonist Alex and is written in Nadsat, a new language created by Burgess. This language is used by Alex to demonstrate how he dominates the streets but then attempts to retain this control when he becomes subject to a government experiment that aims to modify his violent behaviour. Nadsat acts a buffer to the graphic violence Alex and his ‘droogs’ commit. When they break into a woman’s house, and attack her, Nadsat blurs the violence to the reader. He ‘upped with the little malenky like silver statue and cracked her a fine fair tolchock on the gulliver and that shut her up real horrorshow and lovely’ 1. The language limits associations the reader would normally have if Alex spoke in ‘proper’ English due to the confusing and new words. Burgess’s use of alliteration in ‘fine fair tolchock’ creates a playful and poetic image and, as he said himself, the use of Nadsat does ‘not sound as bad as booting a man in the guts.’2 The lack of complete understanding invites empathy and sympathy from the readers towards Alex in a situation where scenes of rape and violence would normally create horror and disgust. Blake Morrison discusses the effect of the language and suggests that ‘much of the excitement […] comes not from what Alex says, but how he says it: from his slovos.’3 Morrison recognises the reader’s reaction to Alex as he becomes the anti-hero in the novel that readers sympathise with and root for. Alex also plays on the reader’s empathy by referring to himself as ‘your little droog Alex’ (ACO, p. 61), and ‘Your Humble and Suffering Narrator’ (p. 97). The use of the word ‘your’ includes the reader in Alex’s journey, even when his ‘droogs’ leave him to be arrested and he is alone. It creates a relationship between the reader and Alex. As the novel progresses, he even shortens the reference to ‘Y.H.N’ (p. 126), implying that the relationship evolves as Alex becomes more isolated. Morrison suggests that ‘Alex insinuates and allies himself so intimately with his readers (‘O my brothers’) that we end up sharing every laugh (‘haw haw haw’) and cry (‘boohoohoo’).’4 Although readers know that Alex’s actions are wrong, the combination of the confusing Nadsat language and the pronoun ‘your’ creates a relationship that blurs the reader’s moral compass thus demonstrating how language can be used to manipulate and control the reader.

Whilst Nadsat can be used for Alex to control his narrative, it is also a way to gain control in a world where he finds himself being manipulated and controlled. When Alex talks to adults in the text, he mostly uses standard English to charm them but sometimes uses Nadsat. When he is partaking in the Ludovico technique, he has a conversation about what will happen when he leaves:

‘Oh I shall go home. Back to my pee and em.’ ‘Your -?’ He didn’t get Nadsat-talk at all, so I said: ‘To my parents in the dear old flatblock.’ ‘I see,’ he said.’
(ACO, p. 87)

Here, Alex is attempting to gain some control in a situation where he is being monitored and forced to watch videos against his will. The reader’s lack of understanding leads them to believe Alex has a superior knowledge. However, in the text those in authority treat him in a patronising way. Alex uses Nadsat even more so when in distress:

‘These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulliver and my plot,’ I said, ‘that’s what it is.’ ‘Quaint,’ said Dr Brodsky, like smiling, ‘the dialect of the tribe.’
(ACO, p. 91)

When he becomes aware of the aim and process of the experiment, he uses Nadsat aggressively by including more words of the language in his speech. He attempts to use an alternative language to gain back the control he has lost. Dr Brodsky’s reaction of ‘quaint’ is patronising and dismissive, highlighting how ultimately the government are in control, no matter how hard Alex tries. Keith Booker comments on Nadsat and suggests that it ‘shows the imaginative superiority of Alex and his fellows.’5 The attempt to gain control highlights that Alex believes he has superiority with a different language but whilst he may have an advantage over the readers, the adults and those in power take no notice of Nadsat. Alex uses Nadsat to try and gain back some control when victim to their manipulation.

References

Featured Image: Cover Image created by David Pelham for Penguin’s 1972 edition of the novel. See Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (London: Penguin Group, 1972).

(1) Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (London: Penguin Group, 1996)

(2) Christian Bugge, ‘The Clockwork Controversy’, The Kubrick Site [n.d.] <http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0012.html> [accessed 20th April 2018]. The rest of the quote follows as ‘But in a film little can be implied; everything has to be shown. Language ceases to be an opaque protection against being appalled and takes a very secondary place.’ Burgess has often showed distaste towards Kubrick’s film version as the violence is seen visually which takes away the element of cloaking that Nadsat achieves in the novel.

(3) Blake Morrison, ‘Introduction’ in Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (London: Penguin Books, 1996), pp. vii-xxiv (p. ix).

(4) Ibid., p. xii.

(5) Keith Booker, Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 96.

Written by Sophie Shepherd
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Purging the ‘Unconventional’ in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi

‘What is’t distracts you?/
This is flesh, and blood, sire;/
‘Tis not the figure cut in alabaster/
kneels at my husband’s tomb.’
-The Duchess, The Duchess of Malfi (l.386-387)

In John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the Duchess finds herself condemned for crossing the conventional position of widow deigned appropriate for her by figures of male authority. Rather than adhere to her brother’s orders, the Duchess utilises the small amount of independence proffered to her in widowhood to defy them. The Duchess rejects her subordinate patriarchal position, subverting this inferiority to become both wooer and head of her household.1 However, this insubordination is not celebrated; rather, it is viewed with disdain and anger by almost all of the characters in the play. The Duchess is viewed as a figure of treasonous radicality, threatening not only the private family model but the very status and order of the governing state. As she declares her decision to marry Antonio, the Duchess announces ‘let old wives report/ I winked and chose a husband’.2 In using ‘I’, the Duchess places herself in a position of autonomy; she makes it apparent that she ‘chose’ (l.281) Antonio out of her own free will. Furthermore, the Duchess clearly distances herself from the ‘old wives’ (l.280) of conventionality in favour of a more masculine assertion of personal choice. However, in Webster’s allusion to the Duchess having ‘winked’, defined as ‘to indicate that something is a joke or a secret’, the Duchess is presented as irresponsibly naïve.3 She seemingly fails to register the severity of her subversion; rather, she instead becomes collocated with the archetypal ‘lusty widow’ figure, driven by rampant sexual appetite and desire.

Although the Duchess repeatedly asserts that her actions are the result of the pure love she feels for Antonio, Webster consistently undermines this through a discourse of lust and desire. This language is first evoked by her brothers, who suggest that her wish to remarry is inevitable as she ‘is a widow’ and knows ‘already what man is’ (ll.225-226). The Duchess is further advised that she must not allow her ‘high blood’ to be ‘sway[ed]’ (l.228). The bawdy nature of Ferdinand and The Cardinal’s speech bears striking similarities to the language used in the 1650 conduct book The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. In this text, it is stated ‘for widows, the fontanel of whose desires hath been opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed’, they must remember ‘that God hath now restrained the former license’ and ‘bridle[d] […] their desires.’4 Through such paralleling, the Duchess is thus presented as a figure whose actions are founded on gross self-interest and lust. This results in both the aristocracy and the ‘common rabble’ ‘directly say[ing]/ she is a strumpet’ (l.26).

Denounced as a ‘strumpet’ (l.26), the Duchess becomes a radical figure that is viewed with disdain by figures of lower and higher-class social status. As Sarah Steen argues, ‘in light of Renaissance social standards […] the Duchess flouted patriarchal authority […] violated decorum by remarrying and by choosing a man below her in station’; she also demonstrated ‘an overt and dangerous female sexuality, all of which threatened the social order.’5 In this subversion, the Duchess ultimately comes to radically usurp not only the rigid social positions afforded to men and women in society, but also their positions within the private family model. Due to the class difference between Antonio and the Duchess, the Duchess ultimately subverts the traditional framework by becoming both the orchestrater and instigator of their union. In doing so, she usurps Antonio’s role as head of the private domestic family. It is she that proposes marriage to Antonio, telling him ‘raise’ himself’ with her ‘hand to help’ (ll.351-352). Through subverting the strict family model, the Duchess not only threatens the patriarchal social structure of the family but also the very foundations of the governing body. At the time of the plays first performance, as Dympna Callaghan expounds, advice books such as A Godly Form of Household Government depicted the family structure as ‘a microcosm of the state.6 In this reading, the Duchess not only threatens private social order, but also rigid political order. Her actions are denounced as politically radical and monstrous; ‘desperate physic’ must, as Ferdinand declares, be applied ‘to purge infected blood, such as hers’ (ll.23-26). The threat of the Duchess must, as Webster’s play comes to suggest, be ‘purged’ from society at whatever cost.

References

Featured Painting: Paris Bordone, The Venetian Lovers, circa 1530, Oil on Canvas, 80 x 95cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy.

1. For more information on the position of the widow in Renaissance England, see Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner, Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

2. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, I.ii.l.280-281, in Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments, ed. by Arthur F. Kinney (London: Blackwells, 2004). All further references to The Duchess of Malfi are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the body of the essay.

3. Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/wink [Accessed 1/04/2018].

4. Jeremy Taylor, ‘The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living’ in The Whole Works of the Reverend Jeremy Taylor: Volume I (London: J.R and C. Childs, 1836), pp.399-515, p.427.

5. Sara Jayne Steen, ‘The Crime of Marriage: Arbella Stuart and the Duchess of Malfi’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 22 (1991), pp.61-76, p.61.

6. Dympna Callaghan, ‘Loving and Marrying’ in Romeo and Juliet: Texts and Contexts, ed. Dympna Callaghan (Boston, New York: Bedford Books, 2003), pp.245- 248, p.247.

Written by Steph Reeves
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

The Female Body as a Political Territory in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus

‘’‘Rape’ call you it, my lord, to seize my own-/
my true betrothed love, and now my wife?/
But let the laws of Rome determine all;/
Meanwhile I am possessed of that is mine.’
(Act 1, Scene 1, l.402-405)

The representation of the female body as a political territory can be seen throughout Shakespeare’s gruesome tragedy Titus Andronicus; specifically, the politicising of the feminine form is explicitly shown through the brutal rape and maiming of Lavinia, Titus’s only daughter. Lavinia’s reduction to her basest form, a body, comes to symbolise Ancient Rome’s social patriarchy, a symbol that prevails throughout the entirety of the play. Her mutilation at the hands of her rapists, Chiron and Demetrius, leaves her with arms ‘lopped and hewed…thy body bare’ and ‘her tongue cut out’, ‘ravished’.1 Through this act of extreme male violence, patriarchal social codes are inscribed onto her body; she becomes a ‘map of woe’ (III.ii.l.12), whose bodily mutilation represents the decay of Rome’s political infrastructure. Throughout the play, Lavinia is determined completely by the men around her, who seek to seize her body as their territory, regardless of her compliance. Bassianus, upon accusation of sexual misconduct, declares ‘rape, call it you, to seizeth but my own?’(I.i.l.280-281). The verb ‘seizeth’ in the latter sentence accentuates the notion of Lavinia being little more than an object of ownership; she is seized as property, never escaping male domination. As Eisaman Maus argues, at no point ‘is Lavinia’s consent an issue: she becomes the property of whoever happens to carry her off by force.’2 It was not until after the Act of 1597 that ‘a woman’s body was legally understood as being her own possession and not that of her nearest male relative’3. Before this, a woman’s body was seen as merely an extension of their husband; A husband’s role was to ‘govern her [the wife] in all duties that properly concern the state of marriage, in knowledge, in wisdom, judgment, and justice.’4 Conduct books that circulated in the Elizabethan era, such as John Dod and Robert Cleaver’s A Godly Form of Household Government, proved incredibly popular in endorsing the notion of the woman as merely an object to be owned and guided by her husband. Titus Andronicus, written around 1593, can therefore be viewed in light of Elizabethan views of rape as an act committed against the male patriarch.

Yet Lavinia’s physical rape also inscribes her into Roman history; she is one of a number of rape victims associated with Ancient Rome. Perhaps the most prolific of these is the tale of Philomena within Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Lavinia’s rape is based upon this classic tale, in which Philomena is raped by brother-in-Law, King Tereus, and maimed by having her tongue cut out. It is only upon weaving a tapestry that illustrates her barbarous rape that the truth is revealed.5 Lavinia’s tale can clearly be read in light of this; As Eisaman Maus continues to argue, ‘Lavinia’s story, then, is an amalgam of classical rape narratives. Her terribly mutilated body condenses a long history of sporadic violence against women into a single, intensely imagined brutalization.’6 Even in her horrific personal rape, then, Lavinia becomes homogenised into a history of violent female oppression; she becomes indistinguishable from other rape victims, claimed and historically conquered through her bodily torment. Lavinia’s rape, however, and subsequent dismemberment acts in turn as a metaphor for the penetration of Titus’s own familial territory, which is entirely obliterated by the end of the play. As Peter Stallybrass remarks, ‘unlike most property, this property [the woman] can bring dishonour to the landlord even as he possesses it.’7 In Lavinia’s grotesque deflowerment, Chiron and Demetrius defile Titus’s own property, invading his territory as father and protector. It is this territorial invasion that sets Titus’s revenge in motion, accentuating the importance of the female body as a symbol of the family.8 Once damaged, Lavinia has no functional role; her body, once seen as a way of attaining power and prestige through marriage, is useless to the Andronicii family. She is told to ‘die’ along with her father’s ‘shame’ (V.iii.l.45-46), emphasising her use only as a physical form and an objectified territory. In death, as in life, she becomes nothing more than expression of the territorial claims imposed on her by the surrounding male figures.

References

Featured Painting: Samuel Woodforde, Titus Andronicus: Act II, Scene III, Tamora, Lavinia, Demetrius and Chiron, 1793, Oil on Canvas, 72.5 x 58cm, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Warwackshire, UK.

1 William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, II.iii.16-18, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt (New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). All further references to Titus Andronicus are to this edition.

2 Katharine Eisaman Maus, ‘Titus Andronicus: Introduction’ in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt (New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), pp.399-407, p.404.

3 Lisa Walters, Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p.231.

4 Robert Cleaver, ‘A Godly Form of Household Government: For the Ordering of Private Families’ in Sexuality and Gender in the English Renaissance: An Annotated Edition of Contemporary Documents, ed. by Lloyd Davis (Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 1998), pp.183-212, p.194.

5 See Ovid, Metamorphoses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

6 Katharine Eisaman Maus, ‘Titus Andronicus: Introduction’ in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt, pp.399-407, p.404.

7 Peter Stallybrass, ‘Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed’ in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret W.Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan and Nancy J. Vickers (The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1986), pp.123-145, p.128.

8 Revenge in Titus Andronicus becomes entirely based on the female body; this is shown literally through the rape of Lavinia and the subsequent invasion of Titus’s familial territory, yet more literally through Tamora. As the mother of Chiron and Demetrius, Tamora literally births the avenging actions of the play. Her role as a mother literally positions her as a sexually fertile and reproductive body, in the same way as Gertrude in Hamlet.

Written by Steph Reeves
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

The Representation of the ‘Monstrous Feminine’ in The Monk

‘Every moment convinced him
of the astonishing powers of
her mind: but what she gained
in the opinion of the man, she
lost with interest in the affection
of her lover.’ (p.232)

Throughout Gothic tradition and, most interestingly, the Gothic fiction of the Romantic Age, concepts of the monstrous-feminine are inextricably linked with masculine fears of unveiled female sexual identity. More specifically, the female gender’s characterisation as both dangerous and horrifying is inextricably linked to notions of the sexually independent female. These fears, rooted in rigid patriarchal constructs of eighteenth and nineteenth-century British society, come to embody the portrayal of women in romantic Gothic texts. Masculine fears of female sexuality are prolifically highlighted in the characterisation of Matilda in The Monk; in Lewis’s 1796 tale of ‘Gothic Horror’, Matilda subverts, and subsequently comes to threaten, stereotypical gender binaries by acting on the urges arising from her burgeoning sexuality. To gain proximity to Ambrosio, Matilda adopts the masculine disguise of Rosario, who is described as a ‘fond’, ‘gentle’ and ‘submissive’ male youth.1 However, in describing Rosario in this manner, Lewis clearly evokes character traits believed to be possessed by the ‘ideal’ woman, as conceived by patriarchal teachings on womanhood. These teachings were emphasised in works such as Coventry Patmore’s 1854 The Angel in the House. In the poem, Patmore ‘idealised women as devoted, docile wives and mothers; paragons of domesticity, virtue and humility.’2 Patmore declares ‘Man must be pleased; but him to please / Is woman’s pleasure; down the gulf / of his condoled necessities / She casts her best, she flings herself.’3 Although written some fifty years after the publication of The Monk, it is apparent that Rosario’s characterisation is based upon similar patriarchal teachings on the ‘ideal’ role of women. Ambrosio’s fondness for Rosario, coupled with his subsequent regret at Matilda’s metamorphosis, foreshadows Matilda’s contradictory and subversive nature. Her nature comes to be presented as both unattractive and monstrous. Upon revealing her natural form, Matilda immediately subverts patriarchal gender ideals by demonstrating to Ambrosio ‘the astonishing powers of her mind’ (p.232) and indulging in her own unconcealed sexual desires. As Lewis reveals, ‘[…] she assumed a sort of courage and manliness in her manners and discourse but ill-calculated to please him [Ambrosio]. She spoke no longer to insinuate, but command: he found himself unable to cope with her in argument, and was unwillingly obliged to confess the superiority of her judgment’ (p.231/232). In the use of the verb ‘command’, coupled with ‘superiority’, patriarchal social structures are shown to have been subverted. Ambrosio, once superior to the ‘submissive’ Rosario, is placed in a subordinate position to Matilda. This positioning, however, is refuted by Ambrosio. As Lewis writes, ‘what she gained in the opinion of the man, she lost with interest in the lover’ (p.232). In Ambrosio’s response to Matilda’s subversive nature, it is apparent that he is threatened by Matilda’s adoption of such androcentric traits. Her empowerment threatens his superiority, emasculating his sense of power and subsequently undermining patriarchal teachings of masculine authority.

It is the threat that Matilda poses to ordained patriarchal social structure that leads to Ambrosio’s fear of Matilda. Her evident sexual identity, as well as her growing independence, come to be described in terms that evoke horror and fear. As Paul Poplawski argues, Lewis’s novel ‘represents the male horror of an uncontrolled female sexuality.’4 This ‘male horror’ is demonstrated through Lewis’s physical descriptions of Matilda. In the novel, Ambrosio finds himself awestruck not only by her beauty, but also her striking similarity to his beloved painting of the Madonna. Matilda is described as possessing ‘the same exquisite proportion of features, the same profusion of golden hair, the same rosy lips, heavenly eyes, and majesty of countenance’ (p.81). At first glance, in possessing ‘golden hair’, ‘rosy lips’, and ‘heavenly eyes’, Matilda finds herself aligned with a Romantic ideal of beauty. However, this notion of Romanticist beauty is almost entirely superseded by the Subliminal undertones prevalent throughout the description. In an alignment with the Madonna, Matilda’s beauty is colluded with the ethereal; the semantic field of the celestial serves to elevate her above mankind. In this elevation, Heiland contends that ‘Matilda’s beauty has paled in light of the increasingly sublime power of her sexuality’.5 As a result of Ambrosio’s fear, Matilda’s beauty is replaced with a combination of awe and terror. As Edmund Burke’s work on the Sublime theorised, ‘Sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small; beauty should be smooth, and polished […] the great ought to be dark and gloomy.’ As he concludes, ‘they [Beauty and the Sublime] are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one being founded in pain, the other pleasure.’6 As Lewis’s description demonstrates, Matilda is far removed from Burkean notions of beauty. Her elevation and power lead to Ambrosio’s ‘amazement’ (p.81), this being, along with astonishment, ‘that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.’7 In a collusion with the Sublime, unbridled female sexuality thus becomes a force that is viewed with horror.

References

Featured Painting: Cornelis Van Haarlem, A Monk and a Nun, 1591, Oil on Canvas, 116 × 103 cm, Franz Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands.

1 For more information on the ‘monstrous-feminine’, see Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 2012).

2 Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Classics, 2008), p.232. All further references to Lewis’s text are to this edition.

3 British Library, ‘Introduction’ to The Angel in the House. Available at http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/coventry-patmores-poem-the-angel-in-the-house [Accessed 26th March 2017].

4 Coventry Patmore, ‘Angel in the House’, quoted in Joseph Bristow, ‘Coventry Patmore and the Womanly Mission of the Mid-Victorian Poet’ in Sexualities in Victorian Britain ed. Andrew Miller and James Eli Adams (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp.118-140, p.122.

5 Paul Poplawski, English Literature in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008), p.363.

6 Donna Heiland, Gothic & Gender: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2004), p.38.

7 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: J. Dodsley Publishers, 1767), p.237-238.

8 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, p.95.

Written by Steph Reeves
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

A few words from the Creator

I decided to create this blog after graduating from Cardiff University with a First-Class Honours degree in English Literature. Having always loved the Arts, I decided that I would translate this love only into further postgraduate study, but also into sharing and publishing my ideas on a public platform. With publication becoming ever more competitive and graduates finding it increasingly difficult to get their views expressed through more traditional avenues of publishing, I decided to create a multi-authored blog that has content created by a series of regular contributing writers. This not only gives the blog a large variety of content, but also allows for both a greater diversity of opinion and a way for our views to be broadcast to a wider audience.

It is my great wish that this blog will prove (hopefully!) to inspire a range of people, from the casual reader to the academic, to view the primary works used in our discussions in new ways. Along with the other members of the team here at The Literature Blog, I hope you will enjoy the blog posts that will be featured over the coming months. To keep up to date, please feel free to hit the follow button. And from all of us here, welcome to The Literature Blog!

Written by Steph Reeves
© The Literature Blog, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome!

Welcome to The Literature Blog, and to our very first blog post! Founded and written by academics that have graduated with Bachelor of Arts degrees, we aim to provide you, the reader, with insightful and interesting commentary on works of Literature, Philosophy and Art.

The blog will soon have a number of regular contributing writers with specific interests that span the breadth of time periods, genres, and critical theories. It is our hope that, in doing so, we will not only inspire new ways of perceiving philosophical, literary and artistic works, but also inspire the next generation of critical thinkers.

Please check back in on us as we continue to develop this site and, if you wish to be kept up to date with our future posts, feel free to hit the follow button!