Review of "The Caucasian Chalk Circle"

First thing first, I'm aware that the picture of this book is of startlingly appalling quality. However, as England has become a seat of darkness already this Winter, there's only a very small time period in which decent photos can be taken. As I'm really conscious at the moment of how long it's been since I've written something (over a week, whoops) I really wanted to get this out today, so we'll have to deal with the poor quality picture. Hey, at least it matches the battered copy my student loans graced me with right? 

Anyway, let's talk about the play. Although I should have already read some Brecht, my general lack of motivation (aka laziness) as a first-year student meant that I *cough* overlooked reading Mother Courage and Her Children. So, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is really my first experience of reading Brecht. I have to say, I massively enjoyed it. If you haven't read any, or really feel like reading something that will make you ask questions about modern life this play is brilliant.The quotation above is just a small sample of thought-provoking and often terrifyingly accurate analyses of modern life that the play contains.

The play itself tells you what's going to happen within the prologue, so I can't really spoiler anything, The Caucasian chalk circle, as narrated by Brecht, is a circle which is drawn around an infant when there is a dispute over who the mother is. The two women in question are asked to tug on the infant - whoever pulls him out of the circle hardest and fastest is the legitimate mother. However, there is a twist. Although the judge of the action states these rules, the real mother is in fact the one who lets go - she cares about the child enough to choose his safety over her emotional attachment to him.

The plot follows the story of Grusha, a servant girl working for a governor and his wife. There is a revolt in the city they live in. The governor is killed and the wife, in her haste to save her dresses, runs away and forgets their infant son, Michael. Grusha runs away with the baby, pursued by soldiers who want to kill him. She eventually reaches her brother's house, but her safety is not secured there....

The second half of the plot sees Azdak, a simple man, become a judge during a revolution. Almost like a Robin Hood-esque character, he has a distorted sense of justice, which for once doesn't help the rich and powerful!

There's so many things that could be said about this play that I'll just never be able to articulate. So, I'll just give a brief account on my thoughts, There is a really interesting interplay between the role of women in capitalist society and commodities. Grusha herself is set up to be a commodity from the start: she is a servant, whose sole worth in the mind of her employer is her ability to follow instructions and perform certain tasks with accuracy. She is then further commodified in her ability (or lack thereof) to produce milk for the infant. She views her breast as something that exists to produce milk, but it sadly serves as a reminder to the reader that she is unable to mother the baby on a physical as well as an emotional level. 

There are many provocative moments in the play. I'm not going to bore you, but some of the most potent aspects I found were the connection between the exchange of money and sexual acts/sexual presence, and the idealist understanding of socialist principles. 

What did you guys think? Have you read it?

Love and Light

Steph

Analysis of Dubliners in the context of Modernity and the Surreal

I’m going to talk a little bit about the book in general and then move to look at what I think are its two most important chapters: Eveline and The Dead in a bit more detail. Dubliners, published in 1914, is made up of 15 chapters which are in themselves separate stories. Written in a naturalistic style, the book serves as a map of middle class Dublin. It’s not a Dickensian novel with a great number of characters whose lives intersect, but each story takes place in Dublin without impacting upon the other stories. Thus, just through the structure of the novel, Joyce highlights the alienation central to bourgeois society. These characters aren’t even aware of the existence of the characters of the other chapters, nor do they particularly care a great deal about those who are a part of their story.

Joyce wrote Dubliners when Ireland was struggling to create a definitive identity – the nationalist movement was at its peak, but unity within Ireland would be required to succeed in breaking away from British control. Clearly change was needed, and radical change at that. The majority of the stories in the book highlight the cyclical nature of life in Dublin at the time. Eveline longs to break away from her life of domestic drudgery, but avoids doing so at the very last minute, Jimmy from “After the Race” spends his time get into more and more debt and making the same bad choices as he did when he was a boy, and so on.

Joyce appears to be calling for traditional Irish class-structured society to be overhauled. This is incredibly potent in “The Dead”. Gabriel is the only character in the novel to voice his frustration with the current state of things when he exclaims “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it”. He speaks out about the new educated generation who are going to be a force for change in the country. When he does this, the distinction between him and the traditionalists and him and radicals is made clear: he makes a speech about this new generation of new principles, but condemns it as a movement away from traditional values such as hospitality. However, by voicing this movement in itself he raises awareness of it to both the reader and his own audience. Importantly, Gabriel chooses this speech so that it will be appropriate for the members of the class which he understands to be beneath him. Thus, perhaps Joyce is indicating that this “new generation” is vital for the working class to see progress happen. At this point I think the reader has to ask him or herself whether this “new generation” is to be found in the book. The youngsters we meet are often unable to throw off the weight of societal expectations and the influence of their elders. For example, the first person narrator in “the sisters” has an unexplained relationship with a priest, who is evidently a very influential force for the young boy. Perhaps one could read into this the “hyper-education” which Gabriel speaks off. The boy has learnt about a great many religious doctrines as a child and questioned them – this could lead to deeper questioning as he grows older and the potential to throw off religious concerns.

The other story which I’m going to talk about in a bit of detail here is “Eveline”. On a purely structural level, this story is striking and marks a dramatic change in the progress of the book. It’s the first story with a third person narrator, the first to focus on a female protagonist, and the only story to have an eponymous protagonist. Ironically, Eveline herself is a rather selfless figure, abandoning her hopes of love and happiness abroad in order to look after her family. Unlike Gabriel, Eveline is a figure of stasis in the novel. She has the chance to escape Ireland, and in fact knows that her life will only progress if she goes there, yet she is held back by the bonds of tradition. In this way I think we can see Eveline as a synecdoche for Irish unionists, and her father as a figure for tyrannical Britain. She seeks to break away from this domineering presence who has been abusive in the past, but clings to the pleasant memories of the past and fears abandoning her former life for the sake of independence. The reader is aware that she is making a mistake – she sacrifices her freedom because she deems her father not responsible for himself and her family. Her life of endless repetition of submission serves as a warning for the people of Ireland.

Now I’m going to talk a little bit about the book in relation to the reading we’ve done over the past two weeks. A quote from Marinetti’s “The Futurist Manifesto” struck home about what Joyce appeared to be getting at: “up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility” – Joyce revolts against this (although not quite in as extreme a manner as Marinetti does) as Dubliners points out the flaws in the cyclical state of literature. Gabriel, who is arguably socially awkward and unaware of class friction and the endless movement which is part of the modern world, is also behind in his appreciation of art. In the Cubist manifesto, Apollinaire states that “real resemblance no longer has any importance”. However, Gabriel talks about painting an accurate portrait of his wife, calling it “Distant Music” as that is what she is listening to at the time. He has no interest in understanding the woman behind the surface, and so has no desire to create something abstract or surreal. Perhaps one could describe Gabriel as making a move towards surrealism as his story begins to draw to a close. Here we have him unable to combine his thoughts, or dreams, with the reality before him: he sees only the reality and only wishes to express that. When he finally talks to his wife and starts to get to know her, he gains an appreciation of the thoughts in her mind. At this point fears arise, seemingly from his unconscious, about not being the “best” man in her life. As they start to overcome him, he begins to slip into a dream-like world, in which a “vague terror” seized him and he begins to “pass boldly into that other world”. If we are to assume that he is not dying, then it makes sense that this “other world” is the state of dreaming, or a kind of voyage into his unconscious. He feels his “identity” dissolving almost before his eyes as this occurs. Here I believe for a brief time Joyce’s writing can be described as surreal. He has somewhat achieved a union between dream and reality in which nothing is known, and everything is immaterial.

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Review of "Woman in the Dunes"

Sorry about the poor quality photo, but the cover of this book isn't exactly the most vibrant in the world. Both Kobo Abe's writing and the cover, however, both speak volumes through their seemingly dull appearance. The Woman in the Dunes is hardly the most inspirational title, but it captures the essence of the writing in this novel. It plainly states things, but has a multitude of meanings behind. Take the title itself for example: the book really is about a woman in some sand dunes, but it's also about the struggle of women in general, and the exclusive state of modernity, which does leave some people fending themselves in the outskirts or "dunes" of modern life.

This book grew on me. At first I had no interest in hearing about the confused plight of Niki Jumpei, insect enthusiast, who gets trapped in a village in the sands whilst trying to find a new breed of beetle. His incessant whining and refusal to accept that he had been trapped against his will, got very irritating very quickly. However, like the infuriating buzz of an insect, I suppose, once you paid more attention to the situations in the book they became much more interesting. 

Niki enters this barren environment and comes across a village that remains in the sand dunes. As sand is always moving, more like a liquid than a solid, continual work must be done in order to preserve the houses in the village. He is invited to spend the night in one, in a supposed act of hospitality from the villagers, but once he goes down into what is effectively a hole in the sands with a house and a woman in it, he finds it is far harder to escape than he'd ever imagined ...

According to TIME magazine, The Woman in the Dunes is a "haunting Kafkaesque nightmare". Having read Metamorphosis I can say that I entirely agree with this comment. The sense of the uncanny in this book was astounding. This book was probably one of the scariest I've ever read. I'm not talking about gore or horror as such (and I've had my fair share of those kind of books - anyone else love the "Goosebumps" set as a kid?), but actual nightmarish terror. We've all had those dreams in which we're running or climbing and we just can't escape. We think we're making progress, but we're not, and eventually a sense of panic overcomes us. This scenario is played out over and over again for Niki, but this time it isn't a dream. 

Even though Niki is the main character, the woman in the dunes is far, far more interesting. The fact that she isn't named struck me: she has no name because Niki, who pretty much controls the narrative, never asks her. He's happy enough to blame her for his struggles and to have sex with her, but connecting with her on an emotional or personal level? Pffft, why would be bother? I think this raises a lot of issues about gender relations in the modern world, and how we should deal with sex. Having said that, I've been researching the Communist Manifesto at the moment (for uni, it's hardly my idea of a "fun read"), and it made me think about the impact of capitalism on the world of the novel. So, if you're going to read it, it adds just that bit of extra depth to the meaning of the book if you do think about that.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x