Ad Astra Issue 3 Autumn - Winter 2014

AD ASTRA A Journal of Aspiration and Achievement

Issue 3 - Autumn 2014

Front cover: Artwork by Eve Althaus

Acknowledgements Executive Editor: Production and Copy Editor: Art Editor: Cover Art: Design & Printing:

Kat Pugh Graham Gardner Dora Wade Eve Althaus NHA Asssociates Ltd

An online version of this journal is available at www.stmaryleboneschool.com.

Ad astra is wholly owned and produced by The St Marylebone C.E. School. Copyright in text and images resides with the individual authors and creators of those works.

The St Marylebone Church of England School is a charity and an academy trust company, limited by guarantee, and registered in England and Wales.

Company number: 7719620. Registered office: 64 Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 5BA.

AD ASTRA Issue 3 - Autumn 2014

Contents Artwork by Marco Pini ii List of Contributors iii Artwork by Phoebe Clothier iv Artwork by Uccella Khan-Thomas vi About AD ASTRA Kathryn Pugh vii Artwork by Eva Barnett viii Introduction to Issue 3 by Graham Gardner ix Artwork by Evangeline Baldwin x The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy by Elena Ware 1 Connection and Disconnection in Mrs Dalloway by Eliza Frayn 3 Artwork by Maya Baker 6 Artwork by Indigo Pole 8 Re-creative Writing: A Clockwork Orange

by Tilly Shoul 9 Artwork by Anna Dean 10 Textiles by Henrietta Dent 12 Militancy and Female Suffrage by Rose Lasko-Skinner 13 Artwork by Eliza Darby 16 Opinion in Translation: Life in 2050 by Heather Ampadu-Taylor 18 Artwork by Madeleine Eve Monnickendam 20 Diaries as Art? The work of Dieter Roth

by Mary Higgins 21 Artwork by Florence Webb 26 The Virign/Whore Dichotomy by Kavita Desai 27 Artwork by Leanne Commins 28 Artwork by Mackenzie Westwood 30 Special Focus: The 2014 ARTiculation Prize

by Birte Meyer 31 Textiles by Hannah Still 32 Sou Fujimoto’s ‘Final Wooden House’ by Anna Vlassova Longworth 33

Artwork by Florence Webb Artwork by Ayantu Erana Le Corbusier’s ‘Unité d’Habitation’ by Eva Barnett Artwork by Helena Moock Jean–Baptiste Carpeaux’s ‘Ugolino and His Sons’ by Tilly Shoul Artwork by Evangeline Baldwin Antoni Gaudì and the Sagrada Familia by Maya Colwell Artwork by Johnny O’Flynn Artwork by Uccella Khan-Thomas Entrapment, Escape and Transcendence by Rachael Nagle Artwork by Madeleine Eve Monnickendam Textiles by Charlotte Elvin The Imagination: Good or Evil? by Mary Higgins Opinion in Translation: Euthanasia by Tajmila Chowdhury Textiles by Hannah Still The Pain of Human Limitations by Anna Dean Artwork by Eva Barnett Artwork by Anna Dean The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy by Eliza Frayn Artwork by Marco Pini Photographs by Dora Wade Concluding Commencement by St Marylebone Dance Company Photograph by Dora Wade The Laws of Nature and Moral Responsibility

by Oliver Joncus Artwork by Columba Williams Leonora Carrington by Anna Dean

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Artwork by Marco Pini

List of Contributors EVE ALTHAUS is studying History, Art, French and German.

HEATHER AMPADU-TAYLOR studied French, Classics and Economics.

EVANGELINE BALDWIN is studying Biology, Maths, Chemistry and Art.

MAYA BAKER studied Art, Religious Studies and History. She is now reading Religions and Theology at Manchester.

EVA BARNETT is studying Art, Maths, History and Physics. She plans to read Architecture at university.

TAJMILA CHOWDHURY studied Chemistry, English, Spanish and Mathematics.

She aims to read English at university.

PHOEBE CLOTHIER is studying Art, English, History and Music Technology. She aims to study English, potentially with History or Art History at university.

MAYA COLWELL is studying Music, German, Chemistry and Maths and aims to study either Music at Cambridge or Music with Italian at Bristol.

ANNA DEAN studied Art, Drama and English Literature. She is now reading English Literature & Drama at Queen Mary.

HENRIETTA DENT studied Art, Drama and Textiles.

KAVITA DESAI studied English, RS and French. She aims to study French at the University of London Institute in Paris.

CHARLOTTE ELVIN is studying Classics, Psychology, Textiles and Drama.

AYANTU ERANA is studying Art, History, Psychology and English. She aims to study either Art Foundation or Psychology or Anthropology at university.

ELIZA FRAYN studied English, Religious Studies and Drama. She is now reading English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

MARY HIGGINS studied English, History and Fine Art. She is now reading English Literature at Oxford.

OLIVER JONCUS is studying Classics, Philosophy, English and Drama.

LEANNE COMMINS is studying Psychology,

UCCELLA KHAN-THOMAS studied English

English, French and Art. She aims to study Art Foundation and go on to university.

Literature, English Language, Music, Science, Additional Science, Art, Business and Textiles at GCSE. She will be going on to study at Sixth Form.

ELIZA DARBY studied Sociology, Art and Drama. She will be reading Anthropology at Sussex, potentially following an Art Foundation year at Camberwell College of Arts.

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Artwork by Phoebe Clothier

List of Contributors ROSE LASKO-SKINNER studied History, Geography and Religious Studies. She is now reading Social Anthropology with Geography at SOAS.

(continued)

TILLY SHOUL is studying Classics, Art, History and English. She aims to study English with Classics at university.

HANNAH STILL studied Art, Textiles and MADELEINE EVE MONNICKENDAM is studying Chemistry, Physics, Art and Mathematics. She is planning to study Natural Sciences or Physics at university.

HELENA MOOCK is studying History, English, Religious Studies and Art. She is likely to study Art Foundation and is considering going on to read Russian Studies at UCL.

English Literature. She has begun an Art Foundation year at CCW with a view to going on to a degree at either St Martin’s, CCW or Kingston.

ANNA VLASSOVA-LONGWORTH aims to study Art Foundation prior to reading History of Art at university..

ELENA WARE studied English, History and RACHAEL NAGLE studied Art, Classics and English. She aims to read English at university.

JOHNNY O’FLYNN is studying History, Art, Physics and Maths. He aims to study Art Foundation at Camberwell or Central St Martin’s before applying to university to either continue with Art or study Civil Engineering.

MARCO PINI is studying History, English, Psychology and Art. He aims to study Art Foundation and then Philosophy at university.

Biology. She plans to read Social Anthropology at LSE.

FLORENCE WEBB is studying English, Psychology, History and Art.

MACKENZIE WESTWOOD is studying Philosophy, Art, English and History. She aims to study Art Foundation before going to university, potentially to study History, Philosophy or Anthropology.

COLUMBA WILLIAMS is studying History, INDIGO POLE is studying Psychology,

Philosophy, Physics and Art.

Philosophy, Art and English.

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Artwork by Uccella Khan-Thomas

About AD ASTRA

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D ASTRA, simply translated, means ‘to the stars’. We could interpret this phrase as a declaration of intent, an invitation, an exhortation, even a command. But for us at St Marylebone, AD ASTRA connotes something more important: possibility.

As such, the phrase articulates a guiding ethos of St Marylebone. Every member of staff believes in the potential of every student here to reach extraordinary heights, and is dedicated to helping show them the way. Hence AD ASTRA: a journal showcasing some of the best of St Marylebone students’ aspirations and achievements.

Every piece of work in this journal bursts through the strictures of assessment objectives and examboard specifications. Testing and marking, though an integral component of teaching and learning in our increasingly competitive world, should never be allowed to obscure the importance of creation as a good in its own right, whether as an act of affirmation, of rebellion, or of self-definition. To simply file creative works behind exam-board coversheets with a ‘full-marks’ score on the front does not do them justice; even the tiny asterisk in A* is too monochrome and meagre.

Yes, the writing and art included here earned or will earn their creators points which contribute to a score on a list produced by an exam board and submitted through UCAS to universities which add their names to an undergraduate register. But these pieces are so much more than means to this end.

They are the work of students who have dared to question, to explore and engage with ideas and concepts, knowledge and experiences way beyond textbook margins, in the manner admired by William Faulkner, one of the great American men of letters: “At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance - that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight … to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.”

This too is entirely in accordance with both the St Marylebone ethos and the wider context from which the phrase ad astra is taken: “est ad astra mollis e terris via”: ‘there is no easy way from the earth to the stars’. Great achievements are not a gift; they are the result of great effort, diligence and persistence. We are celebrating here not only the heights attained, but the uncompromisingly aspirational hard work and application involved in getting there.

So as you read, gaze and learn, we hope you will be impressed by the quality of the work here.

Equally, we hope you will be inspired. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars, but the means to getting there are available to all of us. How will you reach “ad astra”?

Kathryn Pugh Head Teacher

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Artwork by Eva Barnett

Introduction to Issue 3

W

elcome to the third issue of AD ASTRA, St Marylebone’s journal celebrating aspiration and achievement over the preceding school year. This is the fullest issue yet, with a special focus on the presentations for the 2014 ARTiculation prize, all of which were of such a high standard that I was unable to choose between them and so decided to include them all.

Continuing the focus on visual art are in-depth essays on Leonora Carrington, a major figure in the surrealist movement and on Dieter Roth, who rendered his life into art.

For the first time ever and perhaps - given their prominence in the life of St Marylebone - not before time, AD ASTRA also features the performing arts; ‘Concluding Commencement’ creatively and dynamically explores our ability to be comfortable “within the gap” between those two states. This major collaboration between the Art and Dance departments earned a rapturous reception from audiences at its performance by the Marylebone Dance Company on its 2014 tour.

Another first for AD ASTRA this year is the inclusion of work from Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). Two students write in French and Spanish on, respectively, the likely consequences of technological advances and controversies around euthanasia; for those (including me) who are not fluent in French or Spanish, they have also very kindly provided translations into English.

Work from students of English featured strongly in the first and second issues of AD ASTRA, and this third issue continues that tradition. Three essays discuss, from very different perspectives, representations of gender in John Milton’s epic

poem Paradise Lost and John Webster’s revenge tragedy, The White Devil. Alongside this are essays on the themes of imagination, entrapment, transcendence and disconnect in literature, all of them written at an intellectual and conceptual level that many undergraduates would struggle to achieve. Likewise, a critical discussion of the significance of militancy in the campaign for female suffrage goes magnificently above and beyond the (already heady) requirements of A2 History.

This issue also features a wonderful essay from Philosophy on the relationship between moral responsibility and the laws of nature in the context of debate over determinism and free will, which is of sufficient quality to have been submitted for this year’s prestigious Lloyd Davies Philosophy prize, sponsored by Oriel College, Oxford.

As ever, the superb written work in AD ASTRA sits alongside student artwork which would grace the walls of any gallery. As ever, Miss Wade, as Art Editor, set herself the challenge of ensuring that the art “would not look out of place at Tate Britain”, and, as ever, our students have risen to and surpassed that challenge.

I am delighted to be able to introduce such a fantastic and diverse number of pieces in what is my final editorial for AD ASTRA. By the time you read this I will have left St Marylebone, feeling great sadness at what I will be leaving behind as well as a great sense of anticipation at the new challenges ahead of me. I have been privileged to serve as production editor of AD ASTRA and will always be profoundly grateful to the many staff and students who not only make AD ASTRA possible but also do so with such energy, excellence and good grace.

Dr Graham Gardner, Director of Independent Learning AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Evangeline Baldwin

The ‘Virgin/Whore’ Dichotomy in Paradise Lost and The White Devil Elena Ware

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he ‘Virgin or Whore’ dichotomy, otherwise known as the Mary – Eve complex, is a concept of women fundamental to men’s assertion of dominance over women in a patriarchal society. It is firmly rooted in the biblical portrayal of women and sexuality and continues to be prevalent throughout the 17th Century, when both Paradise Lost and The White Devil were written, up to modern day media and society. This misogynistic presentation of women can be seen exemplified through the blame put on Eve and her characterisation in Milton’s Paradise Lost and similarly in the treatment of Vittoria in The White Devil. During the 17th Century there was great literary focus on what it meant to be a woman and what her appropriate role in society was; this corresponds to the levels of misogyny seen through either objectifying or vilifying female characters in both The White Devil and Paradise Lost. Though both texts contain composite elements of the virgin – whore dichotomy, to what extent they are made explicit varies between the two texts; this could be due to the allowances from the forms of the texts, a play and an epic poem.

It is clear that both texts’ treatment of the female characters are not representative of women’s true characteristics and are generalisations, shown when Flamineo claims “women are like cursed dogs, civility keeps them tied up all daytime, but they are let loose at midnight” and when the narrator describes Eve’s subservience to Adam (men) as an

“unsupported flower […] so far from her best prop” when she is away from Adam. However it is important to consider how and why this dichotomy is explored in each text and what purpose it serves as a literary theme. In The White Devil, a play which at times can be comedic, Vittoria is consistently vilified and harangued by many of the male characters, namely Monticelso and her brother Flamineo, and is also used as a pawn, pandered, by Flamineo to aid his acquisition of wealth and social status. This objectification and belittlement of women is also seen in Paradise Lost when Eve is objectified through the Devil, and Adam elsewhere, constantly flattering her appearance - “thee all living things gaze on” - as though she is an object just to be seen and shouldn’t have her own opinions. Both texts display the woman to, in an ideal world, have a childlike and simple outlook, not questioning man’s motivation or word and in essence having a simple and peripheral existence.

However when considering this virginal simplicity in both texts, it appears that Vittoria is more enigmatic in her presentation as a character; as an audience we are limited to her speech and what other characters say about her. This contrasts to Paradise Lost as we are permitted full access to Eve’s thoughts and rational processes. Though both characters are persecuted for their actions, Eve’s decision to eat the apple and Vittoria’s adulterous behaviour, Eve comes across as the more vacuous and easily persuaded character and therefore more AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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simple and virginal than Vittoria. These two characters can be easily compared in their responses to verbose and persuasive language. Eve’s response to Satan’s illogical but convincing arguments is telling of her vulnerability and innocence. She falls prey to Satan’s sophistry and rhetoric and even begins, later, to mimic some affectations of his speech. She even deems Satan “far from deceit or guile” when previously Satan had been called “guileful”. Eve’s negligent response to the flattery of Satan fits Adam’s and the narrator’s opinion that she is “inferior in the mind/ and inward faculties” and subservient because she is a woman.

A similar response to deception cannot be found in Vittoria, however, and this is perhaps what leads various male characters in the play to deem her a whore, more complex and enigmatic. During her arraignment scene she prohibits the lawyer from speaking in Latin as she claims “I will not have my accusation clouded in a strange tongue”. In this scene she also comes across as the most level headed and truthful; she speaks in short sentences where Monticelso, in accusing her, outpours his vitriolic and misogynistic rage in long extended speeches.

Where Eve would be convinced by Satan’s meandering extended arguments, Vittoria is not.

This contributes to in my opinion a view of her as a wronged woman simply defending herself, whereas most of the male characters in the play are infuriated by her strength as a female. Saying this, however, Vittoria admits herself that in order to act in such a powerful way she “must personate masculine virtues to the point”. This goes some way to limiting our view of her as an empowered woman if she feels herself that it is only due to her mimicking a man that she can do it. This power that she displays contrasts starkly to Eve, a more passive character, pushing her towards the ‘whore’ end of the polar dichotomy.

An important contextual aspect to consider about these texts is why they were written and perhaps whether the misogyny was intentional to serve a 2

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purpose or not. The critic Janet E. Halley argues that “Milton was hostile towards women in his private life”; this could provide some impetus for his degrading presentation of Eve as a character. Though Milton would have clearly had to include some inherent sexism as his epic poem was based on Biblical writings, famous for their poor representation of women, perhaps his personal opinion towards women as part of his Puritan religious views tainted his portrayal of Eve as the mother of humanity and also the cause of the damnation of humankind. It seems unlikely that Milton would be parodying 17th century views on women as not only in his epic poem does he degrade women but he elevates men to a higher social status also.

Contrastingly it seems plausible that Webster, in The White Devil, aimed to parody the social constrictions of women in the 17th Century and the difficulties that they faced. One critic, Juliet Dusinberre, supports this argument in claiming “Drama from 1590 – 1625 was feminist in sympathy”. The medium of drama lends itself more easily than poetry as a means of parodying elements of society as it was accessible to the masses and relatable to. This furthers my claim that Miltonic misogyny may have been deliberately true to his personal beliefs as poetry was far less accessible to the general public at this time.

Overall, although both texts display different poles of the whore – virgin dichotomy, Eve innocent and virginal and later whorish and Vittoria a whore from the outset of her adultery, I believe Milton’s take on misogyny is far more entrenched and personal than Webster’s as it seems plausible that Webster could be satirising the modern society of the 17th Century. Both texts, however, are damning in their presentation of women and their mentalities and motivations; as Brachiano puts it, “woman to man is either a God or a wolf ” It is unsurprising for there to be such a dichotomy in literature of the 17th Century as inequality is still prevalent today, four hundred years later.

Connection and Disconnection in Mrs Dalloway Eliza Frayn

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oolf presents London in Mrs Dalloway as a great hub of unity; she explores the “ebb and flow of things”. However, despite this, the characters that Woolf depicts experience a severe disconnect with one another.

The cause of this disconnect is open to debate; it has been suggested for example that Woolf was writing about the disturbance of the First World War and the resulting social changes; it has also been suggested that Woolf was writing about social distance caused by the modern age of technology and communications, although this has been dismissed as too simplistic (Michael Whitworth, “Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Modernity”).

Whatever the reasons for the disconnect, it results in the struggle that all the characters experience throughout the novel to communicate with one another. Arguably, an exception is made for some characters as in a sense they do communicate by sharing similar thoughts and experiences. But as this is not recognised by the characters themselves, the characters are still not ‘truly’ connecting in the sense that E.M. Forster meant, through meaningful personal relationships. The attempt to connect is the premise on which the novel was written, and a pivotal point of the novel is the party which Clarissa hosts which represents a potential point of connection which is not achieved.

Characters are not connected with one another despite being situated in London, a capital city, the unity of which many characters recognise. Although many of the characters feel a shared affinity with

London, they do not feel this affinity with one another. For example, Clarissa feels extremely connected to London and by extension this enables her to feel somewhat closer to the people around her, she being “part of people she had never met.”

However this strong sense of connection also harbours the ability to drown; Clarissa almost feels she is swept away by London as she cannot make steadfast connections to people within it despite feeling close to them. This is reflected in how she reports on events she experiences with a profound sense of detachment and feels that “To walk alone in London is the greatest rest.” Clarissa feels, “Far out to sea and alone” and that it is “very dangerous to live even one day.” This sense of drowning could be linked to the rapid expansion of London in the 1920s which on one hand could be seen to bring an increasing sense of vitality and movement to city streets but on the other hand alienating as individuals felt increasingly lost in a rapidly changing and expanding urban landscape.

Even Peter struggles to fully capture Clarissa, despite their early intense relation before their estrangement from one another: “It was a mere sketch, he felt. That even he, after all these years, could make of Clarissa.” He is angered by her “impenetrability” and repeatedly asks, “tell me the truth”. As a character, Clarissa is particularly disconnected even though she constantly and consciously attempts to reconnect by hosting parties and being very aware of her presence on the earth and in society. She is described as a bird, “A touch of AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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the bird about her, of the jay” a fleeting animal, as not even her thoughts rest on anything or anyone for too long, making her near-impossible to connect with. The critic Robert Keily comments, ‘Throughout the day, [Clarissa] comes in and out of focus…dissolves and materialises.’ While Clarissa to some extent is dismayed by her lack of connection with others, she is also fearful of connection, because she prides herself on her independence. She protects this independence by remaining detached from others, a characteristic that has been linked with Woolf having a fear that her own personal identity could be repressed by close relationships, such as those within her own family.

It could be argued that despite their failure to connect emotionally, most of the characters in Mrs Dalloway are on one level connected with one another, possible levels of connection including biological, legal (marriage) and physical (lovers) as well as psychological and spiritual. For example, Clarissa is connected to Richard Dalloway through marriage (a legal connection) and to Elizabeth by blood (a biological connection). Septimus is a notable exception to this pattern because he never meets Clarissa and has no obvious connection to her; the one major connection which is shown is his relationship with his psychiatrist or rather lack of.

However, these physical, biological and legal connections do not lead to the characters feeling truly connected to one another.

Woolf seems to suggest that they are disconnected in a fundamental way (psychological and spiritual). For example, the legal connection that binds Clarissa and Richard Dalloway is essentially a façade as a gulf exists between them; even though they hold hands, they barely talk to one another and their words have little impact on each other. One of the most notable examples of this gulf is when Woolf depicts Richard coming to Clarissa with a bunch of flowers. The obvious interpretation is that these are intended as a sign of affection; however, Woolf undercuts the sense of connection 4

AD ASTRA - Issue 3

that this would bring by stating that he “carries his flowers as a weapon” to fend off the threat he feels from Peter.

Septimus’s connection with someone he never meets is in stark contrast to his connection to the psychiatrist, Holmes whom he spends a lot of time with. Holmes’ attempt to communicate with Septimus and by extension to fix him is the biggest example of failure to connect in the novel. The intimacy of the connection a therapist is required to make with their patient is the highest and more intense form of connection that two strangers can achieve, but the connection here is undermined because the psychiatrist’s belief that Septimus is essentially mad and needs to be ‘fixed’ means that he never really listens to Septimus and therefore can’t understand his view of the world. Consequently, Septimus despises him and never opens up to him.

Even though they are in the same room, they are not connected. Ultimately, this leaves Septimus “quite alone, condemned, deserted as those who are about to die are alone”.

Other characters without biological or legal connections to one another do make attempts to reach out and connect to one another. Woolf depicts a strong urgency for connection in the relationship between Elizabeth and Miss Kilman. It is clearly apparent that Miss Kilman desperately wants to have Elizabeth to herself: “If she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted.” This suggests an effort to connect; she has a hold over Elizabeth and the novel implies that the two women have an intense, even sexual relationship. Ultimately, however, Miss Kilman fails to connect because she is so inward-looking, desperate and bitter. Thus, in the café her key interest is in eating the cake in front of her than in Elizabeth. So despite wanting Elizabeth, she loses her.

Woolf also depicts a notable attempt to connect at the pivotal point of the novel: Clarissa’s party. As many of them have been friends for a long time,

Clarissa holds regular parties that appear to be a major part of the social calendar. These parties allow the characters to connect with one another both physically and through words. The parties might appear to be superficial and unimportant; both Richard Dalloway and Peter suggest that they are, Peter calling her “the perfect hostess”, meaning it as an insult; “she had cried over it in the bedroom”.

However, in the context of the lack of connection Clarissa feels to her husband and others, the parties are very important and significant, creating moments of real human connection and warmth.

The parties are in a way more important to Clarissa as it is her aim throughout the novel to bring people together in a world of disconnection. Indeed, by the end of the novel she is somewhat successful, Richard Dalloway and Elizabeth Dalloway do experience a connection at the end of the novel and party which is in contrast to Richard’s usual aloofness; seeing this and looking at the people leaving, Sally Seaton comments, “Richard has improved.”

Woolf also connects the characters through her use of free indirect style. Characters are connected through their thoughts and their experiences. This form of connection is most obvious in the case of Clarissa and Septimus, who never meet but share many thoughts and feelings. “Fear not the heat o’ the sun”: they both entertain this thought at different points in the novel completely independently of each other. In fact, Clarissa and Septimus could be described as doppelgangers of one another and are connected very intensely. They both when describing London and the ways in which they feel connected by it make reference to nature being “alive” and in particular choose to focus on the trees. Thus, the strongest senses of psychological and emotional connection in Mrs Dalloway are between two characters who never ‘connect’ on a literal level.

The sense of disconnection between characters that do ‘connect’ on a literal level is underlined by the scene in which several people observe a plane

writing out an advertisement for toffee. This shared moment could be seen to highlight connectedness between them; however, Woolf chooses instead to move between the spectators in such a way that suggests they are not ‘truly’ connected by the shared experience of seeing the plane, as each of them assumes that it is spelling different things; “‘Glaxo,’ said Mrs Coates…’Kreemo,’ murmured Mrs Bletchley… ‘It’s toffee,’ murmured Mr Bowley.”

Septimus as a character could be perceived as the most ‘disconnected’, as he is mentally disconnected from reality and other people because of shell shock.

Although he is in many ways abnormally sensitive to the world around him, and like Clarissa feels a sense of unity London - “And the leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body” – he is able to develop neither intellectual nor emotional connections with other characters in the novel. The one clear connection Septimus successfully makes is in the hat scene with Rezia. Septimus feels that he has made a psychological connection to Rezia, that he can “feel” her mind, but then he remembers that Bradshaw has said that he needs to separate himself from her. Rezia declares that she and Septimus will not be separated and that she will not let the Doctors take him away from her; she feels a slight connection and wants to maintain it. But she does leave him, very briefly, to take the young girl home.

In her absence, Septimus becomes disconnected from reality. However, despite this, Septimus should be recognised as the most connected character in the novel as the only physical attempt made to connect with the greater world in the novel is by Septimus, the disconnected man, always caught up in a world of confused delirium.

His suicide is indicative of his determination to preserve soul over body. However, even this attempt to communicate fails, as Clarissa, (his psyche’s twin) although acknowledging it, does not truly connect with it, returning to her party once more. “Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Maya Baker

reaching the centre, which, mystically, evaded them.” Through her parties, she aims to change the world yet she does not have the courage to do anything as radical as Septimus, making her attempts at communication doomed to fail from the outset and Septimus’s falling on deaf ears. Septimus is also trying to connect with or stay in connection with himself, and the only way of doing this, he thinks, is by escaping the people who want to disconnect him - “Holmes was on him… human nature was on him” - by killing himself.

E.M. Forster’s idea of the purpose of a novel was to ‘only connect’. Throughout Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf is showing failed connections.

Ultimately, the novel is about the fundamental failure the characters experience when trying to connect. Despite various characters’ attempts to make connections with one another, and the

biological and legal connections between many of the characters, there is no lasting emotional or psychological connection between any of them. This ‘disconnect’ is a key theme of the novel. Woolf is suggesting that some force, perhaps World War One, very recent history at the time Mrs Dalloway was written, or the traumas of the modern age, has shattered the world; it is in fragments; much of its former unity is lost (only briefly recaptured in London). As in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby Woolf through Mrs Dalloway portrays a broken world in which there is always distance between people and when there appears to be closeness, the ‘connection’ is always superficial (much like Clarissa’s (in)famous parties). When characters do connect, their connections are fleeting and fragile, easily broken.

In Mrs Dalloway, therefore, no-one is ever truly connected.

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Artwork by Indigo Pole

Re-creative Writing: Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange Tilly Shoul

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t was not long after, brothers, when I realized I had been on my oddy knocky for far too long, and so I ittied out real determined, with the purpose of finding myself some nice new droogies.

It was round near Taylor Place that I viddied some suitable nadsats. So over I ittied, and said: ‘Good nochy my fine brothers, how fare you?’

The bolshy one replied real skorry, ‘You’re that chelloveck from the gazettas, are thoust not?’

‘That is indeed I, brother’. Next to the three I had viddied, I noticed one very malenky, weakish malchick, who was blub blub blubbing all like pathetic.

‘What has thou here, brothers?’ I creeched, very like dramatic, ‘tears do not become thee, little brother’. The bolshy chelloveck guffed and threw his big rooker right deep in the malchick’s guttiwuts, making the grazhny little thing yeeeelppppp like a puppy and wriggle to try and get away. But I grabbed him as he scampered off, and pulled him by his luscious glory, razrezzing a rookerful as I did.

I swung him round round round like he was one of those puppets, dangling all like limp and helpless.

One of the other two chellovecks creeched ‘finish him off!’ But I didn’t much feel like getting krovvy on my nice new platties, so I let the little skoolbrat go, and watched him crawl away like a grazhny little rat. ‘Ah little ones’ I said, very slow and like dramatic, ‘it is not worth wasting thy time on something so malenky.’ They looked a bit like in awe of your humble narrator, so I got onto the

bench and like surveyed them from above. ‘Just follow me brothers, follow and I can show you the real horrorshow stuff.’

COMMENTARY The re-creative piece reflects A Clockwork Orange, as both the passage and novella deal with themes of violence, youth and control. As it is intended to be situated just before the concluding chapter, it also shows the development of Alex’s character as he moves towards maturity.

The idea of youth is something that Burgess constantly explores throughout the novella, and the language of nadsat, created to give youth a unique voice, predominantly characterizes its strong sense of identity. Bewildering at first, nadsat alienates the reader from both Alex and youth in general.

However, as we become familiar with the language, we feel a strong sense of involvement with the characters and action, particularly due to the constant ‘O my brothers’. In this passage, Alex similarly calls us his ‘brothers’, and himself ‘your humble narrator.’ This is reminiscent of the way he speaks to us at the very end of the novella, ‘remember sometimes thy little Alex’. These addresses make us ever more uncomfortable, as we feel like we have gone on the journey with Alex as his friend, and at points have certainly sympathized with him (and youth), particularly after Alex’s reformation.

The passage is situated just after Alex has been AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Anna Dean

‘cured’, and we simultaneously see this as a positive, seeing as Alex had been stripped of his character and free will, and negative, as he dives straight back into his terrible old ways. In the novella, we constantly ask ourselves the question posed by the Chaplain: ‘is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?’ We see from the horrific ways in which Alex is treated that imposing ‘goodness’ is immoral, but simultaneously see the brutalities that Alex and his friends commit, consequently wondering: is stripping these boys of their free will a fair price to pay for the safety of others? In the recreative passage, we see how this group of nadsats is attacking a weak, vulnerable boy, and Alex promises his new droogies that he will show them ‘the real horrorshow stuff ’.

We continue to question whether or not Alex’s condition after the Ludvico technique was justifiable as it prevented the innocent from being harmed.

Descriptions of violence as theatrical are demonstrated in the passage and the novella, adding to Alex’s powerful persona, and his actions demonstrate his belief that he should be leader. The description ‘I swung him round round round like he was one of those puppets’ makes the violence seem almost comical, and play-like. This is countlessly demonstrated in the novella, for example ‘down this blood poured in like red curtains’, as though the blood is curtains of a theatre. The idea of the boy being the puppet also represents Alex’s newfound control, as he is no longer being manipulated by the state, but doing the manipulating himself. Moreover, he walks straight over and speaks first, calling the nadsats ‘brothers’, as he did with his previous gang, and after getting

their silent approval, jumps on a bench to appear superior, and speaks ‘all like dramatic’ telling them to ‘follow him’. Not only does this show how Alex believes he should lead, but hints at the novella’s theme of religion, with the nadsats in reverence of him as ‘that chelloveck from the gazettas’ and he asks them to be his followers, as though he is a prophet who can show them better things.

However we wonder if there much truth in this promise, as in the concluding chapter, Alex seems to have found some level of maturity, looking to the future and the idea of having a son, and the recreative passage shows hints of this coming revelation. Whilst Alex demonstrates his regained love for violence, it is not quite the same level we have seen him commit earlier in the novella, nor described with the same relish. Previously, he loved the sight of blood, saying, ‘then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful’. In the recreative passage, he tells us he doesn’t want to get blood on ‘his nice new platties’, but this would have been unlikely to stop the Alex from earlier in the book.

Furthermore, in the passage he uses the excuse that the boy is too small to waste his time on, but previously he has attacked young girls, an old woman, and the ‘very feeble’ fellow prisoner. He seems to have lost a little of the immense passion he used to have for violence, appearing to indeed be ‘growing up.’

In conclusion, the re-creative piece captures Burgess’ themes of control, violence and youth, whilst touching upon questions surrounding free will. It also reflects the novella’s style of narrative and shows how Alex’s character has developed through to his revelation in the final chapter.

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Textiles by Henrietta Dent

Militancy and the Fight for Female Suffrage in Britain Rose Lasko-Skinner

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he suffrage movement was a lengthy colourful campaign that’s start and end lacks clarity. For the premise of my research I focused on an end date being the Representation of the People Bill 1918, when 8 million women won the vote. Three factors are widely cited as causes of this achievement: non-militancy, militancy and effects of the Great War. Within historiography the success of these factors is not clear-cut. While some such as Smith argue that non-militancy was most important, conversely Pugh and Harrison argue that militancy was vital for political success. Others such as Les Garner suggest that whatever the contributions of militancy and non-militancy, the impact of WW1 was the decisive factor in gaining female suffrage in 1918.

No historian argues that non-militancy was directly responsible for achieving female suffrage in 1918, which is perhaps why non-militancy is sorely overlooked in historiography. However there is argument over the utility of non-militancy. Wright argues that peaceful protest was indirectly essential, laying down a ‘fertile discursive environment, which enabled…militants to flourish ‘ which established female suffrage as a subject of mass discussion, for example in the form of a widely-read magazine the Common Cause and community-level debates. Pugh argues for the importance of non-militancy turning suffrage into a ‘mass movement…more difficult for the government to ignore’. In this way it laid foundations for success. This view is complemented

by Bartley’s discussion of the NUWSS, the most prominent non-militant suffrage organisation at this time. Bartley suggests that NUWSS liaison with

other social groups created ‘social homogeneity within the suffrage movement’ which resulted in a doubling of the membership. Smith in contrast argues for the importance of political liaison: the ‘NUWSS electoral alliance with the Labour Party was the key turning point in the women’s movement’ which in a different way laid foundations for success.

Wright and Pugh’s claims are substantiated by evidence of growth in support for female suffrage. By 1914 the NUWSS had 600 regional sub groups across the country. Moving across class boundaries in the early 20th century made the campaign almost double in size – in 1909 the NUWSS had 13,429 members; a year later, 1910, the organization reached 21,571 members. Although this would suggest a movement that no government could afford to ignore, evidence that might support the view that it translated into political influence is at best limited.

Smith’s view is compromised by the many previous failures of electoral alliance between NUWSS and government, for example the 1906 Conciliation Bill where the Liberals were unsupportive. As NUWSS leader Millicent Fawcett said in 1913: ‘it seems that shuffling and delay are all we are going to get from…Government’. This expression of frustration is significant because it is from someone who had previously championed the route of change through the established political system, and subsequently turned to directly challenging government in order to gain public sympathy.

It took another five years for a Labour Government to eventually enfranchise women.

Alliances were never ‘turning points’ in terms of AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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achieving political gain. This supports Wright’s view that non-militancy was an ineffective strategy: ‘paying mere lip-service to the cause was not enough and nor was any allegiance to any political party’.

The view that the methods commended by Smith and Bartley were inadequate is furthered by Strange who labels them as ‘too conservative and cautious’.

Similarly Pugh argues that non-militant methods alone were unsuccessful in driving reform: ‘until the suffragettes little significant progress had been made towards winning the vote’. These views are substantiated by the lack of political progress associated with fifty years on non-militant action.

However they are overly dismissive of the contributions made by non-militants. The balance of evidence supports the view of Wright and Pugh that non-militancy achieved political progress by proxy, strengthening popular support for suffrage and turning it into a mass movement. This made for greater receptiveness for later militant action and recognition of women’s role in WW1.

The utility of the militant campaign remains widely in dispute. Some argue it fuelled anti-suffrage arguments, whilst others believe it injected new energy the campaign. Sean Lang argues militancy ‘hardened attitudes against them in Parliament and the Trades Unions’, by proxy minimising political support. For example, this is Viscount Helmsley speaking in 1913: ‘The way in which…women… have acted in the last year or two… lends a great deal of colour to the argument that the mental equilibrium of the female sex is not as stable as…the male sex’. Mayhall outlines how militancy fuelled anti-suffrage arguments in wider society: ‘a minority escalated violence into forms of terrorism’. Harold notes how ‘during 1913 and 1914 more than 50 Churches were set on fire’. Acts of arson especially on the church lost public sympathy, especially Christians’ - the vast majority in Britain at the time; hence public support appeared to fall in 1912.

However, the NUWSS grew from 21,571 members in 1910 to over 100,000 members by 14

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1914. Thus peak membership correlates with the high point of militancy. This substantiates Smith’s argument that militancy temporarily ‘revitalized’ the suffragette movement. This view is aligned with Brain Harrison who contends that militancy was a ‘short-term tactical necessity born of the failure of legal and peaceful methods’. This is arguable on the basis that militancy rose following the failure of Government to carry out reform. Certain politicians at the time argued militancy proved women were not physically or mentally capable of the vote, a view comically encapsulated by one male supporter: ‘when men wanted the franchise they did not behave in an unruly manner of our feminine friends... they only burnt…three prisons, four tollhouses, and forty-two private dwellings… in a perfectly constitutional and respectable manner’.

Therefore such claims do not stand up to modern day scrutiny and seen in historical and contextual terms militancy could be justified as it was previously during Anti-Corn Laws protest.

Furthermore the view of Viscount Helmsley is clearly misogynistic, reflecting a desire to maintain the traditional male domination of politics and to avoid embarrassment of being outshone by women, which was seen by many at the time as being emasculated.

Hence the view of Sean Lang is deeply compromised, because he implicitly takes the side of establishment politics, presenting the suffrage movement as a political difficulty to be overcome. Mayhall must be acknowledged as aspects of militancy got out of hand and were damaging to the cause. However these acts were not necessarily attached to the movement; Smith describes them as ‘freelance’.

Although many did not agree with extremist militancy there was still widespread support for the ideology behind it. This is evident in there being more success during militancy than throughout the previous fifty years of campaigning, including growth in membership and political reactions such as the 1909 Conciliation Bill and 1912 Labour alliance.

This is unambiguously a result of militancy. Certainly

militant actions attracted both positive and negative media attention. For example Emily Davidson, who died a martyr to the cause still captivates public interest. Therefore the view of Harrison and Smith seems the strongest. The militant campaign drove the suffragette movement, gaining it more publicity and strength. ‘Collateral damage’ such as fuelling antisuffrage arguments and losing some public sympathy, argued by Lang, did not prevent the campaign growing in size and momentum.

Pugh and Smith appear unanimous in the belief that War entitled women to the vote, whereas Bartley and Les Garner suggest it forced female emancipation. Pugh argues, ‘Male prejudice against women melted in the face of revelations about their capabilities during war time’. A degree of credibility can be applied due to the huge growth in female munitions workers during the war. For example, in 1914 Woolwich Arsenal employed 125 women; this grew dramatically to 25,000 by 1917. Smith furthers this view, arguing with regard to women’s economic roles, the war ‘reshaped assumptions about gender and citizenship rights’. Les Garner directly criticizes Pugh and Smith’s view, arguing that the war was far more ‘complex than merely changing some men’s attitudes towards women’. He is backed by the fact that change in attitudes did not translate into membership of suffrage organisations.

While a mass change in attitudes should to some degree be reflected in growth in membership, membership growth decelerated during the war; growth was only 6,000 between 1914-15 whilst earlier in the decade it had tripled each year.

In terms of political change Smith, Marwick and Pugh glorify the ‘occasion’, suggesting women got ‘rewards for services rendered’. Superficially Lloyd George’s public comments support this view: ‘to give women no voice would be an outrage: it would be inequitable, unjust and ungrateful’. However, Lloyd George, as a politician, is responding to the public view and in glorifying their wartime work and emphasising the ‘gratefulness’ of the government is

trying to shift focus from women being unable to keep their jobs subsequent to working men returning from war. Hence this could be interpreted as the government being forced to pass the vote, because otherwise they would have been seen to exploit female work. Les Garner goes further, stating a ‘fear of revolution’ was the most significant driving force.

This assumption is credible as there was much unrest in Britain, first regarding the electoral system, where female workers and soldiers were under-represented, and in industry; by May 1917 1 ½ million working days were lost due to industrial disputes.

Bartley is partially aligned with Les Garner in the sense that the government were forced into passing the vote, but argues that this was due to the ‘renewal of militancy’. This argument is credible on the basis many militants had been assets during the war and to imprison them would have blackened the government image. However, in reality it is inadequate, as there had been no renewal of militancy. This was because most women deemed militancy inappropriate in the post-War era of reconstruction where the focus was on peace.

Militancy had stopped in wartime because former participants felt it was inappropriate, and the same view held during the aftermath. Placing militant efforts within a wider social and cultural context undermines Bartley’s argument.

Nevertheless, the argument that the government was reluctant to pass the vote appears more substantial, primarily because the 1918 Representation of the People Act ironically did not include female workers under thirty who were the ones the government claimed to reward. So regarding the driving factors within the war the evidence suggests Les Garner has the most viable view. Smith and Pugh give weight to Garner’s politically-focused argument, arguing that female abilities, highlighted by war, were a facilitating driving force behind socio-political change that meant the government were not in a position to continue dismissing female suffrage. In this way war AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Eliza Darby

removed obstacles for the suffrage campaign.

Although Smith and Bartley plausibly focus on collective contributions of militant and nonmilitant methods their view appears incomplete when considering wider socio-political circumstance. Despite Smith’s convincing argument for the importance of political liaison and Wright’s credible view that non-militancy made ideological breakthroughs in turn achieving reform, it is evident reform also came from factors outside of the campaign. Therefore Les Garner’s argument that War created unrest and weakened government position by proxy forcing reform is more substantial.

However, without previous campaigning women would not have been involved within the franchise reform. Thus the collective views of these historians produce a more rounded view. The view of Pugh complements Les Garner and develops the explanation of a combination of war and campaign in achieving reform. Pugh’s thesis is that the campaign itself drove a mass movement that could not be ignored after war due to damaged international prestige and economic decline. Thus Pugh appears most reliable, by placing the campaign in its wider context. Militancy was one of the driving factors, but WW1 was the main driving factor behind female emancipation.

Bibliography Bartley, P., Votes for Women 1860-1928, second edition, Hodder and Stoughton, 2003 Garner, L., Stepping Stones to Women’s Liberty.

Feminist Ideas in the Women’s Suffrage Movement 1900-1918, Heinemann, 1984 Harrison, B., Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists Between the Wars, Oxford University Press, 1987 Lang, S., Parliamentary Reform 1785-1928, Taylor and Francis, 2005 Marwick, A., War and Social Change in the 20th Century: A comparative study of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the USA, Macmillan, 1974 Mayhall, L., The Militant Suffrage Movement in Britain: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain 18601930, Oxford University Press, 2003 Smith, H., The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign 1866-1928, Revised second edition, Pearson, 2010 Pugh, M., The March of the Women, A Revolutionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage 1866-1914, Oxford University Press, 2000 Strange, J., 20th Century Britain, second edition, Pearson, 2007 Wright, M., The Women’s Emancipation Union and Radical-Feminist Politics in Britain, 1891-99, Gender and History, Vol.22 No.2, August 2010

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Opinion in Translation

La Vie en 2050: le Paradis ou l’Enfer?

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uand nous pensons de la vie en 2050, nous pensons la société des voitures qui flottent et des robots où la technologie est utilisée pour tout, rendant le quotidien plus facile, plus rapide et mieux. Maintes personnes diraient que ceci est leur idée du paradis où ils peuvent être paresseux et laisser toutes les choses à les robots et les gadgets, pourtant, un monde plein de la technologie pourrait être aussi l’idée de l’enfer de quelqu’un.

Si la vie en 2050 est un paradis, nous pouvons présumer que les remèdes pour les maladies telles que le SIDA, le cancer et l’infirmité seront développés dus au progrès en recherche et technologie puisqu’actuellement nous sommes déjà près de trouver un remède pour le VIH donc dans environ 37 plus années qui peut dire que ce sera impossible. Aussi, nous pouvons dire que les humains seront remplacés par la technologie dans soit le travail soit les relations ou peut-être les deux qui pourrait être bien pour les gens qui trouvent difficile de commencer les relations parce qu’ils sont trop timides donc ils ont des relations avec les robots qui ressembleront un humain mais sont conçus

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spécifiquement pour eux et bien pour les entreprises avec des travailleurs inutiles et chers.

Au contraire si la vie en 2020 est l’enfer, nous pouvons supposer qu’il y aura plus de suicides et un nombre plus élevé des personnes dépressives dû au manque d’interaction entre les humains qui signifie que les gens se sentiront plus isolés et solitaires. Aussi si la technologie remplace les travailleurs humains, nous pouvons nous attendre à une augmentation du chômage parce que les entreprise toujours choisiront les robots au lieu des humains s’il est possible car après avoir acheté le robot il n’y aura pas les coûts ou frais supplémentaires.

A mon avis, un monde où la technologie a pris la contrôle de tout et les humains rarement interagissent l’un et l’autre, c’est mon idée de l’enfer car dans une société tellement très loin de la réalité les choses comme le meurtre deviendraient acceptées, voire la norme. Et bien que, bien sûr, les remèdes pour les maladies terminales et l’infirmité aillent sauver tellement de vies, ils auraient les inconvénients par exemple si aucune personne ne mourait alors la surpopulation pourrait survenir.

Life in 2050 Heather Ampadu-Taylor

Life in 2050: Paradise or Hell?

W

hen we think of life in 2050, we think of a society of hover cars and robots where technology is used for all, making the daily routine easier, quicker and better. Many people would say that this is their idea of paradise where they can be lazy and leave everything to robots and gadgets; however, a world full of technology could also be someone’s idea of hell.

If life in 2050 is a paradise, we can presume that cures for illnesses such as AIDS, cancer and infirmity (disability) will be developed due to progress in research and technology; seeing as currently we are already close to finding a cure for HIV, therefore in around 37 years who can say that it’s impossible.

Also, we can say that humans will be replaced by technology in either work or relationships, or perhaps the two, which could be good for people who find it difficult to start relationships because they are too shy; thus they will have relationships with robots which will resemble a human but will be designed specifically for them, and good for

businesses with useless and expensive workers.

On the contrary if life in 2050 is hell, we can suppose that there will be more suicides and a higher number of depressed people due to the lack of interaction between humans, which means that people will feel more isolated and lonely. Also, if technology replaces human workers, we can expect an increase in unemployment because businesses always will choose robots instead of humans, if it’s possible, as after having bought the robot there will be no extra costs or fees.

In my opinion, a world where technology has taken control over all and humans rarely interact with one another, is my idea of hell as in a society so detached from reality, things such as murder would become accepted, even the norm. And although, of course, cures for terminal illnesses and infirmity are going to save so many lives, they would have disadvantages; e.g. if no one died, then overpopulation could arise.

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Artwork by Madeleine Eve Monnickendam

Diaries as Art? The Work of Dieter Roth Mary Higgins

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ieter Roth (1930-1998) is an artist famed for his remarkable willingness to expose all aspects of his intimate life to the galleryviewing public. His artwork is characteristically experimental and imaginative. Towards the end of his life, during the 1980s, his work became largely biographical. His exhibit at the Camden Arts Centre, London (17 May-14 July 2013) focused on this phase of his career – the diary years. The exhibit included a selection of his personal diaries, sketch books, table mats covered in impulsive mark making, a triptych of ‘clothes paintings’ and his video diaries. As someone who keeps a sketchbook and diary myself, it was the personal diaries that intrigued me most.

Roth’s diaries are exhibited in glass cases throughout the exhibition. They are mostly A5, hard backed and bound – built to endure weeks of intense usage. A few are open and their pages are stuffed with obtuse symbols and doodles. The ink has bled where there were once annotations so that the only legible, understandable things remaining are the dates printed in type at the top of each page.

Glimpsing these personal records of Roth’s life is a real insight into his habits as an artist. They reveal a fertile, active imagination and a compulsion to put pen to paper. However, I couldn’t decide whether the diaries are viable as artworks in their own right or merely of archival interest.

Diaries and sketchbooks are often included in art exhibitions to enhance the visitor’s understanding of the artist. The curators at the Fruit Gallery, Edinburgh Art Fringe have reversed this structure by naming the exhibit ‘Dieter Roth: Diaries’, so that as

a viewer, my conventional expectations were immediately subverted. It would seem the emphasis of this exhibit is not on Roth’s larger, sustained works but on his personal diaries. The spotlight turned on them produces a pressure for works that are usually classed as supplementary to rise to the role of artworks in their own right. This is the crux of the debate. Do the diaries succeed as individual works?

Or do they only highlight the reasons why diaries and sketchbooks are less well suited to display in galleries than their bigger sisters - the formal works?

Perhaps the most obvious stumbling block for a curator exhibiting diaries is the challenge of displaying the book format. The curating team at both the Edinburgh Art Festival and the Camden Arts Centre chose to display the diaries laid out in glass cases, neat rows of leather bound journals, some open, most closed. Of the few that are open, we are only able to look at a single double page - a tiny fraction of Roth’s incessant and obsessive body of work. There are obvious reasons for this decision. The pages of the diaries couldn’t possibly survive the curious fingers of hundreds of viewers, but if it means that most of Roth’s diary sketches are hidden, is it worth it?

After browsing a few of these inhospitable glass cases, I was impressed by the sheer quantity of work that Roth produced on a day-to-day basis but I longed to be privy to more of it. On the other hand, I may be missing the point of the exhibit. Perhaps the curators are less concerned with presenting Roth’s art than illustrating his relationship with it on a deeper level, his artistic philosophy. In which case, the diaries serve a valuable purpose by portraying how Roth interacted with art in its most AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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raw and fledgling state. By this interpretation, the sheer volume of books becomes important because the viewer can understand that Roth lived all his life through artistic means; was never caught without paper, never seen without a pencil.

Personal diaries act as a store house for an individual’s private life; after the death of the author they are often eagerly consumed by others. They promise confessions, secrets, hidden thoughts and these are usually recorded in written form. A sketchbook then, as I have previously understood it, is an artist’s practise paper, meant for quick pencil sketches, brainstorms and unfinished water colours.

But Roth’s diaries are not so easily categorised under one or the other of these labels…

Each of Roth’s diary double-spreads is an impenetrable work in progress; a splurge of inky brainwaves and doodles onto paper. As individual pieces, the diaries are intriguing – Roth has developed his own lexicon of shapes that he uses like his own secret visual language. I kept noticing the same spirals and patterns featuring repeatedly on his pages. As aesthetically compelling as these doodles are - as aesthetically intriguing as these doodles may be – they frustrate an outsider’s attempt to understand them, so they can’t act as literal records 22

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of Roth’s life in the usual way a diary would.

Although, you can of course interpret insistent shapes; Van Gogh’s congested scrolling skies are often cited as revealing of his mental state. Indeed, Roth called them his diaries, because he poured his memories and emotions in them for himself, not to be deciphered by anyone else. Despite being shown publicly, they retain an ambiguity.

The diaries are a window into Roth’s reeling imaginative mind and so they provide a dual function; both as diaries and as his emotional release. Diaries are necessarily, intensely private things. Roth himself didn’t choose to publish them; he had died from alcoholism by the time his son Bjorn decided they should be shared with the public. In any other situation, Bjorn’s choice to publish them might have seemed like a breach of his father’s privacy but the other works featured in the gallery were presented during Roth’s life and they are all equally characterised by his interest in the tension between public and private life and how to record it. Solo Scenes (1997-8) and Hourly Photographs (1978) are examples of how Roth achieved this using photos and film and both are as revealing as their names would suggest. From this interview with Irmelin Lebeer-Hossman in 1979 On Keeping a Diary Roth discussed how his drive to archive every moment of his life can be a burden: D.R.: “For me, it’s… it’s like a cancerous tumour, it’s basically an illness. An illness that I have. Now.” I.L-H.: “This compulsion to represent your entire life.”

D.R.: “Yes. That’s my terminal illness. It’ll probably be the cause of my death.”

In 1989, Roth was victim to panic attacks and depression and he himself described keeping his diaries as a form of therapy. Art therapy did not really exist for the general public in the 80s so it is especially profound that Roth draws this connection between his mental balance and his art. John Merton, a contemplative monk says; “Art therapy

can have profound effects in enabling you to get in touch with and express your feelings, while at the same time being stabilising, because you are handling physical materials.”

Perhaps there is an argument for diaries being more beneficial to the artist than the viewer.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychology professor, a diary is meant to be a source of ‘raw material’. Csikszentmihalyi expounds the benefits of creativity and argues that diaries help an artists’ ‘flow’ because they are ‘completely involved in an activity for its own sake’. So arguably, an artist’s consciousness of his audience could inhibit his creative freedom and make the diary-keeping a far less useful tool both artistically and therapeutically. However, Csikszentmihalyi is assuming that the sketchbook or diary is a preparatory exercise not a final result. Presumably, there was an element of the brainstorm to Roth’s diaries, at the very least they helped him develop his style but Roth didn’t expressly use them to develop ideas. His relationship with his diaries seems far more visceral and spontaneous than that.

I think that exhibiting artists’ seedling doodles serves an educational purpose because it sets great art in a humbler context. Some artists’ achievements can seem intimidating and unattainable and these first impressions aren’t always conducive to inspiring younger generations. Saul Bass, an American graphic designer, agrees; he says that only viewing the completed works of art can be an ‘unsettling perception for young people’. Therefore, I would argue that sketchbooks are valuable because they work to offset the polished mystery of the finished article. The can instead show the genesis of a great work. Although not plans per se, like many sketch books, Roth’s diaries are a testament to how daily drawing and free experimentation enhances development of an artist’s work.

With the advancements of technology, the artist’s relationship to sketchbooks has changed. Budding artists can now forge their career on the internet by

uploading their sketches to personal web pages, page by page. In my opinion, the blog format is a far more successful medium for displaying sketches because the curious browser can pick their own course through the thousands of sketches available to them without being chastised by a stiff gallery attendant. Because of this, an art blog succeeds where Roth’s exhibition falls short by being able to afford each diary page its own space and title – making each diary entry and individual art work rather than a mere accompaniment to other works.

France Belleville-Van Stone (1974 -) with her blog, Wagonized is a brilliant example of a selfpublished sketchbook artist. The internet has allowed her a career in art that would have otherwise been out of her reach. Now, she lives in New York City, draws every day in one of her precious Moleskines or on her iPad and attends the School of Visual Arts. She keeps a visual diary similar to Roth, featuring people and objects in her life that she likes and cherishes. Belleville uses her sketchbooks to record her daily life, but the appearance of her work differs wildly from Roth’s. Her sketches are far more detailed and realistic than his - she evidently sets aside considerable time and efforts for her daily sketch, because, unlike Roth, Belleville knows she is going to post her sketch on her blog for her followers to see. In contrast, Roth kept his diaries to himself so that he could confidently purge his thoughts and emotions on their pages without AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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fearing criticism. But does this privacy mean that Roth’s sketchbooks are more deserving of the title of ‘diary’ than Belleville’s?

For Belleville, the structure of a daily sketch may provide a certain therapeutic comfort, but the sketch book’s main asset is its transportability. Life drawings don’t generally feature in Roth’s diaries so accuracy is less important as he draws mostly from his imagination. Nevertheless, Roth had his coats altered so that each pocket could accommodate a diary. Evidently, both artists cherish the ability to make impromptu art as both have chosen to fuse sketchbook and diary in their little bound books.

Arguably, Belleville’s online presence robs her of the creative freedoms that Roth enjoys with his diaries. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would probably chastise her for sacrificing her ‘flow’ by publishing her entries online for others to see. She can be selfconscious; apologising if the sketch that day is particularly hurried or uninteresting. Belleville clearly feels a sense of duty to her followers to consistently produce high quality drawings for them to enjoy. In which case, the instantaneous and immersive nature of sketchbooks online might be the perfect curators’ solution because it gives the viewer unlimited access to the material but by the same token, less favourable for the artist’s own relationship with their diary.

Maybe even defeating the purpose of a diary at all.

Despite this, I feel that for purely logical, practical purposes, a blog or webpage is a better solution for displaying diaries because these forms allow browsers unrestricted access to the artwork without risking any damage to the original copy.

Independent curators, Marco Livingstone and Edith Devaney, in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts assembled an exhibition last year called David Hockney RA: The Bigger Picture in which they exhibited Hockney’s sketchbooks on interactive screens or in slideshows. Using these technologies in the galleries allows the viewer to see more content but is less satisfying than studying an original noseto-canvas because so much is lost in translation – 24

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the textures, true colours and size.

For example, Roth sometimes uses his diaries as scrapbooks; sticking in receipts and notes etc. He was fascinated by the trail of waste that followed him, so in the mid-70s Dieter attempted to record a year of his life by collecting and preserving all items of waste less than 5mm thick for a piece named Flat Waste.

These bits of detritus are kept in black ring binders, lined up on shelves like an archive. Only three are open for the viewer to flick through, but one can gently feel each object through its plastic pocket. This tangible relationship with the work would be entirely lost on a digital screen. Flat Waste is interesting to compare with Roth’s diaries because it too focuses on archiving a life. However, Flat Waste functions better as an art work than his diaries because the viewer is able to weave a narrative from the collection of junk and gather a portrait of his daily life merely from the waste he created. Flat Waste is a reminder of the insignificance of our lives, the monotony and fragility of it. Roth’s personal diaries are unable to produce such a clear artistic message as his thoughts and emotions morph from page to page and from diary to diary, without an overall concept to relate with.

The highlight of the exhibition is Dieter Roth’s video diary; Solo Scenes (1997-98). The work consists of 128 monitors lined up on shelves, each showing a different scene of Roth’s personal universe. He depicts himself in intensely intimate situations; on the toilet for example, or the harrowing scene in which Roth is visibly experiencing severe heart problems. Bjorn Roth, both Dieter Roth’s son and long-time curator, recalls how Roth “could not look at them (the video scenes), he was ashamed of them… this miserable old man, this miserable old life”. What does it say about Roth that he broadcasts moments of his life that even he can’t bear to witness?

Perhaps his intense emotional involvement with his pieces is what makes his art like a diary, but Solo Scenes is in my opinion a far more effective artistic depiction of his life than his actual diaries. Although many of his works address the same principle;

merging the line between life and art – Solo Scenes has a higher artistic worth because it allows personal interaction and, like Flat Waste, all the individual elements of the piece are linked by a cohesive concept in a way that his diaries aren’t. In Solo Scenes, each viewer is drawn in to have a relationship with the piece because each set of eyes takes a unique journey across the screens and sees different scenes.

We watch him as he moves slowly, coughs, blows his nose, works in bed, sits still for hours, reads, eats. All the while he is producing a steady stream of work. I think this is a better depiction of Roth’s immersion in art than the diaries because the footage is able to show how drawing shaped his daily life.

Arguably then, Roth’s diaries are accompaniments to his other more developed biographical pieces than art works in their own right. But I suppose that conclusion depends on one’s definition of an ‘art work’. If it is just ‘the production of artistic objects’, as the dictionary claims, then Roth’s diaries are undeniably works of art and indeed, it would be harsh of me to completely deny his diaries a right to that title. However, not all art works are displayed in galleries and I don’t think all art works should be.

Ultimately, Roth’s diaries were not intended for a gallery space and therefore they are not comfortable in one. They are first and foremost Roth’s intimate companions and they will never be as meaningful to a gallery visitor as they were to him. In my opinion, art has two faces; public and private. Most of the time art is enjoyed in a wider social context; provoking debate, attracting visitors and press attention, but sometimes art is best appreciated intimately. Roth’s diaries will never hold as much personal value for anyone as they did for Roth himself. Consequently, they are slightly deficient as art works in their own right because art in galleries should have an element of the communal and be open to multiple interpretations. I think Roth’s diaries can be art works in their own right when shown in the right context, but they are simply too specific and excluding to succeed in a formal gallery.

Bibliography ArtSpotter., (2013) Question Time: Jenni Lomax, Director of Camden Arts Centre, speaks about new Dieter Roth Exhibition, Available at: blog.artspotter.com/2013/05/22/question-timejennie-lomax-director-of-camden-arts-centre-speak s-about-new-dieter-roth-exhibition/ Belleville, F., (2013 - 2014) Wagonized: drawings

by Frances Belville-Stone, www.wagonized.typepad.com/ Dictionary.com., (2013) ‘art work’, dictionary.reference.com/browse/art+work?s=t Roth, D., (2012) Diaries, ed. Fiona Bradley. Yale: Yale University Press Dieter Roth Foundation., (2013) Biography, www.dieter-rothfoundation.com/biography/1980-to-1989-german y-iceland-austria-switzerland Dobke, D., (2004) Dieter Roth in America, London: Edition Hansjorg Mayer Gregory, D., (2008), An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers, Cincinatti, OH: HOW Books O’ Donnel, T., (2009) Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World’s Most Influential Drawers, London: Rockport Publishers The Fruitmarket Gallery., (2012) Dieter Roth Diaries, Edinburgh Art Festival Exhibition, fruitmarket.co.uk/ exhibitions/archive/dieter-roth/ Mind, (2013) Arts Therapies, www.mind.org.uk/ mental_health_a-z/7995_arts_therapies Royal Academy of Arts, (2012) David Hockney RA: The Bigger Picture, www.royalacademy.org.uk/ exhibitions/hockney/about-the-exhibition/ AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Florence Webb

The ‘Virgin/Whore’ Dichotomy in The White Devil and Paradise Lost Kavita Desai

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he virgin/whore dichotomy is a predominantly feminist criticism, regarding the limited role of women in literature; they conform to extreme stereotypes, either being portrayed as completely virtuous or sinful. These stereotypes were prominent during the 17th century in Britain, where Christianity played a pivotal role in society. The two most revered women in Christianity are Eve and Mary. It is from these two women that the stereotypes are drawn from; women are either responsible for all sin, like Eve in the initial temptation and downfall of mankind, or are seen as pious and virtuous like Mother Mary. John Webster’s The White Devil and Book 9 of John Milton’s Paradise Lost present their female characters as conforming to these limited roles. However, the study of female nature within the two works can be seen as breaking the conventions of the virgin/ whore dichotomy. Both works can be viewed as instead, an exploration of motive rather than a misogynistic portrayal of women.

Eve and Vittoria are the most conspicuous portrayals of female sinners in the two works. This is because neither can resist temptation and place their desires above all else. Satan plays on Eve’s desires in order to tempt her into sin. He argues that she “shouldst be seen// A goddess among gods, adored and served// By angels numberless”. Satan implies that to eat the fruit, and thus disobey God, will lead Eve to become “A goddess” which to Eve indicates that her position will elevate. The word “goddess”, moreover, has pagan connotations, meaning that Eve has primarily forgotten her duty

to the Christian God that created her. This, to Milton and other Christians, would be seen as a form of blasphemy; in being tempted by this argument, Eve rejects her Christian beliefs.

Moreover, Eve’s desire is to gain importance, to be “adored and served”. The words “adored” and “served” suggest that Satan is aware that Eve wishes to be revered by others and to be of greater importance in society. To Milton, this desire would have gone against the Medieval belief in the Chain of Being, which remained prominent in the 17th century. This doctrine described the God-given hierarchical order in the world which placed God at the top, followed by angels, men and then women.

Thus, in desiring to become “a goddess”, Eve rejects her place in the Chain of Being and as a result rejects her God-given role in the world. Therefore, Eve places her desire for power above her duty to God. To some feminist critics, this would demonstrate the sexist nature of religion; Eve has a valid reason for her desires, she desires to be equal and as valued as Adam. As a result, Eve is not a sinner, more a women trying to bring equality into the world. However, Eve does not just desire equality, she desires to be above Adam. She wonders whether in sinning, she can be “Superior” to Adam. Therefore, to a modern reader Eve cannot be seen as a fighter for equality as she herself desires to be “Superior”. Therefore, Eve can be seen in light of the ‘whore’ stereotype as she places her desire for power above her duty to God. Vittoria also desires power. However, as an audience member, we are only aware of these based on AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Leanne Commins

assumptions from the word’s of the male characters.

Flamineo “(whispers) The fair Vittoria, my happy sister// Shall give you present audience” and then switches to speaking “[Aloud]”. Initially his duplicity implies that he has something to hide and thus may be prostituting his sister without her permission.

However, when Vittoria employs the same duplicitous nature as her brother by speaking “[aside]”, the audience assumes that she advocates the adultery.

A common criticism of The White Devil is that Webster does not create a relationship between the audience and the female characters; we know them only because we know the male characters and their relationships with the women. This would have been typical of 17th century family relationships, whereby the men stood above the women. Women were viewed in light of their family; for example, arranged marriages were common and often based on the wealth and merit of one’s family. Thus, we only believe that Vittoria advocates her sinful behaviour because she does as her brother says. She herself never relays her own motives and intentions to the audience; she is merely a tool for Flamineo to achieve his desires. However, since attaining Flamineo’s desires will lead to the ascent of her family, it can be argued that Vittoria too is striving towards social selfbetterment/ status as well and is therefore a sinner Both Eve and Vittoria are blamed solely for their part in the ascent towards power and status in the two works. Adam blames Eve for their fall, stating that they would have “Remained still happy” if she “hadst hearkened to [his] words”. Adam asserts his authority over Eve too late. However, the act itself emphasises her sinful nature as she was unable to remain in her place in the hierarchy in the world.

This is what led to their downfall. Thus the behaviour of women has the ability to bring men

into sin as well. In the same way, in her arraignment, Vittoria is blamed for the sins of the male characters.

She is accused by Monticelso of being a “whore” and a “devil”, a description which shows that to Monticelso, Vittoria is the source of all corruption and the cause of the murders and adultery.

Brachiano, Flamineo and Marcello are excused from the trial whilst Vittoria is prosecuted for a crime which she technically did not instigate. Therefore, through the blaming of the female characters by the male characters, it is evident that the two works do not present societies in which people are either virtuous or sinners. Everyone sins, but it is just the women who are apprehended for this. It is what makes them human.

Hence, it can be concluded that Eve and Vittoria do have sinful traits. However, this does not mean that they conform solely to the ‘whore’ stereotype’.

In fact, the stereotype seems void as to be human is to be flawed, one cannot be wholly a sinner or a saint. It is thus not just the women who sin, it is just the women who the sin is pointed out and emphasised. Both writers interestingly, despite the clear misogyny that existed in 17th century Britain, give motives to the women for their sin; there is sin for a reason, not just because the characters are evil.

However, perhaps these reasons only resonate with modern readers who are now aware of the deprivation of rights for women due to women’s rights movements such as the suffragette campaigns in the early 1900s. Thus, to the writers the reasons themselves may be further evidence of evil; a wish to cause unrest in an ordered society. Whether one places more importance on the interpretation of the reader or the intention of the author determines to what extent the stereotypical portrayal of women is present in The White Devil and Paradise Lost.

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Artwork by Mackenzie Westwood

Special Focus - The 2014 ARTiculation Prize Birte Meyer, Art Department

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his special focus on the 21014 ARTiculation prize comprises the transcripts of speeches given by four St Marylebone students to an audience of their peers and a panel of experts at Clare College, Cambridge.

The ARTiculation Prize is an annual public speaking competition, designed to promote the appreciation and discussion of art. It is run by The Roche Court Educational Trust, based at the New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery just outside Salisbury.

The competition seeks to engage sixth form students, regardless of background or experience, with art and to develop their confidence and ability to express their opinions, thoughts and conclusions.

Each student is invited to deliver a ten-minute presentation to an interested audience about a work of art, artefact or architecture of their choice.

Adjudicators are asked to assess each presentation as a whole, looking at content, structure and delivery.

Our internal ARTiculation heats saw Anna Vlassova-Longworth, Tilly Soul, Eva Barnett and Maya Colwell competing for the opportunity to

represent the school.

Anna Vlassova-Longworth from Year 12 went forward to the regional heats at the Whitechapel Gallery on Thursday 30 January where she won first prize.

Following the regional heats, on 1st March we travelled up to Clare College, University of Cambridge, for the ARTiculation finals, adjudicated by acclaimed writer and artist Edmund de Waal, OBE, and an associated conference. We had an enormously enriching day, full of looking, thinking and sharing ideas about art. We all left with new insights and thoughts. Everybody there was taken

by Anna’s poetic and beautifully presented speech, which won her third prize.

We are particularly proud of Anna as she was competing mainly with private schools which all, unlike St Marylebone, have a History of Art department. You will be able to glimpse parts of Anna’s speech on the BBC2 programme The Culture Show; clips from this 30-minute documentary on ARTiculation 2014, ‘For the love of art’, can be viewed at bbc.co.uk/ programmes/ b03y48hn.

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Textiles by Hannah Still Modelled by Millie Holland Photograph by Zoe Tankard

Sou Fujimoto’s ‘Final Wooden House’ Speech written and presented for the 2014 ARTiculation Prize Anna Vlassova Longworth

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y name is Anna Vlassova Longworth and I am a year 12 student at St Marylebone School. I have been interested in Architecture for several years and have therefore chosen my piece to be a building called Final Wooden House by Japanese architect, Sou Fujimoto.

I first came across Sou Fujimoto when I visited the Serpentine Summer Pavilion last year. I was amazed by the beauty of the structure and had never seen anything like it before. This inspired me to find out more about this architect. Sou Fujimoto founded his architect firm in 1997 and since then has designed many imaginative buildings that incorporate both traditional and modern ideas within Japanese design. Inspired by forests, nests and caves, Fujimoto intended to create a summer pavilion of “constructed geometry” like a cloud or rising mist. This multi-purpose social space merged beautifully into its surroundings built from intricate latticework out of white steel. Fujimoto wanted people to interact and explore the site in diverse ways. This was definitely achieved as people such as myself clambered around the complex structure to find the best spot to sit. This idea of creative interaction with buildings is a concept used in Fujimoto’s Final Wooden House built in 2007, which I found when researching the architect and was blown away by the unique design of the building.

From the title of the house you can probably guess that it is made out of wood. But, Fujimoto has not just made a square house with straight panel

walls. He has done something far more interesting.

Final Wooden House is a cuboid shape made from solid rectangular lumber blocks laid horizontally and stacked up to resemble a half finished game of Jenga. When I was younger I would always make houses or castles out the jenga blocks and could never understand why this wasn’t the original aim of the game. So when I found Final Wooden House I immediately connected with the similarities between my playing as a child and his structure. All I could think was “wow, someone actually made it!”

This clever design allows the house to function without furniture. The exterior of the house and the placing of the blocks then turn into the interior of the compact building. The blocks form not only the supporting structure, but the stairs, seating, kitchen benches, interior space division and decorative elements. This means the house is always changing, with the occupant deciding where to sit, eat and sleep rather than the normal interior-fixed spaces dictating this for us. Fujimoto’s interior space flows from one functional area to another. By blurring the boundaries between internal and external, there are no rules with Fujimoto’s house. You can move where you want, when you want. This gives it a carefree and peaceful atmosphere. As a child I would often climb trees in Hampstead Heath near my house.

The interior of the building reminds me of this and how you have to search the different levels of branches to find the perfect spot to rest and take in the view around you.

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Artwork by Florence Webb

The constructed area of the building is 15.13 sqm and randomly stacks 350mm square lumber blocks.

Lumber is very versatile, so Fujimoto wanted to create a building that fulfilled the versatility of the material. He envisioned a space that preserves the primitive conditions of a harmonious entity before various functions and roles were differentiated.

This means that within the house there are no separations of floor, wall and ceiling. When you step onto a surface that you thought was a floor it could immediately turn into a chair or a table or anything that is flat. Fujimoto has created a living space where the floor levels are relative to ones position.

Inhabitants discover different ways of using their space rather than feeling prescribed to the various functions and spaces dictated to us by walls and level surfaces of normal houses.

Early Japanese houses had no separations between rooms; they were just an open space. As time went on paper screens were added to the household space to separate bedrooms and suchlike to give a tiny bit more privacy. Eventually, the paper sliding doors we often associate with traditional Japanese living space were added, called Shoji or Fusuma. The main reason fixed walls were not added to Japanese houses were because of the high number of earthquakes

that regularly occurred and still occur. The unfixed walls gave the building a chance to move with nature and not be as badly damaged. Moreover, the unfixed divisions between spaces mean that the Japanese people have always lived close to nature, therefore making them consider the inside and outside of a building to be as one compound rather than two separate components. Fujimoto has definitely followed this tradition, causing his building to flow from one use to another.

Some may say a building with no clear floor and ceiling is an accident waiting to happen; however, I say it’s aesthetic genius. Never mind if I would never, ever consider living in a building like this. As a piece of design and ART, Sou Fujimoto’s Final Wooden House ticks all the boxes. His design is more than just a new building; it’s a new origin, a new existence. Fujimoto has eliminated the need for furniture and created a living space that can be observed as if it was a piece of sculpture. The way the building merges with its natural surroundings and the cosy, cave-like space that is created shows that buildings and houses can be appreciated just in the same way as art in a gallery. Houses are no longer just for living in: they are for admiring and inspiring, just like a piece of art.

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Artwork by Ayantu Erana

Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation Speech written and presented for the 2014 ARTiculation Prize Eva Barnett

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ith my parents being architects, I have visited many amazing buildings since I was little; however, one that stood out to me was the Unité d’Habitation, designed by Le Corbusier and finished in 1952, in Marsaille, France. What struck me about this building was the way Le Corbusier managed to incorporate something with not only beauty, but also how he carefully made every part important, so its function is highly important as well.

Arriving in the night, I only caught a glimpse of the outside, and I wondered how someone could make a looming block of flats beautiful. However, Le Corbusier, a master of design, truly succeeded in this task, making sure that every part of the building, at every scale, was designed perfectly.

My first proper look at the building came from inside. As we woke up and walked through the corridors, the bright colours and designed doors down to the letterboxes (which used to function for delivery of goods as well as post, for example milk and ice, as they didn’t have fridges) immediately told me that this was not a normal building.

As we made our way downstairs, the lower floors contained all the public needs for people. This included shops, dining halls and social/recreational areas. These halls are double height, with large windows, providing a light and open environment for people to meet and socialise.

Le Corbusier carefully planned each flat to give an amazing living space. The section shows the

arrangement of the flats in the building. Here we can see that he gives each flat a whole floor and a half. This allows the occupants to not only have a double height space, but also means they can look across the flat, giving views on both sides from the building.

The furniture in the flats, even down to the stairs, is chosen, like the building, not only for its purpose but also the beautiful design. This includes design from Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouve. Charlotte Perriand is a particularly interesting partnership with Le Corbuier, as in his younger years, when she requested a job from him, he had bluntly told her that they didn’t ‘embroider cushions’ in his offices.

However, in his later life when designing the Unité, Perriand’s work became vital for the beauty of the flats.

On the roof there is a terrace and a small swimming pool for children, as well as other spaces that are sadly not now available to see. For me, it was here I saw the true beauty in Le Corbusier’s design. From the roof you can see a series of concrete structures, for the exhaust pipes, benches and what is now an artist’s studio.

His design is highlighted by the incredible view that surrounds the building, showing the horizon of buildings and hilltops all around. The aspect that specifically stood out to me were the contrasts, as the thin columns held up large concrete structures, and the concrete seats rose from the floor to also become barriers. Furthermore, he manages to make the concrete, a stereotypically heavy and clumsy AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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material, look delicate, as things like the stairs seem to have little support.

In the roof we can see a prime example of the representation of the male and female sex in Corbusier’s work. The exhaust pipe’s smooth curves he chose to represent women, which contrast with the sharp corners and graphic shapes the art studio makes, representing the male sex. He chose this representation, as he saw men as rational and pure, whilst women were more natural, and decadent.

Another thing I loved about the roof was the space he created. Looking up to the wooden framed windows I saw the artist studio where I would have loved to work! There is not only an amazing view and beautiful design to inspire all that you could want to draw, but he also creates a private space, which is almost like a small house in itself, and I can imagine that when there you forget about the busy building beneath you.

These sweeping curves of the exhaust pipes reminded me of those of Ronchamp I had seen many years earlier. This chapel was designed in 1950, and finished in 1955, so took place in the same time period as the Unité. You can see this in his design, as it contrasts the much more graphic works he designed in his earlier career, with its bold curving roof and windows. This contrast, for example can be seen in the ‘Domino house’, which Corbusier designed in 1914/15.

The reason for this similarity was that he used a similar inspiration, the woman. Corbusier became fascinated with, Mary Magdalena, a lesser know character in the bible, and contrast to the virgin Mary, as a prostitute. Corbusier tried to combine his ideas of these two women in the chapel to express all the views of femininity, which is reflected down to the simplified form of a woman for a door handle. This was even seen as quite radical, as he was putting women in the centre of what is a maledominated faith.

The inside of the building is partially reflected in the outside, with bright coloured balconies catching 38

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your eye and contrasting the concrete. Due to the scale of the building Corbusier made a colour plan based on 16 different tones. This made every apartment individual, and is interesting compared to his earlier work, in which he mostly stuck to white.

Another idea he applied to the Unité for the first time was the ‘Modular man’. This was an idea of how to record the universe, and combined maths, architecture and the human form to put people in the centre of design. This ‘man’ was based on a human of 6 foot (which he chose as the height of the detectives in his favourite books were this tall) as a universal system of proportions. Corbusier centred the Unité around ‘the golden ratio’, a figure of 1.61 (which he split the man into) which has inspired architecture since the pantheon in Greece. It can also be seen in nature, is pivotal to maths, and is seen often in art. Le Corbusier used this proportion to scale the building to the people, putting humans into the centre of the building, and emphasising the idea of the buildings purpose and functionality.

This functionality is made clear through the reaction of Einstein when Corbusier showed him this principle, saying it “makes the good easy and the bad difficult”. However, this idea is criticised at some levels, at the figure of 6 foot doesn’t take into account the majority of the population, and scaling the building with 1.61 can cause some awkward shaped rooms-for example in the unité are 6 by 23 feet. When visiting the building we are constantly reminded of this system as he made several reliefs into the building on the ground floor outside, and similar cut outs are placed inside.

Corbusier is now regarded as the major innovator of modern architecture, seeing it as a ‘machine for living in’, and so the idea of functionality in buildings centred around him. He also hugely advanced modern architecture, making it what it is today, and changing how people saw what could be achieved, being said to have adopted ‘in affect as the unofficial pope’ the international style, which introduced modernism in architecture. This

inspired many architects, and he is still taught about today. Just one example is Goldfinger who is also now considered a master of architecture.

Corbusier was not only an architect, but a theoretician, writing books on the architecture, and its advances. Concentrating his afternoons on designing, he spent his mornings painting, making many pieces of abstract work, which often also reflected of the modular man.

As I have explained, there are many aspects to this building that made it stand out to me; however, I think what particularly drew me to it was how each

part at first looks beautiful, and then its function shows itself as well, only making it more clever.

Every part of the design was considered carefully, not only for its aesthetics but also for its contribution to the calm and communal atmosphere of the building, making it lovely to be a part of, and I was truly sad to leave. I would like to end with a quote from Le Corbusier himself talking about the UnitĂŠ, which I feel really sums up this building, showing his inventiveness and his desire to provide for the people: “the state was the client and there were no restrictionsâ€?.

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Artwork by Helena Moock

Jean–Baptiste Carpeaux’s ‘Ugolino and his Sons’ Speech written and presented for the 2014 ARTiculation Prize Tilly Shoul

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n October of last year, I went on an incredible art trip to New York, visiting amazing galleries and museums, encountering a wide variety of artworks in different mediums. I particularly loved The Met, which was where I encountered Jean– Baptiste Carpeaux’s Ugolino and His Sons. This extraordinary statue was executed in 1865-67 and is made out of Saint–Béat marble. The museum is filled with multitudes of work, from prints and artifacts, to paintings and film instillations, but it was this statue which particularly caught my eye. It is placed in the vast gallery 548, amongst similarly mythological works, but it was the intensity of expression and incredible form of the statue, with its intriguing characters, which drew me in.

When first approaching the statue, I was most taken by the figures’ expressions, most noticeably the pain and anguish they seemed to be experiencing. But the cause of this pain was entirely unclear. The central figure, looking ahead as though deep in tormented thought sits high above the four others, and he appears to be a father-like figure, as the others are depicted around him, looking to him in desperation. This figure’s struggle is evident; he looks out to us as though searching for some sort of answer to his problem. But what problem does he face?

Without reading the plaque or knowing the name of the sculpture, it would be very difficult to know the situation that they are in. The slumped position of the smallest figure suggests exhaustion

or even death, with the other three in varying degrees of distress. My initial impression was certainly one of suffering or impending doom. But the main figure intrigued me the most. Why does he have that torn, tormented expression, and, most importantly, what is he trying to decide?

Well, none of the many scenarios I had imagined in my head were anywhere close to the truth. The story depicted is that of Ugolino and his Sons and is based on a section of Dante’s famous Divine Comedies, Canto 33 of Inferno. The sculpture stems from the section of the story in which the Pisan Count Ugolino is imprisoned for treachery, along with his sons and grandsons. This explains the tortured looks and exhaustion of the sons. But what problem does Ugolino face? Well, the prisoners have been left to starve, with the key to the cell thrown in the river. The count sits, starving, gnawing on his hands in grief and hunger. And the sons cry out to him: ‘Father, our pain will lesson if you eat us. You are the one who clothed us with this wretched flesh: we plead for you to be the one who strips it away.’

Once we have learnt that the decision Ugolino is making is whether nor not to eat his children, the statue takes a turn for the disturbing.

But now, let’s take a closer look. First, the smallest child, who is slumped on the floor, supposedly weak from starvation, or even dead. What I find striking about this little figure, is the serene expression, and simplicity of his position. Unlike the rest, he is simply lying down, with his head resting on his AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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father’s leg. This contrasts to the pain and chaos of the remaining figures, with their intense expressions and the extreme twists of their bodies.

Looking closely at the two sons on the left, we see how remarkably Carpeaux has executed their expressions. The smaller of the two has his eyes shut, tilting his head upwards in pain. And the more prominent of the two appears to be in mid cry.

Of course, the most intense of expressions is Ugolino’s. His brow is so furrowed that his eyes look incredibly deeply set in his head, and as you come closer it is noticeable that he is looking slightly upwards as well as outwards, as though he is looking to the heavens for some sort of guidance. The incredible contortion of his hands also renders him slightly crazed, as Carpeaux depicts the gnawing of the knuckles.

Although each figure is remarkable in its own right, it is the sculpture as a whole, which I find so extremely striking. From the front, the five figures appear to be packed tightly together, lending itself to the impression that they are confined in the prison cell. In this sense, Carpeaux had no need for showing their surroundings; he uses the form of the bodies and the absence of space between them to create the almost claustrophobic atmosphere.

But as you walk around the sculpture, you get a very different impression. With this angled view, you see the lovely curve of the son’s back, leaving a gap between him and Ugolino. What I love most about looking at the statue from this side is that we can still see the little head of the son looking upwards, just visible above Ugolino’s knees. And this was the angle from which I sat and sketched the sculpture when I first encountered it.

The back of the statue is incredibly interesting as well. When viewing it from this angle, the positions of the bodies suggest a completely different tone of narrative. Ugolino appears as though he is actively supporting his son, and rather than desperation, all of the figures’ exhaustion is heightened as all we can see is their collapsed bodies. The meaning behind 42

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the statue is perhaps even more ambiguous from this angle, due to the absence of expressions. What is also notable about the back view is the overall form, which is reasonably neat and symmetrical, with Ugolino in the middle, the two standing figures either side, and the two lying down. From this, you would not expect the tangled chaos of the statue as viewed from the front, the back angle is almost illusionary in the way it hides this chaos.

I particularly like this final view, mainly because of the way the little boy leans, with his arm gently curved. Carpeaux manages to make him look light and frail, despite the fact he is carved from marble, and his arm looks as though it is resting gently. This angle also shows the extraordinary curves that Carpeaux creates: the two beautifully curving arms of the sons, the curve of Ugolino’s back, and the ark which is the whole statue. And I think that it’s from this angle that Carpeaux’s immense skill in depicting the human form and the way our bodies are affected (in this case by fatigue and starvation) is most evident.

Now it’s impossible to talk about Carpeaux without mentioning the great influence another artist had on him and his work. And that was the influence of Michelangelo. You can see from many of Carpeaux’s sculptures the effect Michelangelo’s work had on him, particularly through the similar way in which he captures gesture and position. In fact, the position of Ugolino himself has said to be somewhat influenced by Michelangelo’s sculpture of ‘Lorenzo’, which is part of a larger tomb. The slightly imbalanced knees, the forward inclination of the body and the hand to the mouth are all echoed in Ugolino and His Sons. But whilst looking at other works of Michelangelo, I began to notice other details we can see reflected in Carpeaux’s sculpture.

In these two details from the famous Sistine Chapel, the men are in positions of anguish or distress. The muscular nature of Michelangelo’s figures in both his paintings and sculptures are

certainly similar to that of Carpeaux’s, and Carpeaux appears to have taken the idea of extreme expression that Michelangelo so often depicted, (such as in this detail of Dawn, in the same larger tomb) and wonderfully emulate it. However, Carpeaux’s work is by no means a copy of Michelangelo’s, but simply takes the elements of fierce expression and gestures that the great master used. Carpeaux himself said, ‘There is indeed a vibrant sympathy in my imagination for this great man’.

Carpeaux decided to make a bronze sculpture of Ugolino and his sons around 1858, but it was not completed until 1861. During those four years, Carpeaux struggled to consolidate his vision, and sketched many different versions of the scene. This first one shows Ugolino surrounded by both his sons and spirit-like creatures, with a figure hovering above, supposedly representing hunger. This second drawing shows fragmented details, including an arch and column to show the actual prison. This last one reminds me of Rodin’s version of the story of Ugolino and His Sons, as Ugolino leans forward, with his dying sons around him.

This version was created 20 years after Carpeaux’s, inspired by the sculpture. While I think it is remarkable in its own right, when comparing the two, I felt that Rodin’s lacked something of the ferocity and intensity of Carpeaux’s. Perhaps it’s because the two sculptures are capturing slightly different moments in the story of Ugolino, and I was more interested in that disturbing yet intriguing moment that the count is suspended in in Carpeaux’s, rather than later when they are almost all dead. Although looking at the curved shapes that the bodies make, I feel like you can see elements of Carpeaux’s version echoed, in the same way you can see Michelangelo’s work in Carpeaux’s.

The sculpture was first made out of bronze, but later the proprietor for the Saint-beat marble quarries commissioned Carpeaux to make this final version. Over the years it has been placed in various galleries, and before its current position in gallery 548 it was in another section of The Met. However, I think that where it sits now is the perfect setting, and only increased my appreciation for it. Because of the large windows directly above, the gallery is filled with light, and due to where the sculpture sits, at different times of the day the light falls slightly differently. At one point when I was sketching it, the light was on half of the sculpture. Already sinister and almost animated with its character’s extreme emotion, the changing light makes it look like it’s almost coming alive before your very eyes, only adding to the unsettling atmosphere that it creates. The final most striking element of the sculpture is its size. As you can see from the people behind, it is incredibly large, and as you stand in front of it, it almost looms before you, just like the decision looms over Ugolino.

I think that what makes this sculpture so extraordinary, and what made me so intrigued when I first walked in to the gallery, was the numerous and powerful ways in which it had an impact on me.

From its size, to its form, to the detail of the bodies and the intensity of expression, I couldn’t help but be fascinated. And even after learning what it is depicting, Carpeaux’s skill in showing character and situation so effortlessly still makes the sculpture captivating. He brings a story vividly to life, capturing character whilst creating the unsettling sense that encompasses Dante’s story. And it is this simultaneous capturing of the real and the mythological, which I think makes the sculpture so remarkable.

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Artwork by Evangeline Baldwin

Antoni Gaudí and the Sagrada Familia Speech written and presented for the 2014 ARTiculation Prize Maya Colwell

“M

y client is in no hurry.” These were the words of Antoni Gaudí, referring to God, and the completion of his epic masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral so ambitious in scale and design that more than 100 years after Gaudí set his plans in motion in 1883, it has yet to be completed.

My first glimpse of the Sagrada Familia was from the window of the converted convent in which I was staying when I visited Barcelona, aged 11. The memory that stands out to me is of the uncertainty that struck me at the sight of these vibrant, colourful, and seemingly disembodied spires. Where could these strange, organic forms spring from?

Even obscured by scaffolding, these spires independent of the obscured body of the cathedral - had an immediate pull on me.

Gaudí’s architecture was hugely influenced by nature and organic form, to which he responded with an almost mystical intensity. The roots of this go back a long way. As a child afflicted with rheumatism and often unable to attend school, the isolated young Gaudí found solace in nature. This meant that when he eventually joined secondary school; though not particularly academic, as his school reports show, he had already found his calling and his inspiration. Those remarkable, flowery spires, encrusted with bright stones laid in mosaics, which catch the rays of the sun, embody this aspect of the architect.

The only other place that I had seen such vivid

colours in a place of worship was when visiting family in Southern India. Here, you see the intricately blended colours used to highlight the iconography carved into the exterior of, for example, the Meenakshi Amman temple in Madurai.

Looking at the two examples juxtaposed gives an insight into this fascinating connection. Indeed, there are similarities between the colourful icons perched majestically around the traditional Hindu temples and the joyfulness of the very tops of the spires of the Sagrada Familia, onto which Gaudí’s designs dictated that words of praise be displayed in vibrant white tiles, leading up to an explosion of colour and the blending of a variety of circular shapes at the extremity - possibly there to symbolise the unity of the building.

This is all the more curious if we consider that this is a functioning Catholic church originally meant to have been built in the Neo-Gothic style popular in the mid -to-late 19th century. Gaudí’s predecessor Francisco de Paula del Villar, managed to get the apse crypt in place before resigning after just one year. Villar’s original plans for the crypt featured only small, porthole-like windows, which seemed to Gaudí to be too oppressive for a place of worship. Gaudí redesigned these windows in order to allow more light to shine through, but was forced to reign in his vision for fear of causing a “civil war between the columns”, and now the crypt only bears a limited number of Gaudí’s trademarks. However, these flourishes of his reinforce the idea that Gaudí AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Johnny O’Flynn

himself had a deeper understanding of the Gothic style than the “Neo-Gothicist” Villar, and followed the tradition of intricacy blended with functionality.

Indeed, in the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí succeeds in bringing two architectural styles – the Gothic and the Art Nouveau - together in a way that manages to uphold the integrity of both. Rather than the imitative impetus of Neo-Gothic, which in many ways seeks to confuse the viewer into thinking they might be looking at something from the gothic era, Gaudí’s version, while magnificently employing Gothic forms such as the curly pinnacles and pointed arches, could also never be anything other Art Nouveau – or, as it’s known in Catalonia, “Modernisme”. Here, brick, stone and mortar become organic, sinuous, almost living things, suggesting both the transubstantiation of materials and the living nature of the church.

There is symbolism in every aspect of the Sagrada Familia. These symbols were implanted by Gaudí to show the world his true attachment to the Catholic Church and his devotion to religion itself. The finished structure will consist of 18 towers in total, with the central tower reaching 72 metres in height and symbolising Christ. Gaudí’s plans dictated that four towers, representing the Evangelists, should surround it.

Due to Gaudí’s instinctive and mystical response to creation, he never produced precise plans for

generations after him to follow. This has caused disagreement over the years between Gaudí’s purist supporters, and those who like Gaudí himself, see the Cathedral as a collaboration spanning multiple generations. It could be assumed in fact, that it was Gaudí’s intention for his successors to interpret his masterpiece in their own way and design what would follow in response to their own personal interpretation of what the Cathedral would signify.

Which brings me back to that first view of those scaffolding-encrusted spires when I was 11.

For many visitors, the scaffolding on a famous tourist attraction is merely a frustrating barrier to a good photo. I would suggest, though, that after 130 or so years of construction, the scaffolding itself has become a part of the architecture. And after all, is this sense of a work-in-progress so out of keeping with its medieval antecedents? The building of the great Gothic cathedrals could be counted in decades, if not centuries, and generations of people in cities throughout Europe would have been used to seeing a cathedral as a long and continuous process of growth rather than a completed structure.

It is only from our point in history that the Gothic is a defined form. In many ways, it is the unfinished nature of the Sagrada Familia that gives it such a profound connection to the ordinary person’s experience of how the first cathedrals developed in medieval Europe.

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Artwork by Uccella Khan-Thomas

Entrapment, Escape and Transcendence Rachael Nagle

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evolutionary Road by Richard Yates, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? by Edward Albee, and several works of John Keats portray senses of entrapment and the plights humans take in an attempt to transcend them. The texts denote the want to escape - “break free from confinement or control” - or transcend - “be or go beyond the range and limits [of ]” - several contextual ideals and environments that affect the characters in the texts.

They also portray the theme of being trapped “prevent[ed] from escaping” - within these ideals and environments, with their ambitions to transcend only entrapping them further. This essay will discuss the struggles to escape or transcend undertaken by the characters within each text and which are presented in Keats’ poetry, such as the 1950s’ ideas of gender roles and family life, and environments. It will also examine how these themes, as well as the plight to overcome them, entrap the characters and Keats, and how this is expressed in each text.

The theme of gender roles within Revolutionary Road and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? presents difficulties for the characters, especially with the significance of gender roles and expectations during 1950s America. In Revolutionary Road, Yates presents April as a young woman fighting for independence and an escape from society’s expectations of her as a woman. She is described in Frank’s perspective, as he “squinted through the brilliant window”, and saw April “stolidly pushing and hauling the old machine, wearing a man’s shirt and a pair of loose, flapping slacks”. Yeats’ choice of the words “stolidly”, “pushing” and “hauling” emphasise the laborious, mundane and tedious task

April is performing, depicting it to be a masculine job. The masculine connotations are also furthered in April wearing a “man’s shirt” and “flapping sacks”, suggesting she is purposefully enforcing her own sense of masculinity and rejecting female ideals through her choice of clothing, with the knowledge she is in visibility of Frank and her surrounding neighbours.

The contrast between April’s location in the garden, and Frank’s location within the suburban household, “squint[ing] through the...window”, also highlights the masculinity of April through her attempt to be in a more masculine position than Frank within the household. However, her performance still denotes her to be confined as a woman as she is still limited to the setting of her home, hidden from public eye and industrial settings, highlighting the limitations she is still trapped by. April clearly opposed post-war 1950s expectations of women to act as “housewives who stayed at home to rear children, clean house and bake cookies”, with her statement-clothing rejecting the enforced feminine identity Government propaganda and policies expected women to submit to.

In contrast to April, Albee presents Martha as an “Earth Mother”, feminine and “voluptuous”, with her “melons bobbing” and “blue circles around her thighs”. This earthy imagery denotes Martha to appear goddess-like and maternal, conforming to the expectations of 1950s women. However, although Martha’s appearance conforms to the expectations of the context, she, like April, challenges and attempts to transcend the limited power and voice she has as a woman. Martha challenges the lack of voice women had at the time, contrasting to April’s lack of language AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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used in her attempts to escape. Martha acts as acts “as some sort of Amazon warrior” in her attempts to humiliate and emasculate her husband, seen in her recollection of boxing George in the jaw, emphasising her strength and masculine qualities. She is able to control “George or her other men with language, with her choice of words or voice, baby-talk or hissing venom, and she takes special delight when her attacks can be rendered in rhyme, as all good hexes should be” (Rikke AaserødØisang). Her confident use of language allows her to take on a manipulative and spiteful role, as she is able to humiliate George with her accusation of him being a “FLOP!” and detach herself from reality with her imitations and singing “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf ?”.

However, Martha’s “fun and games” explode social propriety, separating herself from other women, seen in her detachment and inability to relate to Honey, and from the rest of society, entrapping herself in a state of isolation. Furthermore, Martha’s effort to overpower George through language ultimately fails at the end of the play when George uses his own voice to kill the illusion of a child they both used as a coping mechanism for their inability to have one.

Martha fails in convincing him otherwise, suggesting her language finally became ineffective against the will and power of a man.

April also attempts to subvert the gender roles between herself and Frank with her plan to move to Paris. She asserts herself as the partner who will earn the income, in her attempt to find power and purpose whilst Frank gets a chance to “find [him]self…reading and studying and taking long walks and thinking.” The connotations of the words “find yourself ” are whimsical, dreamy and feminine, emasculating Frank and giving April superiority. Yet, April’s ideal is met with disbelief and laughter from the community, with Shep insinuating Frank is weak for letting April support him; “what kind of a man is going to be able to take a thing like that?” With her plan ultimately falling through, April’s entrapment as a woman in suburbia is again highlighted.

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April’s struggle to escape the stereotypical expectations of a woman, thus hindering her femininity in the eyes of society, has a direct implication on Frank’s image of himself and his masculinity. Virginia Woolf once wrote, “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size”, which describes Frank’s ironic situation perfectly, as he relies on April’s femininity to prove his self worth as a man, entrapping him in a vicious cycle where April holds the power over his identity. He strives to transcend April’s male qualities with his performances of masculinity, in an endeavour to empower himself.

Frank instinctively begins “tightening his jaw and turning his head a little to one side to give it a leaner, more commanding look”. The use of the word “commanding” indicates Frank’s struggle to attain power and dominance in his marriage, seen through this reoccurring performance of masculine stature and imitation. Yet, the impermanence of this idealistic appearance “he had given himself in mirrors since boyhood and which no photograph had ever quite achieved” only entraps Frank in his determination to transcend his masculine appearance.

In the poem Bright Star, Keats implies that the natural impermanence of human kind denies their ability to transcend their ideals, echoed in Frank’s determination to attain a constant front of masculinity. Like Frank, Keats longs for a permanent state, seen through his description of the idealistic star as being “stedfast” and “eternal”.

However, Keats’ need for love and affection “Pillowed upon [his] fair love’s ripening breast”, suggests that the constancy Keats is trying to achieve is prevented by the natural emotions and instincts of human kind. The language “breath”, “fall and swell”, and “ripening”, all denote a sense of movement and change, again suggesting the lack of durability in human ideals. Keats’ realisation of human inability to achieve constancy is seen in the words “And so live ever—or else swoon to death”, where he concludes

that one must submit to human changeability, or die a premature death in a moment of love.

Frank’s most obvious attempt to attain masculinity is shown in his affair with Maureen Grube. Øisang writes “Frank’s affair with Maureen is interesting because it gives Frank the opportunity of a revival of his manhood”. He compares himself to “an eagle”, “a lion” and to the swan in Leda and the Swan, showing his delusion of himself being a powerful, mighty predator after successfully sleeping with Maureen. However, Frank’s plight to attain Maureen again only emasculates him as he portrays himself to be desperate as he describes her as being “uglier” than he had previously thought, but “if he focused his eyes on her mouth”, “blurr[ing]” the rest of her face, he could imagine her as “the most desirable woman in the world”, denoting him to be weak and dependent on women. Furthermore, Frank’s “failure of individual fulfilment through sex” in the novel also undermines his manhood as he yet again fails in his plight for contentment.

As women in the 1950s, April and Martha were surrounded by the expectation to bear children and raise a family after enduring the difficulties of the Second World War. “Women were considered domestic caregivers, with sole responsibility for the home and child rearing, while men ‘brought home the bacon’.” However, Yates portrays April to reject the idea of motherhood, through her hesitation to have a third child and the reoccurring theme of abortion. April attempts to convince Frank of her “infallible way to induce a miscarriage” in order to release herself from the fate of motherhood. Yates highlights the lack of language that can be shared between Frank and April to describe her intention of abortion through the vagueness of their speech, seen in April’s ambiguous statement “I know what I feel I’ve got to do.” As seen in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, objects are used to forebode and highlight what the language cannot. This idea of objects speaking louder than words is derived from the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ genre of play popular during

the 1950s and 1960s. “Objects are much more important than language in absurd theatre: what happens transcends what is being said about it.” The imagery of the rubber syringe emphasizes April’s rejection of children, and forebodes her ultimate decision to abort her child and kill herself to escape the clutches of motherhood.

However, as well as being entrapped by society’s expectations, April is also trapped by Frank. Frank’s reaction to April’s rejection is one typical of the time, to “psychoanalyze the unnatural female who does not want to carry children or become a mother”. He accuses her of having something “the matter” with her, “emotional things”. He also victimises her in his words “You’re fighting with yourself ”, emphasising the suggested neurotic problems he believed April had. His assumption is linked to that of Freudian theories at the time, claiming that women who did not want to conform to their stereotypical gender roles, one of which was motherhood, were neurotic, often suffering from hysteria, an illness commonly diagnosed to those who were thought to fit outside the norms of society in their ways of thinking. These degrading labels and confinements ostracize April from her husband and from society.

Martha and George, in contrast to Frank and April, both embrace the idea of having a family, yet their infertility denies them from conceiving. In order to escape the heartbreak of never being able to have children, Martha and George create their own illusion based around a fictional child that is soon coming home to visit them. Martha indicates the illusion to be a “refuge we take when the unreality of the world lies too heavy on our tiny heads”, with the word “refuge” denoting an ironic sense of safety and comfort, when in fact the illusion causes paranoia and emotional distress. However, as indicated from the offset of the play, the illusion entraps the couple into a “game” in which they work against each other in order to control the fate of their “boy”. The play continuously forebodes the crossing of boundaries within the illusion, with Martha warning George AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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“Just don’t start on the bit”, the vague language highlighting the unspeakable obscenity of their “reality”, and foreboding the events that will unravel.

George also predicts the fall and exposure of their illusion in his words “every definition has its boundaries”, furthered with his plan “When people can’t abide things as they are […] they set about to … alter the future. And when you want to change something … you BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!” The mention of the word “boundaries” stresses the confinement they are limited to within their illusion in order to keep it alive and believable to Honey and Nick. Furthermore, the harsh and violent repetition of “BANG!” echoes that of the gun, implying George still uses his masculine ideals and power to take control of the illusion, limiting Martha.

The violent imagery and vicious words could also reflect the malicious and destructive Cold War. Albee wrote the play whilst America and the USSR were in the midst of the war, with his writing incorporating verbal and visual senses of tension.

Ultimately George’s power and intellect defeats Martha’s outspoken, feminist voice, as he uses his language to destruct their illusion, whilst also exposing their illusion to Honey and Nick, “… our son is … dead”, taking away what gave them a sense of hope and normality, leaving them childless and isolated in society.

The attempt to transcend a setting within Keats’ poems is a prominent theme of his work. The theme of transcendence was not unusual within Romantic literature; as Peter Ackroyd puts it, “For a whole new generation, the Romantic idea of transcendence became a religion in itself ”. Romantic writers explored the limits of human imagination, with some succumbing to addiction, “Coleridge’s dream of Kubla Khan, for instance was induced by opium” (Ackroyd). Some explored the relationship between the ability to transcend, and madness; Ackroyd notes that “John Clare wrote some of his greatest works while he was an inmate at an asylum”. In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats pleads to fly away with the 52

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bird and transcend the earth. He describes a moment of happiness with the nightingale, as he is not envious of “thy happy lot”, but “…being too happy in thine happiness”, suggesting he feels at one with the bird, as he sits surrounded by nature away from mundane reality. He begins to denote the idea of transcendence as he wishes to “leave the world unseen”: “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget… / The weariness the fever and the fret”.

His wish to “forget” the “weariness”, pain and hardship of human life evokes pity for Keats as he dreams of an unachievable ideal, with the iambic pentameter of the ode highlighting the freedom and ease of the nightingale Keats aspires to. However, Keats returns to reality, ushering the nightingale “Away!” In the seventh stanza, he describes the bird as immortal in the line “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”, highlighting the contrast between his human self and the bird, reinforcing his own mortality. By attempting to transcend with the nightingale, Keats only emphasises his mortality as a human, confining him on earth as he continues to search for a way to transcend and find constancy.

Keats’ transcendence links to his own concept of “Negative Capability”. His concept of Negative Capability was the aim of poets as humans to be able to transcend their surroundings, thinking beyond human capability, free from boundaries and natural emotion.

In Revolutionary Road, Frank and April also strive to transcend the suburban setting they’re confined to by moving to Paris. Like Keats, they aim to find a place more idyllic and free, with April wanting to find freedom and transcendence through her plan to be a working woman. The setting of the Wheelers’ house implies their reluctant attitude towards conforming to the stereotypical 1950s household setting with “the furniture that had never settled down and never would, the shelves on shelves of unread or half-read or read-and-forgotten books, the loathsome gloating main of the television set…” The pessimistic view of the living room suggests it acts as a stage for the

Wheelers as they conform to the 1950s stereotype in front of guests. Echoing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, Revolutionary Road nods to absurdist theatre, using objects to create a façade for the Wheelers to play in front of impressionable guests.

However, their plans to move to Paris isolates the Wheelers from their social peers as they believe they have gained a sense of status by being able to admit they live “among a bunch of frightened little-”. They ostracise themselves with their determination to transcend the setting of revolutionary road, as they refuse to follow symbolic order, which would have branded them as “The Other”, according to Lancan’s theory of symbolic order within society.

Furthermore, John Givings is the only character who commends them for their “hope” and bravery, only highlighting how delusional they are, as ironically John is considered mentally ill and not fit for society, a typical example of an “Other”. With reality obstructing their dreams, their plan ultimately falls through, emphasising reality’s defeat over dreams and illusion, and encases April further into the life she hates as a suburban housewife.

With April’s dream of moving to Paris failing, and her fate of being burdened with another child approaching, the tragic resolution she finally comes to is suicide through the abortion of her unborn child.

The abortion signifies the “hopeless emptiness” that there was no escaping living on Revolutionary Road, highlighted by John Givings. The resolution she comes to allows her to escape her confinements, yet death is the final trap she had to endure. Her death suggests that those who really feel and bravely admit to themselves how they feel are able to find some resolution in their life, even if it costs them.

Resolutions to entrapment and the inability to escape and transcend it are also seen in Keats’ ‘Ode on Melancholy’. He tackles the subject of how to cope with sadness, but denotes a sense of hope rather than of despair or loss. He suggests that melancholy is derived not from death itself but from the contemplation that beautiful objects are fated to

die, seen through the language “droop-headed flowers” and “She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die”. However, the iambic pentameter of the line and the caesura in the centre of the line suggests a sense of balance between life and death, and that Keats has come to a realisation that both must go together to appreciate such beauty in the first place.

He offers advice, advising not to “go to Lethe”, or commit suicide such as in April’s case, and not to turn to drink. His solution is to find something beautiful and “glut thy sorrow on a morning rose”, or “on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave” or into “peerless eyes” of one’s love. The natural, calm and idyllic imagery created evokes a sense of hope for the victim, as they turn to beauty through melancholy, rather than to more sorrowful objects.

‘To Autumn’ echoes the structure and themes of change and hope seen in Ode on Melancholy. The ode begins with rich and hopeful descriptions of autumn, as it fills “all fruit with ripeness to the core”; however, a similar them of change and the inability to escape nature’s liminal qualities is seen in the final stanza. The speaker asks “Where are the songs of spring?” emphasising the liminal nature of the seasons and their lack of constancy, an issue Keats suggests he wants to transcend within several of his works. However, like in Ode on Melancholy, a hopeful resolution to the inability to escape the inevitability of change is seen in the reply “Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,” suggesting he should seek the positive out of nature’s confinements. This is again seen in the quote “fullgrown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn”. The emphasis of “full-grown” forebodes the fate of the lambs, which would have been slaughtered come autumn time, yet Keats doesn’t highlight this inevitable fate in the language, instead focusing on the sweet sounds and serene setting.

The resolutions of hope Keats creates through his poetry can also be seen in When I have Fears that I May Cease to be. In this poem, Keats shows his awareness of his own mortality and he fears what he AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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Artwork by Madeleine Eve Monnickendam

will lose upon death. However, the language used connotes imagery of ripeness and transcendence, seen in the language “teeming brain”, “high pil’d”, “full-ripen’d”, “high romance” and “faery power”.

Keats creates a sense of aim and hope for what he has left to do, giving him a purpose to fulfil before he passes away, again creating a resolution that although isn’t perfect, is something to work for.

Furthermore, Keats achieves negative capability in the last lines of the poem, as he demonstrates taking on the “poetical character” to achieve “no self… no identity”, distancing himself from human emotion, recognising the loneliness and insignificance of human kind. He also comes to a separate resolution through his use of negative capability, realising “love and fame” are also as insignificant as the human form, and that they too will “sink” when he crosses the “shore” to death, highlighting their unimportance in the greater scheme of his life.

In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? George and Martha are forced to acknowledge and accept the truth that through the death of their “son”, their illusion is dead, and they must submit to the reality of being childless. This acceptance is highlighted in the lines “George: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf….” “Martha: I … am … George … I … am”. Martha’s weakness contrasts to her previous “warrior” like, pagan, “Earth Mother” qualities, and she appears to submit to a quieter, more feminine role within the relationship wherein George has the power, coming to the resolution to face the truth and succumb to male dominance in order to restore peace in their relationship.

In conclusion, the resolutions found in each of the texts highlight and prove true the ironic argument that those who “struggle most to escape or transcend” are those who “feel”, and likely end up submitting to being, “trapped”. The confinements of contextual expectations surrounding women, men and family

life prove too difficult for April, Frank, Martha and George to transcend or escape from, leaving them entrapped in states of unhappiness, frustration, and in April’s case, death. Keats’ poems however, although still depicting his entrapment as a mortal human, still seek hope and transcendence through what Keats can still achieve within his limited life and through his writing, highlighted in his plight to achieve negative capability, and through his focus on what the ever changing world has to offer in its beauty.

Bibliography AaserødØisang, R., Suburban Narratives Revisited: Problematics of Gender and the American Family in Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Masters Thesis, Department of Literature, University of Oslo, 2012. www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/ 25317/Editedxmasterxthesis.pdf?sequence=2 Culk, J., The Theatre of the Absurd the West and the East, University of Glasgow College of Arts, 2000, www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm Holt, J., The Ideal Woman, Soundings, California State University, Stanislaus,undated. www.csustan.edu/honors/documents/journals/ soundings/Holt.pdf Keats, J., Letter to Mr Woodhouse, October 27, 1818. http://www.john-keats.com/briefe/271018.htm Lockett, J., “I am the Earth Mother”: Pagan Elements in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, undated, www.prismnet.com/~jlockett/ Grist/English/woolf.html Ackroyd, P., From Transcendence to Oblivion, The Romantics, originally broadcast 2005, Open University / BBC

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Textiles by Charlotte Elvin

The Imagination as a Force for Good or Evil Mary Higgins

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he Romantic Imagination, as defined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria is ‘the living power and prime agent of all human perception (…) at all events it struggles to idealize and unify’. If the imagination is the ‘prime agent of all human perception’, then it must translate all the details of human existence, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Therefore, it follows that the imagination’s role depends on the nature of a situation. But Coleridge argues that the imagination intends to be a force for ‘good’ because ‘it struggles to idealize and unify’ the reality it confronts even if the final result is unfortunately ‘bad’. Wordsworth’s worshipful depiction of the imagination in The Prelude largely agrees with Coleridge’s definition. The imagination in The Wasp Factory and Peter and Alice is portrayed as equally powerful – but these modern texts are less certain that it’s always a force for ‘good’. Banks exposes the imagination’s tendency to warp and destroy a grasp on reality and Logan tackles its relationship with memory; whether haunting or nostalgic. All three texts agree with Coleridge that the imagination is the window through which we all view our lives but they differ on how an individual’s window pane might blur, distort or romanticise the reality. Sometimes the imagination manifests itself as horror, other times, a blessed relief – it is not so easily defined under such blanket terms as ‘bad’ or ‘good’.

The imagination is a powerful influence throughout the texts, and particularly during childhood, when the young mind is still impressionable. In The Prelude, Wordsworth aimed to narrate the development of his imagination in an autobiographical epic poem. In Book I he recalls

memories of his youth and with hindsight, his imagination endows Nature with a sentient role in his moral upbringing. Wordsworth comes to believe that Nature has been his personal tutor; ‘it delights her sometimes to employ / Severer interventions, ministry / More palpable, and so she dealt with me.’

The word ‘intervention’ implies that ‘she’, Nature personified, invests motherly concern and interest in Wordsworth’s shaping personality and good behaviour. Nature is only so powerful because of her influence on Wordsworth’s imagination; for example, when his secret poaching is disrupted by ‘low breathings’ behind him. In reality, the ‘breathing’ is only the wind’s rustle but Wordsworth interprets this eerie sound as Nature’s warning and runs scared from the scene. A modern day psychoanalyst might interpret this experience as merely the invention of a young boy’s guilty conscience and not proof of Nature’s ‘ministry’ but Wordsworth’s asserts that his imagination has purposely taught him a moral lesson.

He refers to his imagination’s ‘invisible workmanship’ when it strived to weave together similar events or ‘discordant elements’ into a larger tapestry, one that narrates Nature’s efforts to deter young Wordsworth from petty crime. The word ‘workmanship’ implies the imagination’s prolonged and determined intent to form Wordsworth’s moral compass. The influence of romantic philosopher Jean Jacques-Rousseau on Wordsworth is evident by the importance Wordsworth invests in a moral education. Rousseau believed that children are born with an inherent goodness that is later corrupted by society; ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ In other words, the closer we are to nature, AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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the better preserved we are from society and corruption. Wordsworth believed that Society is the mechanism that crushes the imagination from a child. Goodness comes from expanding the imagination rather than allowing society to trample it with imposed conventions. Therefore, imagination in The Prelude seeks a means to educate Wordsworth by endowing Nature in his mind with the role of a stern governess, who will prudently protect him from deviance and vice.

However, in The Wasp Factory, Banks perverts this romantic portrayal of a child’s pure imagination with his wicked protagonist, Frank. Frank is the antithesis of an ‘inherently good’ child; capable of murdering his own cousin Blythe at ‘the tender age of five’. His imagination is characteristically violent and put to very impure purposes, a categorically ‘bad’ force in his personality. Banks’ choice to write in first person means the reader cannot be in doubt of Frank’s grotesque enthusiasm for the crimes he commits. His narration is often dramatized and exaggerated to the point of hyper reality; for example, he likens a large buck to a ‘wolverine’ with huge teeth. These evident untruths show the reader that Frank indulges his imagination and prefers his own version of events to that of dull reality. Banks implies that Frank may have acquired a thirst for violence from ‘watching hundreds – maybe thousands – of films and television programmes’ released in the 1980s, many of which glorified battle and killing, such as First Blood.

Exposure to cinematic horror has planted the seed in Frank’s own head for violent acts – portraying how easily the imagination can be moulded and corrupted into a negative force by external influences.

Arguably, Nature’s role in the development of imagination is as significant for Frank as it is for Wordsworth. However, where Wordsworth views nature as his ‘playmate’ and tutor, Frank’s imagination perceives Nature as a threat. The Sea, for example, is his ‘greatest enemy’ because it ‘wip[es] clean the marks I have made’. Frank’s habit of categorising everything into ‘allies’ and ‘enemies’ 58

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betrays how his imagination perceives all his experiences to be part of some never ending War – Frank against the world. His obsession with making ‘marks’ on his island echoes Britain’s involvement in the territorial conflict over the Falkland islands, a brief but bloody war that for Banks symbolised everything that was barbaric about civilisation. He names parts of the island after the events he orchestrated there like ‘Black Destroyer Hill’, revealing a kind of pubescent imperialism. Frank is in these ways, a product of his time, just as Jean Jacques Rousseau warned – society has corrupted his perception of the world until similar strains of revenge, power and senseless murder have characterised the workings of his imagination. In The Wasp Factory, Banks tries to shift the blame for Frank’s crimes onto society; Frank, like Frankenstein’s Monster, is simply a victim of circumstance, the savage within all of us if it were only allowed rein. Therefore the imagination itself is not a force for ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but raw material that can be shaped into something monstrous.

In Peter and Alice, the imagination is depicted as a gift given naturally to children that they must fight hard to preserve; it goes hand in hand with innocence. Logan portrays growing up as a demoralising and crushing experience through his characterisation of the depressed Carroll who warns young Alice of hurrying towards the place called ‘Adulthood’; where ‘all the lives [are] lived in neat little hedgerows, all excess banished, all joyous peculiarities excised.’ Adulthood is a system of enforced order, of tidiness; even nature’s will is challenged and constrained. In contrast, Carroll’s Wonderland offers a world of contradictions and unchallenged absurdity – ‘Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!’ Logan too seems to support Rousseau’s theory; the imagination is most alive in children because they have not yet been conditioned to distinguish between truth and fairy tale - this is freedom.

However, the happiness that imagination provides

is always fleeting: on stage, Wonderland and Neverland are depicted through ‘gentle and magical illuminations that light the stage’ but these playful lights are only a transient temporary. The real world, on the other hand, is lasting. Logan emphasises this by beginning and ending the play with the backroom of the bookshop. The dull realism of this set forms a depressing contrast to the fanciful and colourful visuals used to illustrate other scenes. Therefore, Logan presents the imagination as an escape from a crueller reality, but he also reminds the audience that any jaunt in memory and fantasy can only be a brief pretence for our aged protagonists.

Peter feels oppressed by the public imagination and the expectations that come with being the ‘real’ Peter Pan. He feels that he is somehow complicit in deceit because when people meet him, they remember that ‘boys can’t fly and mermaids don’t exist and White Rabbits don’t talk and all boys grow old’. Each realisation in this line is relayed with a blunt fierceness, evident in the repetition of the negative terms ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’. The polysyndeton emphasises the hammering staccato rhythm and gives the sense that this list of lies could go on forever. Peter is possessed with an arid bitterness that makes him wish he’d never been imaginative in the first place if it would have saved him the pain of learning it was all made up. The physical representation of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland on stage throughout the play visually highlights this tension between reality and fiction visually present throughout the play; ‘PETER PAN shadows PETER, almost like a game for him. Not for PETER though.’ Peter’s relationship with Peter Pan symbolises his inability to embrace his imagined self and his younger self. Reality, for Peter, is the only truth and so anything imagined or fabricated or dreamt up becomes dishonest and deceitful.

However, where Peter and Alice portrays the imagination as something free and innocent, The Wasp Factory depicts it as a cynical tool for control – an extension of Frank’s obsessive personality.

Invented rituals have come to dominate Frank’s life, they provide him will an illusory sense of command over matters that he cannot influence in reality. The Wasp Factory is Frank’s ultimate invention, and it is essentially a fortune wheel; ‘keep your […] books and birds and voices and pendants and all the rest of that crap; I have the factory and it’s about now and the future’. Frank’s zealous dismissal of all other established faith systems in favour of his own is indicative of his wild egomania. The Times Literary Supplement argued that Banks’ ‘satiric intention’ is overwhelmed by his violence but I disagree: Frank’s sacrificial rites are a crucial part of Banks’ satire of religion because they demonstrate how religious beliefs have historically motivated people to commit cruelties for the sake of a higher power.

Banks is essentially trying to highlight how the widely shared faiths such as Christianity and Islam are in essence no less ‘crazy’ than Frank’s belief in his factory, as Banks said himself in a radio interview; ‘faith is belief without reason’. Banks uses religious vocabulary such as Frank’s ‘secret catechisms’ and The Wasp Factory ‘altar’ to highlight these parallels. He then figuratively and literally sullies the holy connotations of these terms with Frank’s disgusting interpretation of them; he ‘christens’ his new catapult by smearing it with ‘earwax, snot, blood, urine, belly-button fluff and toenail cheese’ . For Frank, these imaginative rituals are a force for good, The Wasp Factory has become his pseudo-god in the absence of other authority in his life and its existence makes him feel happier, but for everyone and everything else; the island, animals and small children – Frank’s imagination can be extremely destructive.

Both Peter and Alice and The Wasp Factory examine the effect of trauma on our state of mind.

The imagination and memory are closely linked and the root of Eric’s insanity is his horrific encounter with the dead baby in the hospital. The image of a ‘slowly writhing nest of fat maggots’ swimming in the child’s consumed brain lodges itself into the AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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crevices of Eric’s mind and cracks him. In a grotesque irony, the child’s eaten brain reflects Eric’s own disintegrating sanity – his trauma from the incident resurfaces as a compulsion to force feed other children maggots. Banks has titled the chapter ‘What Happened to Eric’ and prior to the reveal, he builds up tension and causes the reader to speculate what the cause of Eric’s madness might be long before he rewards us with the detail. Bank’s has designed the novel’s structure to tease the reader’s curiosity, occasionally making oblique allusions to ‘[Eric’s] nasty experience’ to tempt the reader’s imagination to invent one themselves.

In Peter and Alice, Peter’s imagination has a similarly cruel hold over him – forcing traumatic memories to resurface when he’d rather they stay buried. Peter’s imagination is a torment for him, conjuring up nightmarish images of ‘corpses lunging for me in the dark’ whenever he closes his eyes. His imagination has become too powerful for him and this weakness becomes his tragic hamartia, ultimately leading to his slipping sanity and eventual suicide. Both Logan and Banks emphasise the fragility of sanity through images of a delicate skull.

Peter recounts how his ‘life cracked open and spilled out of my head, started pooling around his feet’ as if his thoughts and memories are only liquid contained in a thin eggshell. Similarly, the braindead baby that Eric tends to in the hospital has an underdeveloped skull, the ‘skin over its brain was paper thin’. This image predicts how Eric’s own sanity will be easily destroyed by this ‘nasty experience’. By portraying our imaginations as delicate, volatile substances that can easily break loose, Logan and Banks create sympathy for the mentally unstable characters in their stories, encouraging the reader to appreciate that when confronted with such horror any human being is capable of breaking down. It is their imaginations that fuel and feed this deterioration but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a force for ‘bad’. On the contrary, Eric is arguably a coping mechanism; his 60

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imagination has buried his old personality and torn him from reality so he doesn’t have to deal with life responsibly any more. This would be a force for ‘good’ then, but only for him – from the perspective of others he is simply destructive.

However, The Prelude does not depict the imagination as something to be feared and controlled. Rather, Wordsworth seeks to foster his growing powers of imagination because he believes they afford him a more intense experience of life; a ‘higher mind’ is one that ‘can build up greatest things / From least suggestions’. The line break emphasises the antithesis between ‘greatest’ and ‘least’ to boast easily the powerful mind can draw meaning from very little. However, Wordsworth’s imaginative power is not always a positive influence; it can make him detached and egocentric. For example in Book VII , when Wordsworth recalls a moment in London when he spied a ‘blind beggar’, and his ‘mind did at this spectacle turn round / As with the might of waves’. The oceanic imagery iterated how sensitive Wordsworth’s imagination is to change; like water it is rippled by the smallest disturbance. Instantly, the beggar becomes an ‘emblem’ for Wordsworth, stimulating him to consider the universe and man’s place in it, but he fails to convey much sympathy for the individual he is looking at, reducing the beggar’s humanity to a ‘Label’. This is indicative of how Wordsworth’s lofty imagination can numb him to instinctive humane sympathy while he is distracted by his philosophising.

Wordsworth’s indifference to the beggar might be considered symptomatic of his privileged upbringing but Lloyd argues that he actually shared the long established Christian view ‘that the poor form a spiritual category, closer to salvation than the rich and respectable’. In which case, his imagination hasn’t desensitised him per se but it does often set his experiences in a wider spiritual context in an attempt to ‘unify’. This habit of his imagination isn’t harmful so long as Wordsworth fights to preserve his simpler emotional responses.

In conclusion, each text portrays the imagination having a powerful influence on the way we experience things, remember them and how we behave. The imagination can only feed off what the individual knows is true and therefore can only be a force for good if it has been nurtured by positive experience. For this the reason, the imagination is portrayed as an overwhelmingly good force in The Prelude, but not in The Wasp Factory and Peter and Alice. Wordsworth’s epic poem narrates his wonderful rural childhood and his time with nature, the positive influence of these experiences in his life mean that he has come to evolve a deep love for his imagination because it helps him to recall these memories and philosophise. Whereas Frank has grown up isolated, has been lied to, abandoned, mutated and hated by people around him and so his imagination manifests itself as a way of taking revenge on his environment and protecting himself.

In Peter and Alice, the young, unformed imagination is warped by the forceful influence of Barrie and Carroll. Logan depicts how the powerful imaginations of these men engulfs the two children in invention and fantasy and consequently makes growing up a more painful process for them to endure. Any happiness that the imagination does provide in these texts is exclusive to the individual, a world kept in their head that can offer solace, enlightenment and a rest from reality. Suspended belief cannot be sustained for long so there is always an element of disappointment following an imaginative experience.

The differing historical context of these texts also explains their varying portrayals of the imagination.

Wordsworth’s Romantic education means that he glorifies the imagination whereas for Logan and Banks, these romanticised ideals have been soiled by war, developing science and technology and media.

Exposure to more knowledge and suffering inevitably means their imaginations produce darker

tales. Every imagination is attached to an individual and so has its own personality and habits; sometimes it is a force for good, other times for bad; all depending on the scenario. The imagination possesses immense power in the individual’s subconscious because it is not an entity that can be summoned or dismissed at will and therefore that makes its influence on humans all the more powerful – with potential for both disaster and delight.

Bibliography BBC, Key Facts: The Falkands War, Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/guides/457 000/457033/html/default.stm BBC5live, (2010) Iain Banks: I’m an Evangelical Atheist, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dnCTApJ4Bc Cairns, C., (2002) Iain Banks Complicity: A Reader’s Guide, London: Continuum Carroll, L., (1963) Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, New York: MacMillan Coleridge, S., (1817/1996) Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIII (Imagination), in British Literature 1780-1830, edited by A. Mellor & R. Matlak, Heinle / Wadsworth: Belmot, CA Doyle, M. & Smith, M., (2007) Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Nature, Wholeness and Education’, in The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education, www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rous.htm Lloyd, S., (2001) Poverty, in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press Rousseau, J., (1762/1939) The Social Contract, New York: Carlton House

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Opinion in Translation

«Una sociedad civilizada no puede aceptar el concepto de la eutanasia.» ¿Estás de acuerdo?

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n los últimos años, una pregunta muy discutida es si el concepto de la eutanasia puede ser aceptado en una sociedad civilizada. ¿Nunca se puede justificar?

Para empezar, sería útil considerar por que alguna gente está de acuerdo con la eutanasia. En primer lugar, muchas personas dirían que deberíamos tener el derecho de morir con dignidad, especialmente en una sociedad civilizada donde tenemos más elecciones; si una persona fuera en la posición de Ramón Sampedro, por ejemplo, elegiría la misma cosa. En segundo lugar, los que son religiosos apuntan que Dios no quiere el sufrimiento de la gente y por eso, se puede utilizar la eutanasia.

Finalmente, el sufrimiento no sólo afecta a la persona que está enferma, sino también su familia y sus amigos.

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Por otro lado, otros argumentan que nunca se puede justificar la eutanasia. Algunas personas creen que sólo Dios tiene el derecho de dar y tomar la vida, y los seres humanos no tienen este derecho.

Además, no olvidemos que la eutanasia siempre no es necesaria a causa de los desarrollos en la medicina moderna en la sociedad civilizada. Por añadidura, en el caso de una persona sin sentido, es posible que se despierte un día; utilizar la eutanasia en esta circunstancia sería matar, una cosa que no es aceptada en una sociedad civilizada.

Para concluir, estoy en contra de la eutanasia.

Aunque entiendo las razones por las que mucha gente quiera utilizarla, no creo que los humanos tengan el derecho de decidir cuando una persona muera. En mi opinión, una sociedad que acepta la eutanasia activa o pasiva no puede considerarse civilizada.

Euthanasia and Civilised Society Tajmila Chowdhury

“A civilized society cannot accept the concept of euthanasia.” Do you agree?

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n recent years, an often-discussed question has been whether the concept of euthanasia can be accepted in a civilised society. Can one ever justify it?

To begin, it would be useful to consider why some people agree with euthanasia. Firstly, many people would say that we should have the right to die with dignity, especially in a civilised society where we have more choices; if a person were to be in the position of Ramón Sampedro, for example, they would choose the same thing as him. Secondly, those who are religious point out that God does not want people to suffer and therefore, one can use euthanasia. Finally, the suffering not only affects the ill person, but also their family and friends.

On the other hand, others argue that one can

never justify euthanasia. Some people believe that only God has the right to give and take life, and humans do not have this right. Furthermore, let’s not forget that euthanasia is not always necessary because of developments in modern medicine in civilised society. In addition, in the case of a person who is in a vegetative state, it is possible that they may wake up one day; using euthanasia in this circumstance would be murder, something that is not accepted in a civilised society.

In conclusion, I am against euthanasia. Although I understand the reasons why many people want to use it, I don’t believe that humans have the right to decide when a person dies. In my opinion, a society that accepts active or passive euthanasia cannot be considered civilised.

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Textiles by Hannah Still

The Pain of Human Limitations Anna Dean

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or Keats, Albee and Yates an excruciating awareness of human limitation infects, invades and embarrasses its way into the minds of their characters. We watch as this awareness dominates Keats’ poetic thought, misleads Frank and April down ‘Revolutionary Road’ and provides deadly ammunition to George and Martha’s war of words. In order to momentarily dull their pain each must blind themselves to human limitations. Keats ‘wanders in a forest thoughtlessly’ and April stands ‘leaning against a tree’ becoming ‘difficult to make out’ as ‘twilight closes in.’ Martha desperately prolongs ‘liqour-ridden nights’, freezing her tears in ice cubes in case Keats’ ‘weeping cloud’ drowns her, jiggling them so they ‘CLINK!’ in her glass. Yet George refuses to let their ‘game’ end until everything is lost. He throws ‘spear-like’ snapdragons at Martha until all their glassy illusions lay shattered around them, leaving them facing their limitations entirely alone.

As hard as they try to break out of human limitation, each character is faced with the inevitable fact that everything that ripens, must fall. In the opening stanza of To Autumn Keats depicts the seasons harmonious ‘close bosom[ed]’ relationship with the ‘maturing sun’ through the abundant ripening of fruits and the blooming of ‘late flowers’ that feed the bees until summer has ‘o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.’ Here Keats creates a sense of overflowing ripeness by drawing upon the semantic field of fullness, using active and heavy verbs such as ‘full’, ‘swell’, ‘load’ and ‘plump’; littering them throughout a continued sentence to create an extremely full description of Autumn. The use of

full rhyme and an ABAB rhyme scheme at the start of this stanza furthers Keats positive portrayal of the productive relationship between the earth and the sun. The structure of the poem itself is fit to burst, suggesting that ‘Ripeness is all’ (King Lear) This ripeness is also reflected contextually; ‘To Autumn’ was written during Keats’ most prolific year as a poet.

The desire to full-fill and be full swells throughout Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?; however, here we see each character dreads an inability to fulfil their potential. This is largely communicated through themes of sexual limitation, with a particular focus on impotence. Unlike autumn’s ‘close bosomed’ relationship with the ‘maturing sun’, the marriages in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? are fruitless. We discover that Honey ‘blew up’ and then ‘went down’ described by Nick as a ‘hysterical pregnancy.’ This contrasts the image of the abundant swelling of nature in To Autumn and also the sensually curvaceous and prolific image of the ideal American wife.

A theme recurrent through the texts is the sense of being trapped; the characters are caged by their own bodily limitations. Honey has not fulfilled her fertile potential - she is described as ‘slim-hipped’ and seems fearfully reluctant of doing so. She does not look like a sexualised woman, nor does she behave like one. In contemporary American society, the concept of a woman being objectified as a ‘childbearer’ was often depicted as her ‘natural’ role.

Martha professes herself the ‘Earth Mother’, and we hear George describe her as sexually aggressive, claiming she ‘attacked’ a Greek artist and implying AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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that she molested their ‘son.’ This is set against George’s repeated dehumanising description of Honey as a ‘mouse’, telling her to ‘crawl underneath the bar.’ When taking a critical feminist perspective, it is clear that these contradictory value judgments outline the unachievable expectations of females in American society.

George, who is also sexually limited, exposes Honey’s secret use of birth control through a childlike story, shortly after he describes seeing her ‘rolled up like a foetus, sucking away.’ The image of a ‘foetus’ is indicative of Honey being incapable to grow up and fulfil the role expected of her. When faced with these expectations Honey neither fulfils nor rejects them, instead she blinds herself with alcohol, only ‘peeling’ the bottle’s label to glimpse what lies beneath. Honey is ‘confused and frightened’; she describes being ‘asleep… dreaming of something’ and then hearing ‘the sounds coming.’

This is reminiscent of the experience in Ode to a Nightingale.

Keats asks: ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music:- do I wake or sleep?’ Here Keats questions what truth is. These ‘chimes’ are too loud for Honey, who voices that she has ‘decided not to remember’; in other words, Honey has chosen not to question and face reality. Keats dooms this in To Melancholy as the reader is entreated to ‘go not to Lethe’, the river of oblivion, which Albee’s Honey floats on giggling and drunk on ‘poisonous wine’, stinging only herself with her selfish-sweetness as her ‘bee-mouth sips’ (Keats). Alcohol has become Honey’s ‘Melancholy’ bile* that allows her to live in denial of a true relationship with herself and embody a disingenuous female role.

Martha also does not fulfil the ‘feminine’ role American society expects and is left dissatisfied and disappointed in her liminal position. Martha strives to be different and special; ‘paint[ing] blue circles around her things’ and rebelling against society’s traditional values, associating herself with pagan principles. This theme of ritual runs deep into the 66

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text, highlighting Albee’s absurdist influences and forming the cathartic three act structure of the play: Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht** and finally, The Exorcism.

Revolutionary Road is also contained in three parts. April Wheeler constantly pushes the boundaries of her own suburban tragedy. This is seen particularly through her physical setting as she mows the lawn and occupies a male role. April is frustrated by her predefined boundaries and in an attempt to displace these she creates friction in her relationship with her husband Frank Wheeler who is repulsed by her pursuit. Frank describes April’s face as ‘forty years old and as haggard as if it was set to endure physical pain’. Not dissimilarly, Martha is criticised by George; ‘don’t bray’ implying she is a donkey. Both Martha and April are labelled unattractive because they actively thrust beyond their restraints, picking the scabs of their husband’s insecurities as they go. Martha articulates the pain that lies beyond the limiting role of the sexual female stereotype: ‘suffocating- you don’t know how stuffy it is with your dress up over your head… waiting for the lunk-heads.’

Here we see that the limitations of others are the most painful for Martha who declares ‘I am the Earth Mother, and you’re all flops.’ No matter how hard Martha tries to become a ‘Mother’ in reality, she is prevented by the limitations of others. George and Martha are unable to have a child, and so Martha ‘bites’ George ‘so there is blood’ saying she will not ‘forgive’ him ‘for having come to rest’.

Martha cannot be satisfied with her reality; instead, she punishes George for their fruitless marriage, taunting him with pet names like ‘baby’, seducing Nick and bringing up ‘the bit about the kid.’ George helps feed this fantasy, ‘learning the games’ as quickly as Martha ‘can change the rules.’ The illusive child is a figure in which they both suffer and share, and in this case their comfort is their prison. As painful as the ‘murder’ of this child is, perhaps the shared pain is what offers salvation to George and

Martha, who are left alone as ‘Just…us’ as they are forced out of their imaginary ritual into a world devoid of meaning which the Theatre of the Absurd aimed to unravel.

In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? and Revolutionary Road, male characters also experience gender limitations. The contextual setting of 1950s post-war America is incredibly relevant to both Frank and George. Attitudes to abortion, gender, and marriage were in a transitional state. Literature itself was tearing down and reconfiguring these attitudes, and the influence of post-modernism on Revolutionary Road is evident through Frank’s fragmented identity, and consequently the structure of the novel. Frank seems constantly unsure of his true self, and is presented as lost in a web of his own deception and insincerity, returning constantly to the settings of the Knox building and Maureen Grube’s flat for momentary security. Contrastingly, George seems astonishingly sure of himself. George is the master of language and jauntily shoots insults at those around him, which hit deeply and draw blood. However, when George is wrong-footed by Martha he feels not only emasculated but also desperately devalued.

In an attempt to reinstate his authority George employs masculine props of Absurdist drama such as the toy gun and snap-dragons. Within this context of post-war, post-modern challenges to objective truth, the character of Frank seems painfully representative, not only of suburbia but of the state of mankind. Yates presents Frank Wheeler as trapped between the public and the domestic, using physical space and place to represent and commentate on his frustrations and masculine worth. George, who is confined within the walls of the university, has only his expertise of the past to give value to his present self. George and Martha live in New Carthage implying a barren wasteland that sentences George to sexually disappoint Martha.

For April Wheeler, the fact that others cannot see beyond their limitations is almost as painful as the

sight of her own. April feels betrayed as she realises that Frank’s so called self-awareness is a false one, and that his identity as the ‘most interesting man’ she has ‘ever met’ is founded on sordidly deceptive exaggerations. However, April does not merely suffer Frank’s limitations; she bears their wholly limited relationship. Frank and April Wheeler are trapped and defined by empty reflections of themselves, and their relationship is glassy and superficial. These reflections offer little comfort or satisfaction, and are received by looking censoriously at the other.

Frank is described looking literally and metaphorically at his reflection in relation to April.

A possible critical explanation for this can be found in A Room of One’s Own, where Virginia Woolf describes women as a ‘looking glass’ that reflect the male as larger than life. We first encounter this idea in chapter two, as Frank looks into Aprils dressing table mirror ‘tightening his jaw… to give it a leaner, more commanding look’, rehearsing his ideal masculine performance. As April catches Frank’s vanity - ‘Her own eyes were there in the mirror’ we see her challenging traditional male voyeurism; Frank is the object of April’s gaze. Despite the fact that April quickly ‘lowers them’, it is all too late; the reader has already recognised the falseness of the couple’s personas. This humiliating moment reveals Frank and April’s domineering egos, their insecurity-ridden ideals that form the shallow, reflective surface of their relationship and prevent them from understanding each other.

The concept of being a stranger to your sexual self also occurs in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? as Martha describes herself remembering past relationships ‘almost like a voyeur.’ This distance from the past that Martha describes is actually living within April and Frank’s relationship; the couple are almost estranged from each other. Martha and George’s relationship is held in extreme contrast to April and Frank’s miscommunication. The games played in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? are a provocation based on faith and mutual AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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understanding. Martha and George supply each other with prompts in order to bring the other out, teasing each other with risks of exposure that are both terrifying and exciting. However, this trust and understanding births a vulnerability that the almostnumbed Frank and April do not experience. Martha and George have the power to profoundly hurt the other by exposing their secrets. This is something that Frank and April fear doing to themselves, rather than to each other. The Wheeler’s lapse of communication extends to their senses of self. Their self-imposed ignorance of their limitations has set in so deeply that they are uncertain of how they understand themselves. This is ironic considering that they are extremely aware of the confines of suburbia; perhaps by glorifying their rejection of this conformity they are in fact confining themselves to an obliviousness of their own reality.

April tries desperately to shatter their mirroredcage, writing, ‘you know as well as I do that there’s never been anything between us but contempt, and distrust and a terrible sickly dependence on each other’s weakness.’ However, April dismisses this attempt as ‘weak with hate’, as she realises that she must push beyond these boundaries alone. Arguably her thought is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: ‘I am in blood. / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’

April admits Frank’s limitations, accepting his ‘inability to love’, but cannot undertake her own.

Instead April pushes the boundaries of the expectations of her society, the reality of her relationship and the strength of her body until she bursts. April and Keats both ‘wander in a forest’; however, the pensive Keats eventually wanders out again. April jumps fatally further in.

Despite April writing ‘whatever happens’, she anticipates her death; in fact she desires to ‘wade no more’; to be still and silent, no longer having to shake her shackles. April relocates her yearning to transcend human limitations in the very human act of death. Similarly to Keats, her death is premature.

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In Bright Star Keats mourns his inability to trace the shadows of ‘a high romance’, envying how ‘steadfast’ the star is in its ‘lone splendour’, wishing not to be limited from experience by his mortality. However, this admiration shifts uncertainly in tone as we move into the third quatrain. This is marked by the expressive ‘No-’ as Keats describes the star as ‘unchangeable.’ Like April, Keats fears being ‘Fixed’ or in April’s case, boxed in by suburbia. In light of the American dream of home ownership, 1950s society can be critiqued as defining people in terms of their home and belongings. Mrs Givings seems disgusted by the Wheeler’s home, describing ‘warped window frames,’ a ‘wet cellar’, ‘crayon marks on the walls, filthy smudges around the doorknobs and fixtures.’ This highlights that the ideal is an impossible one as it follows descriptions of April desperately cleaning, scrubbing in all the hidden crevices of the Wheeler’s home, even behind the oven as if to wash away her embarrassing limitations.

Similar ideas of being objectified and defined by society are outlined in Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds), a song from the time, which quails that people are ‘put in boxes’ and ‘they come out all the same’. This fearful loss of individuality prompts April and Frank to plan to ‘move to Europe’; this is their ‘High romance’ which Keats speaks of. However, this is merely an evasion of reality.

Although at first April believes this is what she truly desires, she soon recognises the falseness of the elusive ‘Europe’ and Frank, and so she gives up on both of them. In Bright Star Keats creates a similar sense of things being worn down through entropy in the repetitive line, ‘Still, still to hear her tender taken breath.’ This indicates a breathy and human rhythm. April also breaks down and washes away illusory false promises, realising her only escape is through a very real and human death. Keats is able to notice the beauty of the transitory nature of human experience in the breath of his lover, preserving this moment in poetic form. However April, who is denied a voice by Yates, cannot express

her limitations through words. She must be active rather than pensive, and so April bursts. This is an idea discussed in the feminist philosophy of ‘Ecriture Femine’ which suggests language is directional and patriarchal, describing women as aqueous-like beings who need free flowing language to be able to truly communicate. When viewing April through this critical lens it is possible to deduce that April is unable to communicate with Frank due to linguistic restrictions of the patriarchal ideology.

The only moment April seems close to achieving emotional and linguistic liberation is when she is writing a letter to Frank. One may argue that this is the only time the reader hears April’s truthful voice, as in Revolutionary Road’s masculine, directional dialogue her voice is distorted and misunderstood, often shouting or remaining silent when confronted

by Frank’s. April imagines the words she has written look like ‘perfectly swatted mosquitos’; perhaps these mosquitoes had drawn April’s blood, and now reveal her pain, sprawled across the page. For April, this previous pain is ‘weak with hate.’ Arguably she feels that by refusing her role and ending her life, and the life of her child, she is actively taking control of her feminine strength. Tragically, April’s final sacrificial attempt to liberate herself from masculine society’s ideal of the domestic ensures her confinement to them. When Frank arrives at the scene of the abortion ‘his head continued to ring with the sound of her voice.’ But the voice Frank hears is of a domesticated April - ‘try a damp sponge and a little detergent darling’ - apologetic of her own corpse’s blood: ‘I didn’t get any on the rug did I? Oh good.’

These issues of falseness and unreliable truth are echoed throughout the texts. Perhaps Martha speaks most truthfully in her poignant monologue in Act Three, The Exorcism: Martha: (to George) ‘ Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy, and yes I do wish to be happy.’ Here we see Martha articulating the dialectic of love and hate, common to her relationship with George and April’s with Frank. In Revolutionary Road the epigraph quotes

Keats’ ‘Isabella; or, the pot of Basil.’ It reads ‘Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!’ Through these quotes we learn of a raw human emotion, the love and hate that both Martha and April are trying so desperately to protect with their ideals and pretences. Martha speaks of George as he who ‘I shall not forgive… for having seen me and said: yes, this will do, who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it.’

We can recognise the same guilt, described by April as being ‘weak with hate’, that both women experience. If this passion is their truth, then it is not the liberation society promises them, and they have no choice but to dull their pain with makebelieve illusory promises of ‘the Kid’ or ‘Europe’.

However, if they are to survive, neither can sustain these illusions. April decides she can no longer bear her reality, and so she transcends it, leaving behind her a trail of blood. Martha who ‘bites until there is blood’ and ‘chokes’ it ‘back in her throat’ fights valiantly against George in the battle to save her fabricated child. However, George knows that in order to save their relationship, he must tear down their pretences, and so the child must die. At the end of the play, George and Martha are both left sorely wounded and mute, but unlike April and Frank they are injured together. Along with Keats they resist the ‘dull opiate’ and ‘refuse to fade far away.’ Instead, Keats journeys ‘on the viewless wings of poesy’ using poetic language and form to transcend his limitations. However, George and Martha must discard language and illusion. As the play ends their language is minimal; however, they voice the deepest truths about themselves. However Frank does not have his counterpart. He does not have the ‘wings of poesy’ to rest on, nor does he have George’s ‘gentle’ hand on his shoulder. Instead Frank runs down Revolutionary Road in ‘desperate grief ’, and will forever be ‘incidentally out of place’ as he exposes the limitations of society’s ‘dosing rooms’, but cannot reflect upon himself nor understand his pain.

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Artwork by Eva Barnett

Notes

Bibliography

* An archaic understanding of the word ‘Melancholy’ suggests a Physiomical state/humour of gloominess. The physiological state of ‘Melancholia’, understood in our modern times, as ‘Clinical Depression’ was believed to be a result of too much ‘black bile’ in a human being’s anatomy.

Yates, R. Revolutionary Road. New York, Vintage, 2008.

** The ‘Witches Sabbath’ on the eve of the Catholic festival ‘Jacobi Philippi’

Woolf, V., A Room of One’s Own. San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.

Shakespeare, W., King Lear, edited and introduced

by Phillipa Kelly. Rushcutters Bay, NSW, Halstead, 2002.

Shakespeare, W., Macbeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Reynolds, M., Little Boxes from Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth. Columbia Records, 1967.

Cixous, H., The Laugh of the Medusa, Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1976. www.dwrl.utexas.edu/ ~davis/crs/e321/Cixous-Laugh.pdf

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Artwork by Anna Dean

The Visibility of the ‘Virgin/Whore’ Dichotomy in Paradise Lost and The White Devil Eliza Frayn

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he virgin/whore dichotomy is incredibly pronounced in both Book 9 of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and in John Webster’s The White Devil. The contention is between whether this is a true reflection of women as a whole in real life as actual beings, or if it is merely a reflection of the misogynistic society in which the characters inhabit and in which the texts were written. This essay will focus on the roles of women in the texts, the treatment of women in the texts and the extent to which this characterisation reflects and is shaped by the historical context.

Dichotomy means two opposing or conflicting ideas. In both Paradise Lost and The White Devil, major characters embody or portray one or both of the attributes of virgin/whore. In Paradise Lost, Eve, being the only female character in the poem embodies both of these qualities; as such she can be considered as a dyad; a whole consisting of two parts. She is an incredibly complex character and is idealised as the virgin and then is condemned as the whore. This is evidence against Samuel Johnson’s comment that in Paradise Lost ‘there is a want of human interest’.

Eve is alternately referred to as both “beguiled” and as the “beguiler”. In The White Devil however, both of these qualities are separately attributed to each of the female characters, Vittoria embodying the role of the whore and Isabella, the virgin. However, Vittoria can be seen to

embody both as she is in herself the white devil, the oxymoron, both pure and evil. Monticelso says of her, “If the devil / Did ever take good shape behold his picture”. A similar opposition is evident between Isabella and Zanche, the difference being where Isabella is depicted as virtuous and devoted, Zanche is shown as lascivious and fickle.

Interestingly, in the Jacobean productions of the play, both roles were taken by the same actor which makes the dichotomy even more pronounced.

In the two texts, the dichotomy is not between women objectively being either virgins or whores, it is between the portrayal of them as virgins and whores versus who they really are and the reader’s perceptions of them. In The White Devil, the dichotomy is between the other characters’ perceptions of Vittoria and the reader’s perceptions of her. To the modern day reader, she can be seen as an early feminist; she acknowledges the disparity between the sexes and refuses to conform and answer to men. In her arraignment she speaks as a man, refusing to answer questions: “I am not compelled to tell you”. However, to the characters within the play she is seen to be a whore and is told thus, “notorious strumpet” by the male characters, who see her for what society does: a whore.

Isabella’s dichotomy is between that of being outwardly a simpering, weak, submissive wife but inwardly, as empowered as Vittoria. Isabella similarly realises that she is a victim of the patriarchy AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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and exclaims, “O that I were a man” and although she desires the same power that Vittoria also craves, she is considered to be virginal and therefore is not a threat. Similarly, Paradise Lost is open to these dual, dichotomous, readings with Blake insinuating that Milton was ‘of the devil’s party without knowing it’ as Milton writes the characters of Eve and Satan as compelling, complex characters with reasonable argument that sways the biblical rules of how women should behave.

After the fall Adam accuses her of wilfully seducing him and implicitly blames her sexuality for “despoiling” their paradise: “This it shall befall / Him who to worth in women overtrusting / Lets her will rule”. In turn, this implicitly portrays their sexual union as an unclean act for which Eve is responsible. A modern reader potentially brings the sensibility of individuals being complex and therefore acknowledges this obvious dichotomy, as opposed to a reader of the age who, affected by the values of that society, might have taken them at face value. Not only would a seventeenth century reader have taken them at face value but also they may have seen them as something rather disturbing; as Simkins comments, the empowered Vittoria and a compelling Eve which a modern audience may ‘interpret as a feisty heroine, a Jacobean audience may well have seen as something monstrous’.

One could argue that actually the female characters are not as complex as they appear to be and are merely whores pretending to be virgins. As Milton shows us, all women after the sin of Eve are born sinful and therefore it is only a veil of pretence that leads one to believe that a dichotomy even exists. As Beidler comments, ‘Feminist critics link the play to masculine anxieties around female duplicity’; this is symbolised by Bracciano’s quote that, “Women to man / Is either a God or a wolf ”.

It is the men’s fear of the women’s pretence that is the root of the virgin/whore dichotomy in both texts because all through the texts, particularly The White Devil, men regard the outward appearance of 74

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innocence and virginity to be a deliberate mask for lustful treachery. The idea of appearances as being deceptive is apparent in Monticelso’s comment, “What goodly fruit she seems, / Yet like those apples travellers report […] I will but touch her and you straight shall see / She’ll fall to soot and ashes”. The word “seem” implies that the aesthetic presentation of women (namely Vittoria) as beautiful and ripe like “fruit” is a deception; they really are poisonous and whores.

As here, in both of the texts, women’s sexuality and outward appearance is considered false and duplicitous. This is crudely defined by the appearance and sexuality of women being depicted in metaphors and euphemisms. Key amongst these are women who are sexually promiscuous (and perceived as whores) being objectified as either food or animals, Vittoria and Eve both being compared to apples and when their sexual instincts are discussed they are primal and animalistic, Eve is described as having an “appetite” for sin as well as a literal appetite for the apple itself. Equally, the virgins are bland, Catholic statuettes of piety. This “veil of innocence” potentially is true of the female characters in both texts, as they are perceived to be by the male characters as all intrinsically sullied yet outwardly projecting cleanliness and purity.

Fourthly, one could consider the possibility that there is no dichotomy at all: women are neither virgins nor whores; they are merely sexual beings like men. Women are only labelled as whores by the patriarchal societies in which they exist; it is misogynist thinking that leads us to believe that there is a difference between virginity and whoredom. The difference is an awakened sexuality; women who present as sexual beings therefore are presented as whores, women who do not embody sexuality and merely exist as effeminate statues are labelled virgins. One could also argue that the men in both texts only welcome female sexuality when it is on their terms, and it is when it is not that women are labelled whores. In Paradise Lost, Adam actively

encourages Eve to have fallen sex with him despite blaming her afterwards: “never did they beauty […] so inflame my sense / of ardour to enjoy thee”; when he leads her to “a shady bank” to consummate their fall he is described as “seizing” her hand, leading one to assume that it was sex on his terms. He also (earlier on in Book 9) speaks of the joys of Godgiven copulation, reasoning with Eve that “to delight he made us”. Similarly in the White Devil, Braciano coerces Vittoria into having a sexual affair with him and it is only the Pope, who disagrees with this promiscuity, who then labels her a whore.

It seems to be the case that the virgin/whore dichotomy only exists when men become frightened of the power of female sexuality and feel duped and emasculated by it. Adam only sees Eve as a whore once he finds himself persuaded by her sexuality to commit sinful acts. The authors themselves embody the values of their age, and it is seventeenth century societies that feared the overwhelming, powerful nature of female sexuality. As Loomba points out, European society at this time regarded women as ‘Saints in the Church, angels in the streets, devils in the kitchen and apes in bed’. It disturbs the male characters that women should feel the same lust as they do, it is only through men and women’s differences that men gain power, so when women openly express the same lusts and desires they raise themselves to the same level of men, therefore becoming a threat as they subvert the Chain of Being: Women being below men.

In the seventeenth century, the previous Monarch, Queen Elizabeth I’s political power created a picture of the monarch as divine and pure and she was known as the Virgin Queen. This positioned her divinity as the source of order, making those who contrasted with her (in their sexual conduct and behaviour) potentially to be perceived as sources of disorder. As the earthly head of the Chain of Being, a female monarch could only hold this position by being utterly pure and uncorrupted, so examples of women in Literature

who use their sexuality in a promiscuous way to subvert and ascend the Chain of Being disturb feudal ideas of order and are punished for their transgressions. The only way after this point that men can regain control is to shame and pervert women’s sexuality until once again the female sexual appetite becomes suppressed. The virgin/whore dichotomy is not only evident, it is so evident that it overwhelms the male psyche and frightens them in to enforcing the categories.

The idea that women’s sexuality is dangerous features heavily in Paradise Lost and The White Devil.

Satan, the most pure form of evil, is nearly thrown off course by the sight of Eve’s beauty in the garden, “Such pleasure took the serpent to behold / This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve”; this euphemism for vagina leads one to assume that Satan is stupefied by Eve’s apparent sexuality, so much so that, “the evil one abstracted stood / From his own evil, and for the time remained / Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed”. The word “disarmed” suggests that Eve’s “sweet recess” is a weapon more powerful that Satan’s own. Her sexuality is such a powerful distraction that it becomes for Satan, a defining part of her essence, therefore making her intrinsically dangerous.

On the other hand, it could be argued that the authors are not embodying the stereotypical attitudes of their times, but are trying to point out this hypocrisy by making the virgin/whore dichotomy incredibly evident. In The White Devil, the reader’s sympathies lie with Vittoria, the condemned whore, the strongest characters are the women as they surprise and compel the reader. It is the men who force the women into this dichotomy and bring about the active change of their labels, the transition from virgins to whores. Eve is seduced by Satan, deflowered of her virginity and then as a whore seduces Adam. Satan’s “persuasive words impregnated” her mind, the most intrusive form of objectification; whilst he does not touch her body, he rapes her mind, the only thing that women AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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inwardly have that is secreted from the eyes of men.

Vittoria, a virgin is seduced by the delights of aspiration and then is ravished at her arraignment; her parting cry is “A rape! A rape” and when asked why she replies, “You have ravished justice and forced her to do your bidding”. Metaphorically raped by Monticelso an evil power (like Satan), like Eve, she now too faces the defining label of whoredom, having been stripped of her virginity by the men around her.

The idea that the body is subject to whoredom but that the mind may remain pious as long as it is not tainted by the men also features in The White Devil where Vittoria notes, “O woman’s poor revenge / Which dwells but in the tongue”; the only thing that is untouched by men is women’s minds and their words, casting Satan’s persuasion of Eve into an even more disturbing light as he also manages to ravish her mind. As she persuades Adam to fall, as Vittoria says, this is Eve’s last revenge. The

Jacobean idea of interaction with the devil resulting in being moved from virginal to whoredom reflects a wider belief in the binary characteristic of the devil, meaning that any woman who interacted with him was by definition either virgin or whore.

In conclusion, although evident in the portrayal of significant female characters in both Paradise Lost and The White Devil, the virgin/whore dichotomy does not stand up under critical scrutiny and bears no resemblance or truth to real women. Rather, they are shown to be products of their context. It is only by the definitions given by men and the social conditions in which women are placed that force them to decide and take on these labels/roles.

Objectively the men in the texts should be considered equally as both virgins and whores like the women are; the only reason why they are not, being that through exercising power in misogynistic society, they men can afford the luxury through gender not to be called so.

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Photos by Dora Wade

Concluding Commencement Francesca McCoid, Director, Marylebone Dance Company

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oncluding Commencement is a reflection on the gap between ‘conclude’ and ‘commence’, two words with a similarity of letters and consonants but a world apart in terms of emotion and direction. Or are they? Do the two words represent the same intention, but with opposing – and therefore symmetrical – direction and focus?

These questions led to the idea that Marylebone Dance Company would engage with these two words for the 2014 Tour, approaching it from a creative and reflective perspective.

This meeting of the infinite world of dance and the finality of ‘end’ led the company to realise that dance as an art form provides the greatest tools for the creation of the perfect ending: Retrograde: repeat the start, but backwards; Repetition: repeat the parts that give the dance identity, but with new developments; Speed and dynamics: slow down, soften.

The company applied these choreographic crafting devices to the programming and production of the 2014 Tour. In applying the choreographic devices of an ending, the company discovered that dance knows how to fill the gaps between a conclusion and a commencement: Retrograde - reflect on what you know, but from a different perspective, backwards. The tour production is structured in historical retrograde, so it

begins with our most recently revived piece and ends with the first piece created at the start of the year.

Repetition - repeat the parts that give identify, but develop them with what you have learnt. In reflecting on the highlights of the year, the company chose to rework and reinvent some of its favourite choreographies. It also explored the idea that a conclusion should repeat the most important elements of the body of a work or text, and decided to apply this to the final work of the tour.

Speed and dynamics - listen to the silence, float in the gaps, slow down in order to reflect. In terms of a creative response, the company developed a piece that worked with mirrors, exploring the need to reflect, highlight and focus within a conclusion.

The resulting performances reflect collaboration between the Dance Company and the Artistic Director of Performing and Visual Arts, Dora Wade, who provided large sheets of metal-clad Perspex along with smaller metallic posters and photographed the subsequent shapes and reflections arising through the course of development rehearsals. Students were then able to view the photographs of their self-choreographed poses, which helped them to reflect on the poetry and impact of their movement (see pages 78 and 80 for examples). The final piece was choreographed by Francesca McCoid.

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Photo by Dora Wade

The World, the Laws Of Nature and Moral Responsibility Oliver Joncus ‘We have to believe in free will, we have no choice.’

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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hese wise, ironical words from the PolishAmerican writer encapsulate the paradox of free will – that moral responsibility along with determinism requires it. We as humans seem very much inclined to make an assumption of free will, it is a fundamental to our nature and the very social structures we are so dependent on. Yet, counter-intuitively, we seem to live in a world of cause and effect - the underlying premise of the determinist’s argument - which suggests that our actions, like any other events in the universe, are a necessary consequence of physical laws, challenging the very basis of moral responsibility by collapsing the distinction between cause and reason. If the power of choice is an illusion, what creates accountability? This essay will explore why determinism and free will are deeply intertwined in a relationship that seems to consist in contradiction, and how such a relationship generates the idea of moral responsibility that we take for granted.

DETERMINISM Pierre Simon de La Place, the French Newtonian philosopher, claimed that if we were able to judge the location and movement of every particle in the universe we would be able to predict the state of the universe at any point in the future. This idea is commonly referred to as ‘La Place’s demon’ but he

himself referred to: “Une intelligence... Rien ne serait incertain pour elle” (An intellect…nothing would be uncertain for it). This metaphor for physical determinism, the belief that all events in the universe are necessitated by preceding events, seems to be becoming more real by the day in light recent of technological advances, such as the ability of some supercomputers to model and simulate the universe’s particle history.* Such an issue seems to pose a problem for rationality, and in turn moral responsibility, as mechanistic materialist Baron D’Holbach points out: if our brains are biological constructs, then what makes them exempt from the ‘immutable’ physical laws of this universe? Although we cannot point directly to the causes of our decisions, what makes them ours, or indeed decisions at all, rather than consequences?

Determinism, then, is certainly a force we have to reckon with in our lives. From the hard determinists’ perspective we are simply complex pieces of biological machinery – but does this necessarily extinguish moral responsibility?

Biological Determinism. Aspects of the human personality certainly appear to be directed by our DNA. Genetics has demonstrated that inherited genotypes shape much of our behaviour. Recent observations about the correlation between genes and behaviour have led to the discovery of the Monoamine oxidase A enzyme, also known as MAO-A or the ‘warrior gene’, which has been associated, in combination with a hostile AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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environment when young, with antisocial or even violent behaviour. In fact, such underlying deterministic factors have proven to affect moral responsibility and culpability in legal terms. A Texan named Bradley Waldroup who attempted to kill his wife and brutally murdered her friend, and was charged with the murder of the friend and the attempted murder of his wife, faced the death penalty; the conviction was overturned after prosecutors and the jury found a connection between his violence and the MAO-A gene.

Determinism as a threat to moral responsibility is shown, in cases such as this, to be more than just hypothetical.

Cultural Determinism. Our environment, especially at an early age, colours and shapes our minds. In the words of Walt Disney: ‘A child’s mind is a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly.’ As a majority of neural development occurs ex utero it is easy to see how we too may be just as subject to the laws of nature that affect everything around us. Our visceral resistance to such an idea, because of the human attraction to the concept of individuality and the ‘self ’, has birthed literary concepts such as the ‘noble savage’ – an idealisation of an indigene who is insusceptible to influences of civilisation and innately ‘good’, an idea often expressed in the works of Jean-Jacque Rosseau. What such expressions of individuality and innate moral goodness reveal is that the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘culpability’ are very much human constructions.

Brain Chemistry and Neuroscience. As our understanding of the brain progresses, Descartes’ assertion that there is a relationship between the mind and the body – although claiming they are separate substances – seems to become more absurd.

Cartesian dualism, and with it the idea of the soul playing a part in our decisions, is incompatible with modern neuroscience. The idea that the brain is the source of our free will and moral responsibility can 82

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be challenged with counter-examples. One such example is a case study revealing a neural prediction of one’s will: the choice of whether to press a button to the right or to the left when told to can be encoded in the prefrontal and parietal cortexes up to ten seconds before we are conscious of the choice.

To say that this would rule out free will and moral responsibility would be painfully reductive, but it certainly indicates unawareness on our part of how our brains, apparently the part of our body responsible for ‘free’ decisions, are just as vulnerable to the determining laws of nature as everything else.

LIBERTARIANISM AND COMPATABILISM Here I think it is necessary to consider how the human mind (in the Cartesian sense) fits into the deterministic equation; is it really sufficient to say that one ‘choosing’ to vote is just as free as the clouds ‘choosing’ to make it rain, that people, in the words of Stephen Pinker, ‘are just as mechanical as guns’?

Somewhere along the chain of cause and effect it seems necessary for us to make a claim to metaphysical freedom – freedom of choice, a causa sui – and for moral responsibility to be present.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt makes the distinction between different kinds of desires that we as humans can experience, our awareness of them and how we act on them; an elaboration of Sartre’s mavauis foi, perhaps.** He claims that most sentient beings are subject to urges and desires, for example a desire to eat chocolate or copulate, something which he terms first order desires. As humans, however, we also have an awareness of those desires (so-called second order desires) and so, in this sense, can choose whether to be determined or not; a drug addict, under this premise, choosing to feed his addiction is wilfully determined. This theory allows for the reconciliation of two seemingly contradictory principles: that our minds determine our actions and that our nature determines our minds.

Although Frankfurt’s libertarian standpoint simply infers the existence of free will based on our

own capacity of self-awareness, to what extent are we in control of our ‘second order desires’? What is clear is that in order to reconcile determinism with moral responsibility we have to redefine free will.

David Hume does so in his Treatise of Human Nature by, firstly, dealing the problem of ‘necessity’ or cause and effect, saying ‘We know nothing farther of causation of any kind than merely the constant conjunction of objects’. It is exactly from this constant conjunction that we derive the idea of moral responsibility, for it is inherent in the human mind to ascribe a relationship to two separate but overlapping events.

Thus it appears, not only that the conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature; but also that this regular conjunction has been universally acknowledged among mankind, and has never been the subject of dispute, either in philosophy or common life.

(Abstract of the Treatise) Hume establishes the framework for free will by identifying the origin of the idea of responsibility as embedded in our conceptualisation of cause and effect. It is here that we see the confluence of determinism and moral responsibility: they are not only compatible, but also interdependent. For we could not make a connection between an action, e.g. a gun firing, and a reaction, someone being shot, and so deduce an idea of accountability on the part of the agent if we didn’t agree on a necessary connection between two successive events. Hume’s approach allows us to extrapolate further, and say that we do possess free will. Returning to semantics, he cites how we typically associate freedom of action with the absence of coercion or physical constraint.

Ideas such a ‘cause and effect’ become dangerous when we start to consider them as a hindrance to the freedom of our choices, when really they are merely an expression of how events are connected.

By liberty, then, we can only mean the power of acting or not acting, according to the

determinations of the will (Section VIII of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’).

By considering free will and moral responsibility to only be applicable to actions in the absence of physical constraint, and by seeing determinism as an inescapable underlying, necessary, force in our lives, the compatibilist approach offers us the best of both worlds: moral responsibility with the grounding in a world of cause and effect.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MORAL RESPONSIBILITY Moral responsibility hinges on all that has been previously discussed. If we take determinism as true then moral attitudes such as praise and blame become meaningless. With this so too the legal notion of culpability, where we can only determine actus reus, the guilty act, but not mens rea, the guilty conscience. From the case studies on determinism previously discussed we can see how establishing intention is essential for our consideration of moral responsibility. Indeed it threatens the underpinnings of penal law, something that is separate yet influenced by ethical thinking, where the concepts of retribution and rehabilitation are key.

In this respect rationality, couched in the world of reasons and intentions, is undermined. It is nonetheless possible to view events, such as acts of civil disobedience which the law system is required to pass a moral judgment on, as causal chains yet also as results of human intention. It is the combination of these ‘stances’, as philosopher Daniel Dennett argues, that allows us to explain and make a conclusion about people’s behaviour.*** Furthermore such stances suggest that we indeed place importance, despite whether intention exists or not, on reactive moral attitudes: viewing someone as guilty or innocent, praiseworthy or blameworthy.

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obligation are viable and important in spite of whether they are deemed philosophically true or not. The friction between the implications of determinism and what some view as absolute moral truths engenders a question: do we let our moral responsibility become dictated by an apparently reductive mode of thought, or do we allow for essential moral concepts based on the assumption of freedom so that we remain a progressive civilisation where basic human moral thought can be universalised by law?

Notes

CONCLUSION In this essay the theories of Determinist, Libertarianist, Compatabilist thought and the implications of Determinism have been juxtaposed in order to examine whether people, in consideration of these modes of thought, can be viewed as morally responsible. By looking at different manifestations of determinism in science, neurology and legal practice it was made possible to view moral responsibility in the context of what effects everyday human experience and not just in the lens of abstract ideas about whether we are existentially free or not. What we have found, especially in examining the rudiments of moral responsibility that lie in cause and effect, is that free will implies moral responsibility yet does not necessitate it. Additionally it has become apparent how compatible, and even essential to one another, ideas of free will and cause and effect are, the premises of two seemingly polar opposite standpoints. This leads me to conclude that the insuperably deterministic ‘laws of nature’ do not have a defining effect on our moral responsibility.

*** According to Daniel Dennett, ‘A little practical reasoning from the chosen set of beliefs and desires will in most instances yield a decision about what the agent ought to do; that is what you predict the agent will do.’

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*The Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation’s primary function is “to compute and model the evolution of dark matter halos, thereby rendering the invisible visible for astronomers to study, and to predict visible structure that astronomers can seek to observe.” ** Bad faith: a characterisation of a person, by the existentialist, as acting under the pressures of culturally determining factors.

Bibliography Laplace, Pierre Simon, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, translated into English from the original French, 6th ed., by Truscott,F.W. and Emory,F.L., Dover Publications (New York, 1951) Primack, J. and Bell, T. (July 2012). Universe on Fast Forward, Sky and Telescope, University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center, hipacc.ucsc.edu/Bolshoi/images/ PrimackBell_S&T_Bolshoi%207-2012.pdf.

Thiry, Paul Henri (Baron d’Holbach), The System of Nature or The Laws of the Moral and Physical World, translated into English from the original French, originally published under a pseudonym in 1770, Freethought Archives, www.ftarchives.net/holbach/ system/ 0syscontents.htm (undated)

Frazzetto, G. et al, Early Trauma and Increased Risk for Physical Aggression during Adulthood: The Moderating Role of MAOA Genotype, PLoS ONE Vol 1, Issue 5, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1 872046/ (2007) Hagerty, B., Can your Genes make you Murder?

Inside the criminal brain, NPR Special Series, www.npr.org/ templates/story/story.php?storyId=128043329 (2010) Soon, C. S. et al, Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain, Nature Neuroscience Vol. 11 (2008)

Hume, D., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, originally published in 1748, Project Gutenburg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ 9662/9662h/9662-h.htm (2003) Hume, D. A Treatise of Human Nature, originally published in 1738, National Library of Scotland / Royal Society of Edinburgh, http://www.davidhume.org/texts/thn.html (undated) Dennett, D., The Intentional Stance, New Edition, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA, 1989)

Frankfurt, H., Necessity, Volition, and Love, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1999)

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Artwork by Columba Williams

Critical Influences on the Early Surrealist Works of Leonora Carrington Anna Dean

T

he very notion of Surrealism is the attempt, through the practice of Art, to create new demands on reality. In order to do so, the movement itself must discard all notions of doctrine, and the artists must strive to liberate the creation of the subconscious. Sigmund Freud states that the only trustworthy definition for the subconscious is something ‘between conscious and unconscious.’ Through the use of the irrational juxtaposition of images and enigma, Surrealism manipulated the possibility of a subconscious art which explored themes of terror and eroticism, creating a new form of sensibility and providing highly influential expression and liberation at a time of change. This essay will explore the tensions between the artist Leonora Carrington’s identities as an independent surrealist artist and Max Ernst’s muse (a female source of inspiration for a creative artist), through focusing on portraits both of and by Leonora Carrington.

The post war climate of the 1920s was a time of questioning of previous values, giving way to a new, psychoanalytic thought pioneered by Freud. Out of the rubble of World War One devastation, which Max Ernst poignantly epitomises the pain of in his autobiography, saying ‘On the first of August 1914 Max Ernst died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918’, Surrealism emerged. Surrealism, despite its imaginative richness, was not really a means of escapism. Instead Surrealists seemed to be relocating their understanding of life and reality

through a relationship with the surreal and the unconscious, not by running away from it. However, despite its originality Surrealism was dependant upon the female muse, much like many movements before it. This essay will explore this concept within the context of the Surrealist movement, and the tensions this entailed within the intimate relationship between Ernst and Carrington.

Surrealism’s role of refining and pioneering artistic thought formed the core of the Avant-Garde era.

Avant-garde, which in French means “advance guard” or “vanguard”, when translated means “foreguard.” This term was used largely to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative. During the 1930s Leonora Carrington, a young female artist floated onto the scene of Surrealism. Carrington, had been rebellious and strong willed from a young age (she was expelled from two schools for her behaviour as a young girl), defied her father’s - a wealthy textile manufacturer - desire for her to become a debutant in a struggle to become a practicing artist.

Carrington’s personal and artistic confidence is pronounced within her painting. Leonora’s ‘SelfPortrait’, 1937–38, overflows with strong visual statements of her need for freedom. When visiting the Metropolitan museum in New York, I discovered Leonora’s self-portrait. Although small, the painting holds a quiet dominance in the space, accosting the viewer with a breathy, shadow of alchemy. The hyena seems particularly gothic and strange with womanly breasts and ice-cold eyes. It AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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poses in a similar attitude to that of the artist; raising its leg to replicate her gesture and unsettling the viewer. This illustrates Leonora’s influences, as the Surrealists were interested in animalistic sexuality.

As my eyes travelled around this whirlpool of composition, I noticed the other animals of the image, particularly the wild freedom of the horses in comparison to the animated pose of the hyena.

The horse seems to be hypnotically inviting the toy horse and the viewer to join him as he runs into an expanse of forest, perhaps symbolic of the unconscious. The horse urges you to escape from the enclosed space of society and old values and live a life conducted by instinct, just as Leonora has chosen to do herself. However the thin layers of paint seem to create an almost insubstantial feeling to the portrait and the undefined mist of the forest could be seen as either romantic or sinister; perhaps it is both, dangerously illusory, just like Leonora’s new surreal life.

In this portrait I notice the influences of Celtic fables, told to Carrington by her beloved nanny, are evident; her Self-portrait certainly carries a mythic element. As I sat and drew Leonora’s wild tresses in the Metropolitan museum, I felt as if I was depicting Amphitrite, the Greek sea-goddess, and wife of Poseidon. Perhaps Carrington was also influenced by ancient Greek and Roman mythology.

The self-portrait itself reminds me of the Marine Venus fresco I once visited in Pompeii. The resting body, set against the extended, energized arm and sprawled hand seems almost identical. Both perched on their velvet-sea thrones, Carrington and Venus are the protagonists of the image who arrange the symbolic figures of the image into a dream-like composition. Although both pairs of fair, elongated legs curve into a comfortable stance, Carrington’s feet are laced tight in black leather boots. These can be interpreted as a restriction on her attempted freedom, as they seem to allude to Victorian fetishism. I think a visual and contextual likeness can be drawn between Leonora’s boots and the 88

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anklets worn by Venus. Venus’s frolic form appears weighed down by the heavy golden jewelry she wears on her ankles. These may suggest that the role of the Roman female, and even a goddess, was to display riches and encourage male voyeurism. This modeling of the masculine success and wealth of craft is not dissimilar from the role of the Surrealist muse. Surrealism often considered female sexuality as a porthole through which to gain artistic enlightenment. In her self portrait Carrington’s creativity seems anchored and limited by the sexual expectations of the female muse; her feet are trying desperately to burst out of her tight-laced boots, which seem completely out of place set against her masculine attire.

Despite the freedom of her figure, and her role as an artist, at the root of things Leonora is tied to the role which her contemporary Surrealists, who were typically male, expected her to play. Carrington acknowledged and refused this expected role almost simultaneously. In 1983 she reminisced, saying; “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” However, when taking a critical feminist perspective I wonder if Carrington, whilst desperately rejecting the muse within her work, in effect, proved its power.

In this early Self Portrait, Leonora’s figure and stance is strikingly masculine. She paints herself sitting with her legs apart and without breasts. Here Carrington seems to be painting herself as an independent, empowered woman, with the prospect of freedom from the shackling society of debutant life. However, the dominance of the figure in this painting springs only from its likeness to the masculine form. She paints herself in the traditional riding costume, which connotes masculine tradition. However, the dominant yellows, purples and greens of her palette could commemorate suffragette plight. I wonder if Carrington was aware of the contradictions within her work? If so, perhaps she was drawing upon her Surrealist influences,

Leonora Carrington, Self-Portrait (1937-38), oil on canvas

ABOVE:

Painting from the house of the Marine Venus, Pompeii

TOP RIGHT:

RIGHT: Leonora Carrington, Le Bon Roi Dagobert (1948) FAR RIGHT: Max Ernst, The

Robing of the Bride (1940)

deliberately subverting gender roles as a way of confusing and removing society’s doctrines from her work, whilst venturing into the symbolic and absurd. To me, this aping of male gestures is not a positive presentation of feminine qualities and expression, which are vague and silent in this portrait, rather than heightened and explored. I find this suggestive of great frustration. Although Carrington had replaced her British, aristocratic social demands with a new circle of Surrealists she was still, in part laced to the patriarchy, and unable

to completely oppose male tradition. Her flashing eyes, flecked with golden paint seemed to ask, ‘In order to play an active role, is a female artist expected to emulate her male counterparts?’

When Carrington met Ernst, a member of the surrealist elite led by André Breton, in 1937, she had an existing admiration for his works. Shortly following their meeting Carrington and Ernst eloped to Paris as lovers, resulting in Max divorcing his wife, and Carrington’s father disowning her.

They never spoke again. Carrington and Ernst, AD ASTRA - Issue 3

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however, spent a number of happy years living and working together with the Surrealists in Paris, and her admiration remained strong. Despite their closeness, Ernst’s erotic portrayal of Carrington in his painting The Robing of the Bride differs greatly from her own masculine self-depiction.

Ernst seems to present his painting as a mystical artifact crafted to defy rationalism. The Robing of the Bride, 1940, troubles the viewer with unsettling splendor, screaming messages of the unconscious like a Surrealist bird of prey, pecking away at conventionality and conscious thought. This painting is a particularly interesting means of considering surreal technique, and its influence on Ernst, and consequently Carrington. In this Image the ‘Bride’ is attended to by a purple, beguiled female nude whose headdress is an eruption of decalcomania. Decalcomania is an organic technique of dappling paint invented by the surrealist Oscar Dominguez, which plays with Surrealism’s interest in chance, spontaneity and the unconscious. This technique is also used in the painting within the painting, which portrays the same scene and hangs on the wall. Here Ernst returns to Surrealism’s interest in myth and storytelling as a means of meditating about creativity.

Ernst tried to see images afresh, by looking into accidental marks and stains, often finding images and scenes within them. This was inspired by the iconic Leonardo da Vinci, who said when practicing this technique of looking at “stains on a wall” you might find ‘“human heads, various animals, a battle.’

I find it incredibly interesting that here again, we see a strong Italian influence on the works of Surrealism.

Although Leonardo da Vinci was a member of the Renaissance rather than the Roman period, it seems Italian art influenced Ernst greatly. I feel this supports the likelihood of Leonora being influenced

by Roman mythology, as earlier discussed.

Additionally, Carrington’s 1945 painting Le Bon Roi Dagobert meaning ‘the good king Dagobert’, depicts a hedonistic Merovingian king; when comparing the 90

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composition of the works, one can clearly see the similarities between composition and theme with both animalistic eroticism and medieval mythology, suggesting their relationship greatly influenced the subjects of Carrington’s works.

Despite this similarity and influence, Ernst’s presentation of Carrington seems to completely contradict her statements of freedom in her SelfPortrait, and her life. In Ernst’s painting the ‘Bride’ is highly sexualized, her body arches forward and her long legs stride in front of her firm breasts and prominent, rounded stomach; which all evoke themes of fertility and sexuality. The female’s face is hidden; she is almost drowned by a crushed red velvet mantle, which pours off the canvas, reminiscent of menstrual flow. In light of earlier discussion, Leonora is presented here as the most highly sexualized muse, weighed down by her femininity, presented here as a heavy burden.

Apparently, this caused Carrington great irritation.

I also find the bride’s presentation as royalty particularly interesting when considering the power of the female muse. Here the bride is worshipped by the disfigured, green demonic bird-man. He serves his new bird-queen holding a broken spear, seeming emasculated by her daunting sexual majesty that has already defeated the gross four-breasted creature weeping on the right. However, of this powerful queen all we see is a single eye, peering out of a hole in her feathered glory-cape. The queen is a tool, much like the muse. Her body represents everything that is powerful and true to the Surrealists, yet her personhood is of no value. She is a vessel of enlightenment.

Building on the themes of Myth and Fable echoed throughout this essay, it is interesting to consider Surrealism’s concern with the interplay between Literature and Art. This concern has been likened to the attempts of the Romantic period. However unlike Romanticism, Surrealism placed poetry at the heart of all art, cementing its voice in plasters and paints. For the Surrealists, literature and art were not

considered as co-dependent entities, nor did they compete for creative value, for they sprang from the same source; the subconscious. Nevertheless, both the Surrealist and Romantic movements shared attentiveness to emotional intensity, and depended upon the female muse as a porthole through which to gain a higher understanding of the sensory and the subconscious. Both Carrington and Ernst wrote, as well as painted their experiences. In Carrington’s book House of Fear: Notes from Down Below she tells the stories of her life with outlandish Surrealist flourish, and trusts Ernst to introduce and illustrate her collection of short stories. Here the closeness of their creative relationship is evident, and it is clear that they held a very sensitive understanding of the other’s mind.

I find Marina Warner’s understanding of Carrington as the Surrealist Muse particularly helpful. She says that during the 1930s ‘there was a very strong feeling that women like Carrington were creatures who just inspired desire to serve men’s greater faculties and paths of imagination.’ She continues, ‘she was the incarnation of their, now rather perverted to us, ideas of women, women’s place, women’s imagination.’ Through the presentation of the muse, Ernst is, in effect and perhaps unintentionally, telling the myth of the female and giving us a fascinating insight into the views of women at the time. However, personally I find Carrington’s works much more valuable in this light. Confronted with a conflict between Freudian psychoanalytic influences of modern thought, which were misogynistic in nature - ‘penis envy’, for example - and her own rebellious and strong minded feminist thought, through relocating this internal conflict from her subconscious to her selfportrait Carrington sets up a fascinating dialogue between the concept of the artistic muse and the modern woman. This resonates just as poignantly today. Despite Ernst and the influence of his work on Carrington’s technique, mental stability and writing, I have noticed a much wider and richer

array of influences.

Through writing this essay I have realised that to fully explore the influences on Leonora Carrington’s work it is important to look beyond her relationship with Ernst, focusing instead on the role of the male and the female in art. In order to explore gender roles within surrealism, particularly ‘the female muse’, it seems enlightening to consider previous artistic endeavours. Through exploring these, I have come to realise that Leonora Carrington had her own independent sources for her work, and dealt with monumental questions and experiences which sprung not just from her intense relationship with Ernst, but also from a deep reflection upon the female condition in art.

Carrington’s embedded gestures and imagery in her paintings suggest the frustrations of the female.

These are echoed frequently throughout her early work, but are particularly prominent in her selfportrait. Interestingly, Ernst also accidentally explains these frustrations to us in his work, The Robing of the Bride. Through a consideration of Ernst’s works we can gain a greater understanding of Leonora’s situation, lending us a clearer perspective on her complex works. By no means does Ernst’s work outweigh the message of Leonora’s, in fact through hers we may notice the influence of patriarchy on his thought, which he endeavoured to extinguish of all doctrines. The accidental misogynistic undertones of the presentation of a passive muse reverberate throughout the works of Ernst, and many artists before him; dating back to the Roman period, and undoubtedly even earlier.

Conclusively, the influence of Surrealism and Ernst on Leonora Carrington, although great, did not define her work. Throughout her life, Leonora’s thought remained independent and her behaviour rebellious. I hope that this very personality will secure Leonora’s legacy as one of the most tenacious and interesting female artists, writers and thinkers of our century.

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