Reflections on my changes to Wikipedia's Eliza Haywood article

You can view the current version here.

I took out all references to Pope except for where it was necessary. As I say here, it is not necessary to frame Haywood's information from the narrow point of view of one of her contemporaries. Pope's significance in relation to Haywood remains in the "Critical Reception" section.

I reorganized the headings, adding "Biography," "Translations," "Periodicals and Nonfiction;" "Critical Reception" replaced "Cultural Context" and I also removed the unnecessary "Last Years." With the new format, I was able to fill in many details that were not mentioned in the original article. The new headings also offer a first-glance sense of how prolific and diverse Haywood's writings and career were.

I added a more complete list of works published and included a plot summary for well known novels. Other curious details were added such as Haywood's "membership" in The Fair Triumvirate of Wit, her mysterious biographical background and contemporary and current reception.

This assignment was invaluable, since I have discovered a venue for my obsession with exact historical details. And though at times others experiences were more action-packed, I was able to make good points in the Haywood discussion page that allowed my article to remain untouched for over a month. Which is good. I think.

to all:

Sorry I missed class today. I drove home from NS this morning with plans to come to Fred, but the weather and roads disuaded me. I had seen enough snow covered/packed roads and rain between Sackville and Moncton and decided to head for the safety of SJ rather than class and more driving in the evening after a forecasted day of freezing rain/snow. Sorry to have missed our final discussions, I really enjoyed working with all of you and hope to see you in the new term and perhaps new blog personae... I plan to post my final thoughts about Burney tomorrow.

Are you a...

Wikipediholic??? There's a test now...

Depth and Slowness

I agree with Jesse that a good paper could be written about the verbal economy here. I find the exchange between Jack and Codger to be really interesting as well. Whereas Codger is desperate to be heard in depth, Jack and his hurrying about seems to be a pointed satire of one who tries to do too much while accomplishing nothing. So it is his perpetual rushing that is most poignant in my reading of The Witlings. Lady Smatter and Censor’s conversation about reading and the kind of name-dropping competition that goes on in this play remind me of something Alberto Manguel said in a radio interview I heard recently. He was speaking about technology and the effect it would have on books and reading in the future and said that the speed of technology and the ability to read a quick headline online is the antithesis of what reading means to him since he believes that reading requires depth and slowness. Censor echoes that notion here:

Lady Smatter: …Why now, how many Volumes do you think I can run through in one year’s reading?

Censor: More than would require seven years to digest.

There is a lot in this play about books, ideas and the literary imagination. The text seems to make fun of anyone who wants to write (see the scene in which Dabler is writing pg 96) or read (see any dialogue from Lady Smatter), but through the sort of negative portrayal of characters like Jack, Dabler, Sapient, and Smatter, we see that rushing and name-dropping are not worth much in themselves. A subtle argument is being made about the importance of “depth and slowness” I think.

after reading Kari's goodbye-post... **sniff**

I'm wondering if any of you will be sticking around the blogosphere after this week?

I will.

But, I might make a new blog and archive this one until I decide to write about 18th century paraphernalia again.

**photo is of Charles Babbage's brain, which I saw in London last summer at the Science Museum. I promise to blog about Charles Babbage's brain after this course is over so please stay tuned for updates**

writing about 18th century plays

I've never bothered to contextualize an author's work before, but I really feel the need to do so with the paper I'm writing on Haywood's A Wife to Be Lett. The criticism we've been reading in connection to all of the plays seems to consistently give readers any bit of information relevant to the writing of the play and the other events or persons connected to it. However, I'm wondering about Fransesca Saggini's impulse that "an outline of the play [The Witlings by Frances Burney] seems necessary before any discussion" (1). Do you think that she feels it is necessary because the play is not well known? I don't remember seeing this impulse to describe the plot in many of the critical pieces we've read for this course. Are any of you outlining a brief plot summary of "your" plays?

Eliza Haywood Brainy Quote

There is one Quality, which has somewhat so heavenly in it; that by so much the more we are possess'd of it, by so much the more we draw nearer to the Great Author of Nature.
~Eliza Haywood



more at Brainy Quotes (hehehe...)

Measuring the speed of meme

If you have a blog and you see this, then you must link to this dude's post. He's doing a "scientific experiment" for MLA (is that possible?) and is measuring how quickly a single meme can travel from one side of the blogoverse to the other.

Grad students helping grad students...

Outline

Procrastinators, lend me your eyes! And suggestions...

• Introduction
  *a basic introduction to Haywood + AWTBL
  *Review of the historical and contemporary criticism of the play.
  *what are the trends across this critical work?
  *how have things changed since the earliest criticism (trends over time)?

• Feminism and the 18th Century.
  *Can AWTBL be argued as a feminist play? Proto-feminist? Name the play and describe within “feminist” context of 18th century *“Feminisms” chapter of Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity
  *Article “Beyond Recovery”, recommended by Andrea
  
  
• My reading of AWTBL.
  *Name and analyze the meta-dramatic moments
  *not believeable (hyperreal?)
  *sentimental
  *Susanna’s shift is similar but not the same (controlled by “man” and man)
  

• Play is not empowering (anti-Fields, pro-Wilputte) but it does do something interesting
  *allows women to see themselves as “whole, moral persons”
  *marriage act and women’s identity as subsumed by their husband
  *parallels with “THE WIFE”
  *Other contemporary context.
  *self-conscious construction of gender: Amadea (gender and power are not inherent)
  

• Conclusion/ wrap-up review of the illusions of power in the play; name the play as a proto-feminist portrayal of limited possibilities for women.

The Tryal (of Withrington's Patience)

(disclaimer: I am not responsible for the final 2 acts of this play at this moment; these are thoughts concerning the first three acts only)

I expected to be sympathetic toward the two central female characters in Joanna Baillie's The Tryal, but I wasn’t (am not). They are conniving and manipulating and annoying. When Burroughs suggests in “The Private Theatrical” that “Withrington expresses his anxiety abou the stability of his nieces’ gender and class position by saying that ‘all this playing, and laughing, and hoydening about, is not gentlewomanlike; nay, I might say, is not maidenly.’” (273) I think she’s reading a preconceived thesis into the play. In my reading, when Withrington says “I’m tired of this,” I am sympathetic with him; quite frankly I was tired of it too. I imagine these two women who are hanging off him, “stroaking” his hand and “clapping his shoulder” as kind of spoiled rock and roll high school students who have been raised to believe they can get what they want by wearing belly shirts. Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch or a red herring maybe. But, rather than “[investigating] why female anger is so upsetting to many men” (273) as Burroughs claims Agnes is doing, it seems to me that she is really just acting in a shallow and thoughtless way and not taking any one’s feelings into account.

Withrington is more sympathetic than his nieces. He recognizes that Opal’s feelings are in the hands of his nieces: “Affected puppy, I can’t bear to look at him” (256); I recognize his common sense and empathy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying this play very much. It’s refreshing for its shift in focus, for its loud asides, its cute interactions between characters that make me laugh out loud as in the exchange between Harwood and his servant in which H asks T to get him a glass of water as an excuse to talk about how lonely he is; or, when Royston thinks Miss Eston is Miss Withrington and they have a back and forth banter in which they don’t listen to what the other person says. I often wonder, actually, why more dramatists or film makers don’t make use of this little element of human interaction more often: the fact that we often don’t hear or understand correctly what the other person is actually saying. I think it happens more often than we know and it can either be funny and cute, or disheartening.