Word of the Day

Here is a delightful word that I found in our drafts. There are thousands in there.

Today's Word:

Schism

1. Division within a group

2. Separation of a group from something else (e.g. a certian church or belief)
Sentence example: The schism in the class was creating competition, as both teams wanted the prize.

By Jess

Pygmalion

Playing the part of Mr Doolittle in last term's performance of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, it brought back the memories of reading the play a couple of years ago in none other than English class. Even though I reread a script that had been altered slightly by our delightful directors, I was still able to appreciate the wonder that is Shaw's witty comedy. If you haven't the faintest clue what play I'm talking about, though you really should, think of My Fair Lady. I've never seen it but apparently it's good.

To understand Pygmalion, you need to know about the Victorian Era and how terribly classist we all were. I assume most of TER's readers are indeed English, however, considering I am hooked to our 'stats' page I can confidently state that since we have readers from every continent (woop!), not everyone will know that if there was a well-spoken and well-mannered gentleman or lady in Victorian London, they would automatically fair better in life than a someone who conversed in Cockney Rhyming Slang.

Therefore, we can conclude that dear Eliza Doolittle really does need Professor Higgins to help her succeed in life. Though on the surface a wonderfully crisp comedy with exaggerated characters and witty lines, Shaw really does put his opinions and ideas about the contemporary society across to the audience, albeit subtly. It seems that while Higgins believes that language is what makes us who or what we are, Shaw is portraying that it is not only language which places us where we belong in society. The Eynsford-Hills and Mrs Higgins are constantly visiting friends and acquaintances, yet Higgins and Pickering both have proper jobs. And therefore the overall question and tone of the play seems not to be whether or not the adventurous Higgins can pass a flower-girl off as a duchess, but rather what is to be done with her once he has achieved his goal. For once Eliza enters that "middle-class morality", as my character Mr Doolittle likes to put it, shouldn't Eliza be acting like a proper lady at all times? She shouldn't be working in a flower shop as she initially intended - in fact, she is doing as all ladies either did or were expected to do: marry up in society. She does it, her father does it, no doubt nearly all the other characters have or had the intention to do so.

So my question is, what is the distinction between class, money, and distinction in society?

I really recommend that everyone goes and sees the play. Enjoy it as a comedy, and afterwards think about what I've mentioned in this review. Even if it isn't on at the moment, go to the library and borrow it. Reading a play might not have exactly the same effect as seeing it, but you can always imagine what it could be like until it pops up at the Old Vic or otherwise.

By Jess

Word of the Day

Here is one my mother mentioned during one of our academically charged conversations.

Today's Word:

Assimilate


To take in and incorporate as one's own.

Origin: Latin 'assimilatus' meaning 'likened to'.

Sentence example: He was assimilated into the native culture of the village as he had been staying there for three months.

By Jess

Word of the Day

Hello ancient followers. It is one half of your leaders speaking. Having not posted for a ridiculous time on the blog of English truth, I felt that an apology was due. So... sorry. But here's a brand new word of the day to cheer everyone up!

Today's Word:

Azure

Blue transparency

Sentence example: The azure lake expanded before her as she rested on its banks, pondering what to do next.

And since that word isn't used everyday, here is another. Also not used particularly often.

Marl

1. Archaic word for earth
2. A sort of fertilizer made from clay and calcium... or something.

I'm not doing a sentence example. It would be ridiculous.

Thank Milton's Paradise Lost for these wonderfully weird words. Toodle pip until tomorrow!

By Jess

Word of the Day

I learnt this word while doing a vocabulary test on dictionary.com. Because I am extremely cool.

Today's Word:

Glib

Readily (but insincerely) fluent; unconstrained

Sentence example: His glib chatter drove his friends to insanity.

Origin: From the Dutch word glibberig.

By Jess

The Pressure is On...

Once upon a time, there was an English Lit. class who enjoyed discussing topics related to their wonderful language. One day, they became terribly confused when talking about words with the suffix -press. They soon figured it out, but I decided to pop it on the Internet so no one could ever forget.

Oppress

To be tyrannical (e.g. a king); to cause discomfort through excess (e.g. heat); to distress

Suppress

To put a stop to something (e.g. riots); to abolish; to withhold from publication (e.g. the truth or evidence)

Repress

To quell; to keep in control

By Jess

Word of the Day

Today's Word:

Flagrant

Shockingly noticeable; scandalous

Sentence example: His underwear was flagrant because he had forgotten to wear his belt on his jeans.

Origin: From the Latin flagrare, meaning to burn, since in archaic language the word meant literally burning or blazing.

By Jess

Word of the Day

I found this one in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a while ago, just thought you would all enjoy it.

Today's Word:

Desultory

Inconsistent; reluctant; random (e.g. an irrelevant comment)

Sentence example: The conversation between them was becoming desultory, and therefore proving to be a bit awkward, since it was only the first date.

Origin: From the Latin desultorius, meaning a circus performer who jumped from one horse to another.

By Jess

Agnes Grey

When people think of Bronte, they think of controversial tales of passionate love on the moors of Yorkshire. Agnes Grey is not part of one such tale. She is a church-going young woman who goes out to earn a living for her impoverished family by being a governess.

You can pick up Agnes Grey at any point and be able to tell instantly what she is like as a person. Every chapter is filled with religious quotations and though she arrives at her first post with a fresh outlook and ready for anything that may come her way, she is not ready for the way of the upper-class children.

The children Agnes deals with are, plainly put, spoilt brats. They are their mothers' little darlings and hence anything that they may do wrong is never the mother's fault, it is that of Agnes. Over the course of the year she spends at her first chance at being a governess, in this instance to a noisy boy and two spoilt little girls, her once excitable desire for adventure is soon relinquished as she realises that not everyone has such good manners as she.

Being only working class, Agnes Grey has an incredibly satirical narrative, exposing to the reader the never-ending coquetry of characters such as Rosalie, a later pupil of Miss Grey, and how others such as Rosalie's sister Matilda may pick up bad habits from their far-too-fond-of-alcohol fathers. I especially liked the dashed out swear words such as "d-n" that terrible Tilly uses. It made me laugh to think of a typical Victorian lady reading Agnes Grey and falling off her seat in shock when none other than a young lady could say such a scandalous word.

Agnes Grey is a feel-good sort of book that mainly anyone can read. It makes the reader think - ah well my life may be rubbish now but maybe eventually a vaguely handsome priest with a good heart will turn up and sweep me off my feet. Or something...

By Jess

You can shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin To Kill a Mockingbird

To be completely honest, I think To Kill A Mockingbird is beyond incredible. No, that is not the entire review, but it is my opinion and I would be thoroughly surprised if anyone opposed it. Told through the eyes of young Scout Finch, a true tomboy living in 1930's Maycomb, Alabama, we are told a story of racism and fighting for equality in the Deep South of the USA.

Reading David Lodge's The Art of Fiction for AS, I remember one of the chapters being about the beginning of a novel, and when it may end. Some beginnings are just a paragraph long, some take a couple of chapters to get going. Harper Lee sets up the main theme of the plot thoroughly well with just under a hundred pages of beginning, but I don't resent her for it in any way. This doesn't mean that you can't get into it, as may be the case with some novels. And once at the end of the story you know exactly why Lee needed to take her time explaining everything.

Atticus Finch is the father of Jem and Scout Finch. Before you ask, Jem is short for Jeremy, who at the start is in the fifth grade (however old that makes him – I think it's about nine); and Scout is a nickname for Jean Louise, who is a good four years younger than her brother. Scout tells us all about their neighbourhood: the spooky Radley Place two doors down on the right; friendly Miss Maudie and her azaleas; Miss Stephanie the gossip; Mrs Dubose the terrifying old lady three doors down on the left; to name but a few. Their first summer, where the story more or less opens, is spent with a new and similarly adventurous friend named Dill Harris from Meridian, Mississippi, and through their activities the reader learns that they are typical children, playing outdoors and getting into trouble.

Evidently there is a more significant tale to be told here. Atticus is a lawyer, and the first case that we are told about of his is where he is defending a black man. On witnessing the court case through Scout's eyes, we know that he is innocent. For this man has been accused of raping a Ewell girl: a white family who live on a dumpster near a 'Negro' settlement, sponging off relief cheques and who are really the lowest of the low. As Scout puts it so perfectly: “All the little man [Mr Ewell – the girl's father] on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbours was that, if scrubbed with lye soap with very hot water, his skin was white.”

Of course, anyone who reads this book knows that in 1930's America there was extreme prejudice against the black inhabitants of the country. Atticus tells his own children, with much resentment, that even if a black defendant is clearly innocent, the jury will always take the word of a white man over his, no matter how dirty and rude said white man is. Hitler is mentioned briefly in one of Scout's 'Current Events' classes, and when her teacher Miss Gates says that it is wrong of Hitler to persecute the Jews, one boy appears to be confused why they should be the victims, since they are white. When Miss Gates says “over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced,” only Scout seems to think it all very hypocritical, with the black community in mind.

If you haven't read this book then dear Lord read it now. The not-so-ignorant view point of a young girl who is heavily influenced by her hilariously precocious older brother makes it absolutely perfect. The only thing I would criticise about To Kill A Mockingbird is that it comes to an end: I so desperately didn't want it to.

By Jess

Word of the Day

This terribly useful word is from none other than Jane Eyre itself. For further details see the previous post to this one.

Today's Word:

Vignette

Brief description

Sentence example: In the Bronte classic Agnes Grey, Agnes only gives a vignette of each of her pupils at the Murrays'. For further details come back in a couple of days when I have finished and reviewed it.

By Jess

Plain Jane

It is a well-known fact that heroines are meant to be beautiful, or at least that they clean up to be so. Grand gentlemen and dashing princes are meant to fall for lady or princess material, not humble sidekicks. This is just one of the controversies Charlotte Brontë presents to us with Jane Eyre.

Jane does not have an easy upbringing. I definitely didn't enjoy the first few chapters of Jane's life, not because it wasn't written well or because it didn't grab my attention, but because it was pretty depressing. I didn't really want to read about a ten-year-old orphan being beaten up by her obnoxious fourteen-year-old male cousin, even sometimes in front of her aunt, when nothing is being done about it. So when Jane went to Lowood School for orphans, I was pleased for her. And then her aunt went and spoilt it all by telling the headmaster, falsely, that she was devilish and wicked, leading him to tell the whole school. I was close to closing the book by this point, wanting to go and give all those horrid adults something to think about wickedness. I didn't, obviously. I carried on reading.

Jane Eyre is a wonderful love story. I assume most of you know the story, and if you don't then stop reading because I'm going to break my tradition of keeping schtum and spoil the plot, because otherwise this would be a terrible review.

As I earlier mentioned, Jane Eyre is an educated but unattractive girl, as is mentioned several times by different points of view. As she is the titular character and it is a novel written in the first person, there is no choice but to accept her as the true heroine, not that the Victorians would have liked this. Though they had their slightly odd obsession with orphans, pleasing them in one respect, they didn't like the thought of an ugly protagonist. So when Mr Rochester, albeit extremely romantically, proposes to Jane, they probably didn't like that either, because she was the governess of this stately gentleman's ward. He was meant to marry a lady, not a woman. We modern readers, however, love it.

Brontë includes a host of biblical quotes in the novel, most probably to reflect Jane's piety and additionally to create a greater sense of horror and betrayal when Mr Rochester's secret is revealed. The mad woman in the attic is the wife of Mr Rochester. She is not dead, they are not divorced, and hence there is no way that Jane and Mr R can marry. Jane finds this out the hard way: at the altar. Does she still love him? Of course. We modern readers may find this entirely acceptable, but I doubt the Victorian readers did. After all, he has broken more than one of the ten commandments: he is a terrible sinner and should not be forgiven. However, when he threatens to use violence against Jane when she insists she leave him, a modern reader (or at least I did) would find this shocking. How can he use violence against her? She hasn't done anything wrong! Why should he be the perpretrator and she the victim? But then again, domestic violence wasn't really an issue then, in that it was totally accepted. Which is a bit messed up, in my opinion.

But Jane does get what she deserves. After days of barely any food and traipsing around the Peak District (the most exciting bit about this is that I went to the town she finds refuge in on my Duke of Edinburgh Gold Practice Expedition) she is taken in my two sisters and a brother and their servant, changing her name to Jane Elliott and not divulging any details of her recent past so as to avoid recognition. It turns out that dear Miss Eyre is the heiress to a large fortune from her recently deceased uncle in Madeira and that the two sisters, Diana and Mary, and their brother, weirdly named St John, are her cousins. So Jane is a very happy lass.

Of course, she has not forgotten dear Edward Rochester, her true love. Brontë brings in the idea of Fate by having her hear his voice and sending her running to him and from a marriage proposal from her cousin (with a trip to India included – not a bad offer, but for all the wrong reasons). She finds Mr Rochester, but his loony wife burnt down Thornfield Hall (where she lived with him and his ward and everyone else before) and he was inside, leaving him blind and his left arm mutilated. But does she care? Of course not. It is true love, and Brontë understands all us girls by telling us that true love has no boundaries. After a very romantic entrance back into his life and a wonderful wedding without all the jewels and luxuries Jane had to so unwillingly accept the first time, the epilogue leaves us with Mr Rochester regaining his sight in one eye. I don't even care if it's not scientifically accruate, it is love for goodness' sake. And I'm so glad I stuck with Plain Jane until the very end.


By Jess

Word of the Day

This is from my new reading project, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Very good book by the way.

Today's Word:

Propensity

A natural inclination to behave in a certain way.

Sentence example: It was Victoire's propensity to be so kind as to let Jess borrow her laptop to post on her blog.

By Jess

A Sardonic Sense of Humour

The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham, is an early twentieth-century novel about lust, unrequited love and courage, taking place principally in the Chinese countryside.

When Kitty Garstin marries Walter Fane it is not for love. As she says herself, she never loves him, not at any point in the novel, despising his “sardonic” sense of humour and his crooked ways. No, Kitty does not marry for love. Instead, she marries Walter in a panic: her younger sister is already engaged; Kitty herself is nearing the ripe old age of 24 or 25; and this marriage would require her to live in Hong Kong, so she wouldn't have to deal with her sister's wedding or go on any loathsome family holidays ever again. Sorted. Walter on the other hand, adores Kitty. She is beautiful and chatty and funny, and Walter, though regretting that his love is unrequited, is happy enough with the situation to carry on with his life in peace.

In the bustling city of Hong Kong, Kitty meets many new people, old and young, men and women, all from the British Colonial base. One such person is Charlie Townsend, a charming, well-built man with a handsome face and apparently wonderful eyes. He is Kitty's undoing. Married himself, he never really loves Kitty so much as takes the opportunity she throws at him, and when Walter finds out a year later on finding them himself, Charlie has no intention of leaving his wife and saving Kitty from the clutches of Walter's ultimatum.

In short, the ultimatum is either stay with Walter or be divorced by Walter. The latter involves staying in Hong Kong. The former involves moving to the city of Mei tan fu, a bacteriologist, but this is less appealing as the site is ridden with a terrible cholera epidemic of which the citizens are dropping like flies. It is this option she is forced to choose.

This is where we see a journey of self-discovery take place. Kitty barely ever takes in someone's personality when we have a person described to us. It is always how attractive they are; how nice their eyes are or how revolting their nose is. Tired of hanging around the house all day and all night, Kitty decides to work with the French nuns who manage the orphanage, and here we see what was a dislike of “ugly” Chinese children change to a love of children and the development of a maternal instinct, just one example of how this new life changes her.

Simultaneously, Kitty learns to live with Walter, though he never really forgives her for her sinful behaviour and though she never fails to remind the reader that she does not love him and could never love him. She befriends the Customs man, Waddington, a squat man with a good sense of humour and a chatty tongue. It is Waddington who tells her about the Way, which is essentially a path of self-discovery the Chinese have figured out long before us.

Over the course of her stay in Mei tan fu, Kitty realises everything she never had figured out, sees everything she was blind to, and understands everything she felt clueless about previously. Her relationship with Charlie, for example, and Charlie's true self. Her superficiality shines through here again; she satisfies herself by telling herself that he was too fat, his eyebrows were apelike and revolting and his face was ugly, as opposed to thinking that his charm and his flattery were all false.

The Painted Veil really is a good read. The whole self-discovery makes it a great holiday read and it isn't too long at 200 odd pages so do give it a go. The film, starring Naomi Watts as Kitty and the thin one from Fight Club is great too, I must admit, following the story the whole way, though it is dramatised a bit, making us believe that Kitty does love Walter towards the end, but that's Hollywood for you.

By Jess

Word of the Day

Sorry for the infrequent blogging, both of us are taking a slight summer hiatus but I found a word I wish to share.

Erubescent:

Becoming red or reddish; blushing

Sentence Example:

Her erubescent complexion was thanks to too many hours in the sun.

By Talia