Reflections: Tess of the D'urbervilles

The hypocrisies surrounding virginity are tiresomely common to some of us, especially to women like me who come from cultures that place inordinate amounts of significance on being “good”, that even adjectives such as “good”, “moral”, “pure” and “virtuous” are mindlessly linked to something that’s laughably insignificant in the rich landscape of human life. Tess of D’urbervilles is a classic story that heart-wrenchingly picks apart the prejudices and cruelties that an honest and sincere, and may I add, wholeheartedly pristine woman goes through on account of losing her virginity due to unfortunate circumstances in a Victorian, patriarchal society. As is still the case now in certain societies, Virginity is only precious for women, that too women of a certain section of society. Men have no such standards or expectations of course, no matter their social class. Ostracized by her community, Tess is constantly searching for acceptance, even forgiveness, to bury her past and lead a better future. Wronged by one man, she nurtures hope for another. But, even the idealists among men, the most educated, progressive and cultured of them all can be hypocritical in their personal lives. Abandoned again by the man she trusts and loves the most, Tess wanders in a society that offers little consideration, even protection, to women like Tess who have no “men” to safeguard their dignity. Everybody knows this is a story that is doomed for tragedy. However, the brilliant and beautiful writing and the wise discussions on morality make this a worthy read.

This is a story that is still relevant in so many parts of the world, and that’s saddening. How cruel these societies can be in labelling victims and pushing them further into tragic situations. Tess represents every young girl in a poor family that’s struggling to put food on the table and support her large family. She represents the strong-spirited, beautiful girl who gets heedlessly exploited by men with power and money and then repeatedly abandoned and shunned by hypocritical idiots who don’t understand the basics of compassion or morality.

We all know many such stories, and are painfully aware of many more stories waiting to be born. And I’m not going to offer any new insights on the subject. People need to crack open their minds and begin questioning the convoluted dictates stemming out of an outdated patchwork of religion, tradition, and culture. There is a scene in the book where Tess feels her pregnant belly and is genuinely amazed and happy at the prospect of new life. She then quickly catches herself and wonders why she does not feel guilt or sorrow at that moment, why she has to remind herself to feel guilty, why deep down her natural instincts don’t find anything morally wrong with her state, and how she can’t understand why everything in her life has to derail and be doomed. It was a powerful scene to me, still vivid after so many weeks, and the writing elevated Tess’s genuine wonderment and innocence. It touched me.

Thomas Hardy’s writing needs no mention from someone like me. His writing carries grace, eloquence, beauty, and such perspicacity to articulate the angst of an innocent and troubled woman’s mind. He describes his characters and their psyche with so much depth of insight, verbalizing their every subtle feeling and emotion. I also love how he interweaves the roles played by religion, conscience, and morality into the story and the characters without letting the discussion of the themes dominate the characters. I can write essays on each of the characters and what they represent, but since this is not a literature assignment, I will just say that everything about the book is just deeply beautiful. There are so many layers and symbols to every character and setting.

I love books that beautifully narrate poignant stories of social injustices, especially from the viewpoints of morality and religion. This book is one such a classic and it has my high recommendation.

Reflections: Trimalchio

I usually don’t care about early editions or first editions or special editions of books - even my most favorite ones. But, I readily invested in this early and unedited version of The Great Gatsby because the book/story managed to capture me enough to want to read the early, “unedited” version, as it were. The story of The Great Gatsby is one that grows on the reader. The reader should let it wash over them and let it slowly sink in. As with most classics, I realized that ruminating on the story and re-reading it brings out nuances and perspectives that really underline why it is a classic. My first read of this classic was interesting, but I was more absorbed in the mechanics of the story. It was palpable that I had missed something. My second read intrigued me, because I was reminded of something my husband (or rather Lisa Simpson) often says -  “listen to the tunes not played to understand the beauty.” Fitzgerald's slim and edited version is full of these unplayed tunes. While it seemed to give the story an almost abrupt and forced brevity the first time I read it, it was beautiful and intriguing during my second read. Given this, I wanted to read Trimalchio, the first version of The Great Gatsby and take in all the played and unplayed tunes.

I loved this version. Seriously, I can’t understand why Fitzgerald would want to re-work and edit a perfectly excellent book! Since you expect “more stuff” in this book, you assume it would run longer than its trimmed and hemmed successor. But this version is as slim as the other! I didn’t do a page-by-page comparison between the two books (because that would categorically make me obsessive), but I realized the additions, and yet the math doesn’t line up!

In any case, since this early version provided more context and content, I appreciated it much more. However, the subtlety and mystery that the edited version provided is still present in this one. There are so many more beautiful passages that could be re-read and interpreted with every read. The metaphors, the symbols, the predictions, and the moral underpinnings are so much more eloquently and insightfully written. The characters are more fleshed out, their motivations and influences more honed in, and the withering bitter sarcasm toned down. Most importantly, there is more emotion - in the narration and the characters, and that makes this version more soulful. The emotions make the excesses, the materialism and the moral and philosophical implications stand out that more.

I have to agree that this is an American classic. It paints America in all its glory and decadence. The insight and relevance is what makes it a classic. The beauty and poignancy of the writing will stay with me. 

Second Chances

This whole term, I have been gripped with the same angst as the person in here suffers.

There was a time, long long ago when I considered being a teacher. I loved the notion of being able to impart some form of “knowledge”, and of presenting myself as an empathetic counselor, who would rise above and beyond repeating words from a textbook and be a “reformer”, a “mentor” of some kind. The whole concept of understanding the psychology of students and guiding them before they take a wrong turn seemed to appeal to me. I always start with lofty ideas and idealistic dreams.

I reformed this ambition over the years - scratching off ideas, introducing revisions, reinventing career paths, putting down “inter-disciplines”, diverging into roads-less-traveled, and well, continuing to pave the roads that somehow lead me to the vicinity of what I initially planned on accomplishing. While I try to frustratedly explain this to confused people, who ask me, “So, what exactly are you doing? And what does it mean”, I have to admit, there are days when I do feel grateful that my destiny swung off course and saved me from becoming a teacher.

In all these years of graduate student life, I’ve had the “privilege” of being a Teaching Assistant and Full Time Instructor, for about 6 courses. Barring a couple of instances when I actually felt a surge of satisfaction at the end of the semester and swelled with the feeling that I really did make a ripple of a difference in somebody’s life, I’ve been left utterly exasperated and disappointed. I try to make light of it by reminding myself of the gang of buffoons and baboons that I was part of in my undergraduate days. But in a way, those callous and unprofessional professors seemed to deserve the hooligans. All those bright minds that never even tried to glance at assignments and projects and blatantly copied from the nerdy first-benchers, are now in respectable positions, doing great for themselves. And I don’t suspect that they have dilapidated moral foundations either. They seemed to know when and where to draw the line.

But somebody has to come along and push me to the edge. As a graduate student, I don’t demand “respect” in the classes I help teach. My enthusiasm corroded after a few courses. Now I do my duty and leave the rest to the students, without fretting or trying too hard to inspire. I have other pressing things to focus on than go out of my way and try to inspire kids who would just sneer at my earnest attempts, or so I tell myself. I choose to ignore people who yawn, sleep, update their Facebook profile, track football scores, give wise-ass retorts, or just stare at the wall disinterestedly. It’s their prerogative. In labs, I spell out the formula and will even help them plug it all into Excel, if they choose to ask me. I hover around computers, relentlessly spilling out “hints”. I mark in big bold red markers the concept that they have to apply for the assignment staring right in front of them. And yet, it appalls me, that some would still hand in a shoddy report. Fine. So, I grade by searching for a few words that convey the concept, give partial credits for even “thinking partially”, organize extra study sessions, and what do some people still resort to? Copying, cheating and proxy signing. And to put the bitter cherry on the icing, it happens to be an Indian who hopes to get away with all of the above.

I hate stereotyping, but this is quite typical of an Indian teenager who finishes his high-school in India and walks into a class here, thinking, “Chalta hai, like this girl is even going to notice all this.” He has better things to do, like skip lab, have someone proxy sign for him, skip classes, giggle at facebook profiles, complain about how “difficult” and “irrelevant” this course is, demand more points for an utterly wrong answer, quiz about class averages, and suggest that we curve the grades. He has the nerve to turn in one of the most easiest, middle-school-level assignments, by copy-pasting his friend’s graph that quite clearly doesn’t correspond to his results. Is a TA that dumb to not notice that the numbers don’t correspond on a bar graph? Sure enough, I dig out a suspected accomplice’s paper,  another Indian, and lo! there’s his graph.  Academic dishonesty in the US is taken very very seriously - the punishments are so severe and will cast a black-mark on the transcript and is sure to haunt for the rest of one’s life.

But I hate to be the person to bring him down. As my rage boiled over, I couldn’t ignore the thought of dozens of guys I know who engaged in such acts in their under-grad days. And I still hold them in good regards. This little graph seemed harmless in a bigger perspective, especially given the fact that he had completed the other parts, and just decided to be lazy to merely plug his results into Excel. He couldn’t spare those 5 minutes and lifted his friend’s graph. However, he had met the Lab’s objectives; the graph itself was just a superfluous extension. Proxy-signing, I brushed off and marked him absent. In the grand scheme of his grades, these two things would count less than 2% of his grade. And he carelessly, idiotically decided to take the risk when the benefits were so insignificant.

I rationalized and rationalized, and eventually decided to take off points that he did not deserve and confronted him with these issues over an email. I decided not to take this up with my professor, but warned him, and “berated” him for assuming that such things go unnoticed.

At home, I relate this to the husband and he fumes at my “innocence” and “benevolence”. No one cares that you give them a second-chance, he rails. People like him don’t learn through forgiveness, he says. He then issues this warning - the more you give in, the more you forgive, the more you will be taken for a ride and treated as a doormat by such people. In effect, he lectures that I’m not being a smart, intelligent woman in a cut-throat world.

We both come from our own episodes of hurt. He tries to shake me out of the compulsion to endlessly give people multiple chances, rationalizing their flaws and forgiving their mistakes with the hope that they will one day change. I know his rant towards me goes deeper than just this episode. But I struggle to change. 

This morning, the student apologizes and asks if he can still get partial credit if he redid the work. Before I was swayed to say yes, I typed out no. No matter how long a rope you give such people, they always push the envelope and ask for more. I would love to listen to what his moral conscience, if any, is saying. However, I try to remember this book, and tell myself what a small issue this is, and how much more effectively I could have handled it to help change his ways. I guess it's indeed better that I am not a teacher.

Reflections: Rainbow Valley

Rainbow Valley is the seventh book in the Anne of Green Gables series. Just mentioning this should be suffice to acknowledge that the book is a sweet children’s classic delivered in Montgomery’s exquisite prose. In this book, Anne Shirley is married to Gilbert Blythe and is the mother of six lovely children. Hard to imagine Anne as a mother of six kids, right? But Anne doesn’t feature much in the book. The story revolves around her children, the new neighbor’s neglected children (the Merediths, whose father is a widowed  minister), and an orphaned waif, Mary Vance. Befitting a children’s story, the children get into mischief due to a few comedies of errors, and end up getting chided by the adults. So they decide to teach themselves to be in good conduct. Of course, they need to first figure out what “good conduct” really means. What is good, what is bad, what is heaven, what is hell, what is moral, what is a sin? Ooh, a whole lot of  heavy questions for kids to decipher. Montgomery shows the perplexities faced by a child when the world ceases to be black and white, even if one lives in a seemingly perfect and peaceful community such as Avonlea.

Avonlea, much like most communities in the early 20th century, was a conservative society honoring Victorian virtues. Social etiquette, decorous behavior, religious fervor, and codes of moral propriety were strictly defined. Without the discipline of a mother, and enough concern from the father, the Meredith children lacked fine grooming. They were frowned upon for not knowing the “right” things to say, or how to conduct themselves in social gatherings and in church, much to their father’s humiliation. But, although they were free-spirited kids who didn’t mind waving their arms in glee than sit still in church, they had good, kind hearts. They took pity on Mary Vance, a girl who ran away from a tormenting employer, gave her a place to stay, food to eat, and above all kindness and friendship. When these kids were constantly rebuked for their frivolous behavior, they set out to punish themselves to redeem and reform their ways to be socially and morally acceptable. The innocence and earnestness tugs your heart. I really liked the fact that Montgomery explores a heavy subject from the simple perspective of children. There’s an instance where Mary and Una try to sort out the moral predicament of lying. Would telling lies always get you down to Hell? Mary innocently states that she had to tell multiple lies to save herself from getting beaten by her unfair and mean employer, while Una wonders if God would be so unkind to banish such girls who lied, to Hell. God was surely much more fair and merciful in his judgments, right? It reminded me of the time I had such a mini-revelation and wondered how God would decide whom to punish. And to this day, I continue to ponder, along with several other intelligent adults.

Underneath all the merriment and innocence of childhood, is the question of what constitutes as mere social propriety and what truly is morality. Of course, Montgomery doesn’t delve deep, but gives a nice enough introduction to the beginning of the end of childhood.

With a happy ending, a little contemplation and the naivety of childhood suffusing the book, which child wouldn’t like this book?

Reflections: The Power of Darkness

The Power of Darkness is one of Tolstoy’s plays. As the name suggests, the plot deals with the complete moral disintegration of a Russian man, his lover and his mother. The play was instantly banned in Russia when it was fist published. And even to this day, some scenes are enacted slightly differently to attempt to shield audiences from its morbidity.

Nikita is a philanderer, infamous for the number of maidens he has despoiled. He engages in a stint of romance with a rich farm-owner’s wife, starting a string of misdeeds. The farmer’s wife is infatuated with Nikita, and bemoans her miserable life with the grumpy old farmer. Along with Nikita’s mom as accomplice, she poisons her husband and weds Nikita, who turns into a wealthy farm owner. When life should have been blissful after the sin of murder, it sadly does not. Nikita can’t stop his old habits, and he indulges in drinking, debauchery and indolence. As his mother and wife try to erase and cover up his sins by committing even more atrocious sins, Nikita’s conscience eventually awakens and he struggles to redeem what is left of his life.

The play is definitely disturbing as it illuminates the extents of moral degeneration mankind is capable of, to achieve petty selfish gains. I am sure such a theme would have appalled the Victorian society. It’s a surprise this play has sustained stiff criticism and opposition to be available in print today. However, most classic books of that era dealt with such drastic themes exploring the flip side of morality and virtuous living. They all seem to show that despite being pushed to the limits of darkness and being steeped in vices, something in us will cry out after a certain point. That voice inside of us can be attributed to our conscience, basic humanity (the "voice" of God), etc, but it acts as a safety net to guard us against total moral/ethical dystrophy, or at the very least from losing our humanity.

It’s therefore a “silver-lining” that the play ends on a note that shows hope for humanity, even if we are to fall prey to our darker instincts.