Why British Society Had to ‘Get a Young Virgin Sacrificed’: Sacrificial Destiny in The Tree of Heaven

May Sinclair ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanna Melin Schyllert
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Tree Of Heaven ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Personal Sacrifice ◽  
Central Characters

In May Sinclair’s fiction, images of sacrifice abound. From the self-abnegating Katherine Haviland in Audrey Craven (1897) to the eponymous antiheroine of The Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1922), Sinclair’s central characters seem to be eternally struggling with the issue of renunciation. The treatment of the theme is heterogeneous in many of Sinclair’s texts, not least in the novel The Tree of Heaven, which both condemns and praises personal sacrifice for a higher or communal purpose. This displays a fundamental insecurity about the nature, function and value of sacrifice. It is this ambivalence, which underlies so much of Sinclair’s fiction, in combination with the individual mixture of philosophies in her work, that will be explored here. This chapter investigates the concept of sacrifice in the war novel The Tree of Heaven and how it is connected to community and feminism. In order to find an understanding of sacrifice as proposed by Sinclair, and its meaning in the lives of both women and men in the context of early 20th century England, the chapter discusses the crossroads in the text between sacrifice, idealism, feminism, and the nation-wide feeling of community that appears to be required in wartime.

Notes from the Trenches

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wendell Moller
Keyword(s):  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Employment Opportunity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Spiritual Beliefs ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Personal Empowerment ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Individual

This chapter details the vicissitudes of race and poverty shaped J. W. Green’s upbringing in the Deep South as well as his adjustment to urban living as an adult. His lack of education, employment opportunity, and personal empowerment led to a “life on the streets.” Stoic faith saw him through a life and death in poverty. Mr. Green teaches us that everyone comes to this phase of life with strengths to cull from their cultural and spiritual beliefs. Mr. Green also teaches us that dignified dying does not require the unfettered exercise of personal autonomy, although a deep and abiding respect for the self-worth of the individual is necessary.

scholarly journals Echoes of the Vision of Hindu Philosophy in T. S. Eliot’s Writings

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Damauru Chandra Bhatta
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Waste Land ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Four Quartets ◽  
Waste Land ◽  
Yoga Sutras ◽  
Spiritual Nature ◽  
Love Song ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Living Objects

This paper makes an attempt to explore the echoes of the vision of Hindu philosophy in the selected works of T. S. Eliot. The works of Eliot such as his primary essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” and his primary poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” The Waste Land, “Ash Wednesday,” “A Song for Simeon” and Four Quartets are under scrutiny in this paper. Eliot’s primary texts echo the vision of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Patanjali Yoga Sutras of the Hindu (Vedic) philosophy. The vision is that rebirth is conditioned by one’s karma (actions). No one can escape from the fruits of his karma. One needs to undergo the self-realization to know the Essence (Brahman). When one knows the Essence, he is liberated from the wheel of life and death. Man himself is Brahman. The soul is immortal. The basic essence of Hindu philosophy is non-dual, which says that all the living beings and non-living objects are the manifestations of the same Ultimate Reality (Brahman). Eliot suggests that the knowledge of this essence can help humanity to promote equality and justice by ignoring discrimination and duality, to end human sorrows and to achieve real peace and happiness. This finding can assist humanity in the quest for understanding the meaning of human existence and the true spiritual nature of life to address the human sorrows resulted from the gross materialistic thinking.

scholarly journals Fairies and Fairness:

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marissa Herzig
Keyword(s):  
White Male ◽  
The Self ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Power Imbalance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
Construction Of Whiteness ◽  
The Individual

The traditional association of whiteness with fairies warrants a closer examination, as this mythological yearning for a specific childlike realm reveals an idealization of a white past. Indeed, the likening of women to a pure, infantile domain reveals an elevation of whiteness, which, by default, degrades people of color as lesser. While there has been considerable scholarship on the racialization of Charlotte Brontë’s Haitian character Bertha Mason, the construction of whiteness in conjunction with Jane Eyre’s character has remained largely unexplored. I explore these themes of the construction of whiteness through fairies and the romanticization of a white past through a close analysis of humanity in Jane Eyre. I first investigate Victorian and Edwardian fairy visuals, moving on to demonstrate how Jane’s individuality and feminism gains autonomy with her religious spiritualism. I also show, however, how the faerie language in the novel serves to override and disregard Jane’s position as a human being with agency due to Mr. Rochester’s aesthetic of white femininity. Through close readings of the supernatural in Jane Eyre, I scrutinize how the use of fairy language creates a power imbalance where the dehumanization of women and minorities creates a male fantasy directly opposed to the theme of the individual. I discuss how the sexualization and racialization of women as supernatural beings bolsters the self-serving, problematic construct of the ‘human’ which continuously labels women and minorities as less than. Therefore, to restructure this racism and misogynistic thought, I propose a decentering of humanity from a white male perspective, seeing women and minorities not as a monolithic “Other,” almost supernatural beings, but as equally human and worth of respect and dignity.

scholarly journals Post-Aural Story-Telling and the Iranian Flaneurs: A Benjaminian Reading of Sina Dadkhah’s Yousef Abad, Street 33

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Bakhtiar Sadjadi ◽  
Bahareh Nilfrushan
Keyword(s):  
Charles Baudelaire ◽  
Urban Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modern Aspect ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
The City

The city has fascinated the street wanderer as the contemplation of modern life. Walter Benjamin’s conception of ‘flâneur,’ originally borrowed from Charles Baudelaire, could be taken as the true legacy of such fascination. There is always a sense of nostalgia being revealed through the flânerie of the city stroller passing through the metropolis, its shopping centers, and boulevards nourishing the mind of the bohemic storyteller with tales of post-aural experience and memory. Adapting Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘flânerie’ in the streets of Paris to those of Tehran, the present paper attempts to explore Sina Dadkhah’s Yousef Abad, Street 33 in order to demonstrate the post-aural stories of the flaneurs in an Iranian milieu. This article focuses on the modern aspect of the Iranian contemporary society and explores the immediate consequences of modernity on the individual subjectivity of the characters represented in the novel. Considering Dadkhah’s novel as a product of the urban literature of a generation dealing with modernity of the arcades and other lures of the megapolis on the one hand and feeling of nostalgia for their past spirit on the other, the paper simultaneously reveals the close affinity between the subjectivity of the characters and Benjaminian tenets of flânerie and modern storytellers. The flaneurs represented in the novel, by rambling through and about the city of Tehran, are turning to be the storytellers who narrate their ‘post-aural’ experiences. In Yousef Abad, Street 33 the central characters are, as fully manifested in the paper, deeply engaged in the experiences of a modern sense of living while wandering to console their wistful longings despite the everyday challenges.

Faces of the Self

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Vanita Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Face ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis paper traces the centrality of the human face in the construction of modern individuality. It argues that the face of individuality no less than that of typology, is mired in and born of historical and political conditions that are subsequently disavowed in order that the individual (and the face she bears) is rendered a product of nature, an instantiation of the universal. Attempting to denaturalize and defamiliarize the authority invested in the face, this paper maps out three interrelated arguments: that the human face is historically produced; that its history is closely tethered to the production of modern subjectivity, and that its status as a purveyor of meaning relies upon the reiteration of preexisting norms through which it can be “read.” And yet, while this paper turns to the nineteenth century to trace the novel privileging of the face as an extension of selfhood, interwoven through this history is the figure of the “effaced” Muslim woman and the Muslim terrorist type.

scholarly journals ANDROGYNOUS MOTIVES IN LENA ELTANG’S NOVEL “STONE MAPLES” (“KAMENNYE KLEYNY”)

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-143
Author(s):  
Елена Александровна Полева
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
Ontological Completeness ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Central Characters

Введение. Образ андрогина, начиная с «Пира» Платона, служит осмыслению темы любви, проблемы поиска антропологической цельности. Широкую палитру вариантов осмысления андрогинности дает модернистская литература рубежа ХIX–ХХ вв., в традиции которой вписывается творчество современного писателя Лены Элтанг. Цель – проанализировать воплощение мотива андрогина в романе Л. Элтанг «Каменные клены». Материал и методы. Работа М. Элиаде «Мефистофель и Андрогин, или Тайна целостности», исследования образа андрогина в литературе Серебряного века и философии И. А. Едошиной, Е. С. Турутиной, Н. А. Копыловой, труды Б. М. Гаспарова и И. В. Силантьева о мотивном анализе. Результаты и обсуждение. В «Каменных кленах» андрогинные мотивы проявлены в коллизиях взаимоотношений центральных персонажей Саши Сонли и Луэллина Элдерберри, сводных сестер Саши и Эдны, представлены в нескольких вариантах, включая «интерсексуальные переодевания» (М. Элиаде), жертвоприношение. Обретение любви, обеспечивающее антропологическую и онтологическую полноту бытия, сопряжено с преодолением трудностей (мотивы прохождения испытаний, разгадывания загадок, выбор суженого). Соединение двух людей в гармоничное целое передано через метафорические образы женщины и мужчины: «автор – читатель», «хозяйка гостиницы – постоялец». Л. Элтанг принципиально дистанцируется от телесной семантики мотива андрогина, актуализируя его символический смысл: соединение со второй половиной трактуется как встреча автора со своим читателем, готовым стать соавтором. Заключение. Роман Лены Элтанг «Каменные клены» вписывается в традиционную, начиная с Античности, интерпретацию образа андрогина, выражающего идею «реинтеграции противоположностей» (М. Элиаде), преодоления одиночества, обретения антропологической и онтологической полноты и целостности личности. Андрогинные мотивы раскрывают в романе темы любви и творчества. Обретение Другого и соединение с ним, подобное по сути андрогинности, дает центральным персонажам романа смысл существования. Introduction. Lena Eltang’s novel “Stone Maples” fits into the traditional, since antiquity, interpretation of the androgynous image associated with the idea of “reintegration of opposites” (M. Eliade), the problem of finding the Other to gain the anthropological and ontological completeness and integrity of the individual. The aim is to analyze the semantics of the androgynous motif in L. Eltang’s novel “Stone Maples”. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the work of M. Eliade “Mephistopheles and Androgynes”, the research of I. A. Edoshina, E. S. Turutina, N. A. Kopylova, devoted to the image of androgynes in the literature of the Silver Age and philosophy. Results and discussion. In “Stone Maples”, androgynous motifs are manifested in the conflicts between the central characters of Sasha Sonley and Llewellyn Elderberry, the half-sisters of Sasha and Edna. Androgynous motifs are presented in several versions: homosexual attraction, “intersex disguises”, sacrifice, as well as through specific metaphors of connecting two people into a harmonious whole “author-reader”, “hotel hostess-guest”. Finding love, which provides the anthropological and ontological completeness of being, is fraught with difficulties (motives for passing tests, solving riddles, choosing a betrothed). L. Eltang fundamentally distances hirself from the bodily semantics of the androgynous motif, actualizing its symbolic meaning: unity with the second half is interpreted as a meeting of the author with his reader, who is ready to become a co-author. Conclusion. Androgynous motifs reveal the themes of love and creativity in the novel. Only the acquisition of the Other gives the fullness and meaning of existence.

Unfinished Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-190
Author(s):  
Tom Sperlinger
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Recurrent Theme

Where education opportunities in Palestine continue to narrow, this chapter considers Selma Dabbagh’s Out Of It as a work of fiction that is particularly attentive to scenes of education and as offering a critique of colonial modes of teaching. Modes of informal and formal education are a recurrent theme in the book and one that illuminates the wider hopes and experiences of the central characters, as they respond to the colonial character of their situation. The chapter reads the novel in light of Paulo Freire’s theories in Pedagogy of Freedom (1996), which emphasises the unfinished nature of the individual as a necessary condition for learning, and offers a model for anticolonial learning. Following this, the chapter contends that the subjective and unfinished work of some of the characters in Out Of It represents an alternative aesthetic response to the situation in Gaza, compared to that which is aesthetically ‘perfect,’ but that mimics a colonial voice with its apparent objectivity.

scholarly journals Art, Nature and the Negotiation of Memory in J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-467
Author(s):  
María Jesús Martínez-Alfaro
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Great War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Pastoral Mode ◽  
Regenerative Power ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
The Great War

Abstract The present article analyses J. L. Carr’s novel A Month in the Country (1980) in the light of an approach to traumatic experience as paradoxically relating destructiveness and survival. This view of trauma – already present in Freud and further elaborated in more recent theories like Cathy Caruth’s – accentuates the possibility of constructing a new story that bears witness not only to the shattering effects of trauma but also to a departure from it. From this perspective, the author deals first with the role of art as a survival aid to the novel’s traumatised protagonist, explaining how his restoration of a medieval mural helps him work through his troubled memories of the Great War. Repetitions and doublings link the two central characters, their discoveries and their recovery, creating layers of meaning that, it is argued, call for a ‘palimpsestuous’ reading, in Sarah Dillon’s sense of the term. The author then focuses on the regenerative power of nature in the novel, relating its use of the pastoral to the frequent recourse to it in Great War literature, and interpreting Carr’s text in line with critical approaches that reject escapism as the main trait of the pastoral mode. Finally, the protagonist’s retrospective narration is discussed as a creative act that is also an aid to the survival of the self.1

scholarly journals Identifying Characters of “Where Angel Fear to Tread Novel” in Teaching Literary Work

AL-TA LIM ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-145
Author(s):  
Suhaimi Suhaimi
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Library Research ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
High Social Status

The aim of the research is to identify some characters in the novel Where Angels Fear to Tread in teaching literary works. In learning of characters, someone will understand about the term of the interests, desires, emotions, and moral those form the individual within a story. Library research was used in thid study. The experts divide characters become two characters; they are central characters and additional characters. Central characters are a character who takes the greatest part in the main character or a figure that is most telling. Volume appearance of the main character more than the other characters. Meanwhile, additional characters or subordinate figures are figures that appear once or several times, figures that support or assist the central figure. In the novel Where Angels Fear To Tread, writer found some figures or characters such as: Mrs. Herriton, Lilia, Philip, Gino, and Carroline Abbot. Each of them had different characters; Mrs Herriton was a selfish and arrogant because she came from a high social status. Lilia was a patient and never denied what was ruled by her mother in-low although sometimes she was often treated her like slaves. Philip was figured as a handsome man, his tolerance and empathy were high. Gino was figured as stupid character. Miss Abbott as a nice, quiet, dull, and friendly.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Philip Kitcher
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Relative Neglect ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Central Characters

The Introduction explores the philosophical significance of Ulysses. Despite the relative neglect of the novel by Anglophone philosophers who have discussed literary modernism, it argues that Joyce’s fiction takes up the oldest questions of philosophy, those revolving around the qualities of the good life. In particular, Ulysses focuses on the middle years, when the “straight way” has been lost. Through its explorations of the thoughts and feelings of the central characters – Bloom, Stephen, and Molly – Joyce brings about a revaluation of everyday values, and an elevation of the commonplace. His strategies for doing so require the development of new narrative techniques, so that philosophical explorations are often intertwined with attention to the features on which literary scholars have fastened. The introduction closes with brief summaries of the themes of the individual chapters.

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