Women’s Challenge to Patriarchalism; Feminism Approach to “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen

My latest academic paper


“Pride and Prejudice,” probably the best work ever written by Jane Austen, has satisfied people in a number of ways. There are a lot of fascinations employed in this novel to make readers feel that way, especially engaging females in a sense of comfortableness. The story is successfully designed to make us conscious of new aspects of women that previously have been unseen or even ignored. For instance, while a number of eighteen-century novels demonstrate that women were actually sacrificing themselves pressured by a desperate need of getting married, this novel paves the way for defining women’s self-respect as totally independent of their husband hunting (Johnson, 92). For it “happily averts a showdown between survival and self-respect” by potentially settling some “competing claims without conflict or sacrifice” in the end (Johnson, 92). The compatibility between the necessity of marriage and pursuit of self-satisfaction is insisted on here, with a belief that women really need not even struggle faced with this impossible choice. A long-time agony for women in history, the stereotyped notion thus fades toward obsolescence in this story that they are supposed to forfeit their own happiness once married.
Among these kinds of employments of female fulfilment emerges one possible motif the author Jane Austen seems to have adopted in her writing of this novel. It can be safely said that there are some descriptions scattered in the story that make us convinced that Austen must have had a strong will to dispute a social trend in which women were looked down on. It is true, though, that this idea has been often susceptible to challenges suggested by those confident that this story’s overall plot contributes to female powerlessness confirmed after all. They say for example, the mere fact the Bennets women are struggling in their present situation created by an unfair patriarchal entailment system clearly suggests that they are abused by society, even void of an ability to challenge it.
However, the purpose of this paper is to prove that despite every argument proposed by those people it is still undeniable that we can clearly see in this novel Austen’s strong insistence upon women’s independence. In later sections, this opinion is confirmed mainly by three ideas: firstly by meticulous analysis of the unique way that the meaning of “female friendship” operates in the story, followed by an intriguing “absent-minded” theory established by critic Susan C. Greenfield; secondly by observation of the personality of Elizabeth Bennet, a heroine in this story, and of the relationship between her and her fiancé, Darcy Fitzwilliam, involving a theory by Jean Jacques Rousseau about sexual characteristics; thirdly by an interesting argument attached to a funny female character, Mrs. Bennet. Again, each of them is highly rewarding and useful to make convincing the thesis of Austen’s motive to establish women’s self-value in this novel.
Closer observation of female friendship in this novel reinforces the idea of Austen’s arduous challenge to the traditional approach to women. A lot of female characters appearing in this story, their relationship should not be defined as just mere “friends”; it is more than that. They try to construct a strong female community based on a common sense of aversion against the world dominated by male. In this regard, their relationship in this story can be identified as a female “alliance,” in which they are desperately eager to subvert the male’s governance over themselves. Elizabeth Bennet, one of the most major protagonists, is a chief leader of that party constantly obsessed by a hatred for patriarchal values. That is why she is all the more disappointed when faced with an unforgivable betrayal perpetrated by one of the members in her unity. Charlotte Lucas, whom Elizabeth definitely believed to be her closest friend, has decided to make an engagement with a man of great consequence and property merely searching for his security. This shocking news seems to have flabbergasted, and even mortified Elizabeth. He, called Mr. Collins, is actually the one whose passionate proposal she refused with such a determined resolution a few days before, that she was finally put under the necessity of declaring herself as “a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart” (Austen, 122). Her every effort thus done to reject Collin has been totally ruined by Charlotte’s later insensitive acceptance of him.
However, what Charlotte has ruined is not only Elizabeth’s refusal itself. Depending only on the mercenary motives without any real affection attached, Charlotte betrays her disloyalty to the community she belongs to, on the verge of ruining her friendship with Elizabeth. For Elizabeth, easily accepting a proposal only out of economic reasons is nothing but the subjugation to men. For those women who are really loyal to their own sex, she might say, would never concede that females lack an ability to own objects and advance in life. Of course they know it is true that women are apt to follow wealthy men to secure their own life; a man of a good fortune being “the rightful property of some one or other of their daughter” (Austen, 3). However, it is totally unprofessional for a member of the female community to relinquish her dignified pride as a woman and determined attitude against succumbing to the temptation of men’s property. Charlotte’s disloyalty has thus led to Elizabeth feeling alienated and their friendship becoming weakened (Kaplan, 104). Actually, an awkward politeness is suddenly produced between the two, in which “there was a restraint which kept them mutually silent on the subject” (Austen, 144). Thus, taking a rather austere attitude to the renegade careful lest any sign of forgiveness should escape herself, Elizabeth Bennet seems to show how the whole betrayal has been exasperating to herself. Her outrageous disappointment and devastation is accordingly indicative of how huge amount of confidence in and attachment for the female solidity she has held with strong loyalty.
In addition to the meaning of friendship as a “female alliance,” there is another implied definition of friendship operating in this novel. Austen also seems to indentify women friendship with a “sisterhood” (Kaplan, 195). This story’s use of the meaning of a women companionship as a sisterhood becomes particularly apparent when Elizabeth Bennet decides to refuse a proposal from Fitzwilliam Darcy. Unable to demonstrate her impartial discernment blinded by the distorted prejudice toward Darcy previously suggested by Mr. Wickham, Elizabeth dismisses his sincere proposal very negligently. One of the most disgusting things about Darcy Elizabeth has heard from Wickham is his intrigue to separate her dearest sister Jane from her intended fiancé Mr. Bingley. Elizabeth is actually so deeply astonished to hear this unforgivable information as to find herself in a need of mental consolation to apart from her “agitation and tears which the subject occasioned” (Austen, 208).
In this sedate meditation, Elizabeth lets her resentment against Darcy growing stronger and stronger, deeply sympathizing with her sister by reading “all the letters which Jane had written to her since her being in Kent” (Austen, 209). Darcy, unaware of her being amid the increasing hatred against himself, confesses his enthusiastic love to her with every gentlemanlike gallantry possible. In this scene, Darcy himself seems to be confident in seeing his sincere proposal immediately accepted by her a few moments later, because he has never imagined Elizabeth can be allegiant to her sister enough to kick out the great chance to marry him (Johnson, 91). However, by declaring no amount of reflection will allow herself to condone the man fully responsible for every disaster of “a most beloved sister” (Austen, 212), Elizabeth refuses his love confession in a very disrespectful manner. In this context, it is fully obvious that Elizabeth shows strong loyalty to a sisterhood with Jane by dumping a great opportunity of marriage which if accepted must have secured her subsequent life; camaraderie between them has intensified itself more than ever in her strenuous effort to defend her sisterhood.
One of the intriguing theories confirming the idea of this novel’s relatively stronger friendship is explained by the hidden fact that female characters in this story, especially Elizabeth, become more discerning when they are isolated by the power of absence (Greenfield). That is, estrangement from the public allows them to exercise the most sophisticated observation of things around them. For uncertainty makes one feel the need of stopping to think about things while those confident that they are well informed do not care about them (Greenfield). For example in this story, only after Darcy disappears from Elizabeth in his quest of Lydia and Wickham, a eloped couple, to reconstruct peace of the Bennets, does Elizabeth realize how admirable he is. Thus, separated for a while from the tangible Darcy and therefore allowed to re-identify him inside her head through a different perspective, Elizabeth implements her perception and judgement the best without any prejudice.
Now, what is to be noted here is that this highly-sophisticated exertion of judgement through the power of absence can be applied to other female characters too, with the result of contributing to their friendship intensified. They find themselves more conscious of and identified with each other when they are detached. Their relationship cultivates itself through “emotional intimacy and frankness” (Kaplan, 192). The most interesting example is maybe the one between Elizabeth and Jane. Their strong companionship, which we will examine closely in a different approach later, is a very convincing evidence to confirm the idea of intensified friendship by absence. For instance, Elizabeth is constantly preoccupied with her sister in her imagination when the latter stays at Mr. Bingil’s home, three miles away from the city the Bennets lives in. Her consideration for the absent Jane even encourages her to go to see the sick sister on foot; even though the weather is so dirty that anyone can guess easily Elizabeth in a few hours would be the person victimized by “weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise” (Austen, 36), that she really is. Also, a great deal of correspondence itself with the two also shows that they are connected so strongly, constantly caring about each other even though they are not physically seen. Since absence enhances the quality of judgement, camaraderie between the sisters is made all the more reliable and solid amid the growing considerations for the intangible. This unique type of friendship is built on female solidarity eager to make their relationship stronger, a firm evidence of women’s desire for independence.
To vindicate the idea of Austen’s all discontent with the conventional way that women are looked down on, it is also highly rewarding to analyze Elizabeth’s personality itself, apart from the viewpoint of friendship. One of the keywords to describe her character is the word “individualism.” Elizabeth always does what she thinks is right, not shaken by any confrontation, especially the one provided by male. When dancing with Darcy at the Netherfield ball, she denies being subordinate to him, which women are supposed to be (Kaplan, 186). She says, “It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. －I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples” (Austen, 102). In this context, individualism can be established as part of the interpretation that Elizabeth plays a dominating role over Darcy in this story. Generally expected to show that men’s exertion of their educated knowledge leads women to change more dignifiedly and maturely, Austen seems to try to challenge the trend by her use of the relationship between the heroine and hero. Actually, it is Elizabeth who dominates the other with the result of his personality enhanced in the end. Elizabeth’s strong individualism thus exerted on Darcy, in its didactic effect on him, obviously demonstrates that she is totally against the conventional way women are supposed to be.
Here, this unlikely interaction between Elizabeth and Darcy suggests one possibility concerning conventional sexual characteristics. There has been a perennial debate as to whether a conventional behaviour of male and female is constructed naturally, or just acquired later in one’s life. That is for example, whether a commonly acknowledged female quality that they are of elegant propriety is intrinsically determined or contingent on their later experience. Jane Austen, by means of her use of Elizabeth’s deviation from a conventional female behaviour, insists that their characteristics be entirely acquired, not natural, and therefore actually replaceable (Cohen). It also leads us to be aware that Austen must have challenged the philosophy of sexual role suggested by a famous theorist in the mid-eighteenth century, Jean Jacques Rousseau (Cohen). He maintained the characteristic available to each sex is irrevocable and nothing can be done to change it because it is definitely natural, saying “Where they [men and women] differ, they are not comparable ... One ought to be active and strong, the other passive and weak” (Rousseau, 358). In later paragraphs, it will be argued that there is every intension scattered in this novel to call it into question that stereotyped characteristics attributed to each sex are innately determined, through the portrayal of “reversion” of conventional behaviours between male and female; presented in Elizabeth and Darcy. Since it is almost obvious, from hitherto arguments, that Elizabeth behaves rather male-like way, the focus will be on Darcy Fitzwilliam, proving he has gradually acquired womanish mannerism in the story. To verify the inversion of sexual traits would be to corroborate Austen’s insistence on women’s independence.
Darcy Fitzwilliam, apparently seen as if he, as most other men, were extremely loyal to his own sex － proud, conceited, arrogant, and narcissistic, － actually has undergone a huge material change in his nature. His personality is enhanced in the end, rather effeminate. First, he learns to behave in the way more devoted to others, as women were used to sacrificing themselves for men. After faced with his loving woman Elizabeth devastated a great deal by the news of a Lydia-and-Wickham elopement, Darcy suddenly disappears. A few weeks later, he is actually found to have paid a tremendous amount of debts, amounting to “considerably more than a thousand pounds” (Austen, 356), to settle the matter. It is all the more unbelievable given the long-term feud between Darcy and Wickham, which is attributed to the latter’s intolerable despicability and betrayal to the other in the past. Nevertheless, Darcy did it; mostly because he was spurred by his affection for Elizabeth, even though he was sure he would never be accepted by her. In this context, we can interpret that he, deciding to delicate himself to his loving woman, has abandoned his headstrong pride as a man, and started to gain a female-like personality of making a sacrifice. Second, a letter Darcy wrote to Elizabeth after he was refused also shows that Darcy comes to acquire an effeminate characteristic in his own self. The letter, ending itself with a phrase “God bless you” (Austen, 224), implies that it has a “show of genuine feeling,” which links “stylistic conventions to sentiment in a fashion that Rousseau would call properly female” (Cohen). Adding such a phrase means that he began to make himself considerate and thoughtful for others, a step to estrange himself from selfishness often seen in male and, reversely, to perform altruisms in female. Last, maybe the most overt, Darcy shows Elizabeth a kind of capitulation, accepting that his personality is to be blamed in some way. Men, thought of as always superior to women, generally would not admit their having faults at all, even sometimes regarding it as the most humiliating to accept that they are wrong. However, Darcy does it at the last scene. He bitterly thinks back of his life and admits he has just let his own pride and conceit growing up in his nature doing what he wants to: “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice ... I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit” (Austen, 406). In this context, Darcy again learns to behave in a female-like manner, letting Elizabeth win himself by means of voluntarily vindicating her long-cherished argument that he has been disagreeable in a way.
Here, what must be remembered is that these reversed conventional behaviours between male and female in the story directly contribute to supporting Austen’s suggestion that sexual characteristics are entirely acquired. If they were inherently determined and unchangeable, Elizabeth would not have teased Darcy with such aggressiveness at the ball complying with female propriety; and Darcy would not have accepted his wrongness loyal to male pride. Thus, showing the fact that sexual characteristics are always interchangeable, Austen seems to say it is foolish to try to weigh up people’s value only from their sex. She might even say they originally have the same amount of ability to perform things, regardless of whether they are male or female. “Pride and Prejudice” is the work filled with her every message to claim the equality between men and women.
So far we have observed Austen’s feministic point of view mainly dealing with Elizabeth and Darcy. In later paragraphs however, a completely different approach will be done by sticking to another female character in this story: Mrs. Bennet, the mother of Elizabeth. Completely silly as she may seem, actually Mrs. Bennet, throughout the story, reveals her sense of hatred against the society being dominated by male. Her most overt criticism about patriarchal rules rooted in society perhaps is made apparent at the scene of a neighbourhood ball. At the first ball where all daughters from the Bennets are present, the origin of two of them meeting for the first time their future husband, Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Darcy, a tacit agreement at that time is vividly portrayed. Men and women are not equal there; it is only gentlemen who are qualified to ask people of the opposite sex to dance together (Kaplan, 187). While men fancy themselves in their authority to choose women and do not feel any anxiety in abundance of the objects, women are incessantly exposed to a sense of uneasiness for their powerlessness. Not until merciful gentlemen come to ask them to dance together, do they have no choice but to just wait, alone. Mr. Darcy, at first, is also one of the guys enjoying their privilege, fastidious about an eligible woman who deserves to dance with him. He, assuming there is no woman qualified to spend time with him, just stands alone with every appearance of a man who is unfriendliness itself. Such is his ill-natured behaviour that even his best friend Mr. Bingley says, rather offended, “I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner” (Austen, 11).
However, Mr. Bingley is not the only one who has criticised Darcy’s bad conduct: Mrs. Bennet, who in her freewheeling use of some strong vocabularies breaks into a violent diatribe against him. After several severe criticisms about him, she says, “He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great!” (Austen, 14). This comment reflects her feministic point of view. While the comment mentioned by Mr. Bingley is just an admonishment to a friend who behaves badly, the one by Mrs. Bennet takes on a more pregnant meaning. Her remark is based on her strenuous wish to refuse accepting a social convention at the ball exclusively beneficial to male. The usual unreliableness in her discernment is not the case with that comment she then mentioned because it “captures nicely Mr. Darcy’s tendency at the ball to flaunt his power to choose by exhibiting himself detached and free”(Kaplan, 187).
Mrs. Bennet is never so perfect in her challenge to patriarchal values as when she refers to an entailment problem inherent in the family. She is always eager to encourage her daughters to get married; mostly because she is bitterly aware what would happen were they not to have husbands. Since she has failed to produce an eligible male heir, after her husband dies those left are going to be deprived of all the property they now have. Instead, the closest relative inherits it. Bennets women, including Mrs. Bennet, will have no place to live in, completely destitute of everything necessary to live a normal life. While Mrs. Bennet is constantly obsessed by this desperate thought for their future, her husband, Mr. Bennet, seems never to have any tiny interest in the subject. For he knows his life is secured until he dies. The entailment system designed to be advantageous to men never allows it to happen that he casts aspersions on its advisability aware how sexism-like it is and sympathizes with his wife and daughters (Wylie). Mrs. Bennet tries to make him understand it is a matter of death and life for female members, saying “Ah! You do not know what I suffer” (Austen, 5), and “I am sure if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it” (Austen, 69).
Paradoxical as it may sound, actually it is also true that Mrs. Bennet refuses to understand the legal system (Wylie); “Jane and Elizabeth attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They often attempted it before, but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason” (Austen, 69). Constantly desperate but also irrational and even silly her attitude toward the entailment problem, Mrs. Bennet seems to indicate that she is trying to make a fool of the legal system favour of the patriarchy. She herself has never admitted the validity of it. She probably knows that if she accepts the truth with her reasonable mind, she will be convinced that the problem is beyond her reach after all. She will be persuaded, she knows, that no amount of her individual challenge can be enough to change the whole social system anyway. Being irrational and silly is the only way for her to continue to encourage herself to ignore and escape from the unfair truth. Thus, rather than seriously reacting to the problem in her effort to contrive a constructive resolution, Mrs. Bennet tries to be always Mrs. Bennet; ridiculous, headstrong, and irrational. We must notice it is based upon her feministic energy to dismiss the way society is that she behaves that way.
Almost the same thing can be said with her reaction to a horrible event that is to throw the whole family into a huge trouble; a Lydia-and-Wickham elopement. This event influences those concerned in a number of ways; from the feministic point of view it is highly important to have a look at the examples of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Although usually Mr. Bennet is described as a quiet and gentle person, faced with his real daughter’s unforgivable impropriety, he is totally upset. It is not until then that he finally realizes that he has lacked his responsibility as a parent for what he has been supposed to do for his own daughters. He even notices his knowledge about his own daughter has been quite insufficient, even not enough to predict what her conduct of herself would be like when she goes out to the dance party full of officers. Elizabeth in advance suggests to him that Lydia be prevented from going there, conscious of her disposition to resort to flirtation wherever she goes. However, he negligently dismisses this remonstrance, foolishly misjudging that Lydia will be at the ball “too poor to be an object of prey to any body” (Austen, 256). However, now that it is revealed that Lydia ran away with Wickham, and therefore that his judgement is proved to have been completely stupid, his sense of dismay at what happened is gradually replaced by an even stronger sensation: rage.
Mr. Bennet finds Lydia’s misconduct extremely infuriating mostly because she has violated the legal and moral dictates of the patriarchy (Wylie). Lydia’s impropriety is completely subversive of a set of assumptions of what most people recognized should be the norm in society through the patriarchal perspective. Any woman should be prudent and unobtrusive when she is married off, just waiting for a proposal from a man; a shotgun marriage mainly motivated by an ebullient passion on the part of a bribe is unacceptable, and even inconceivable. Thus, there is more and more resentment growing up in Mr. Bennet’s mind to such a extent that he even decides that he will not “advance a guinea to buy clothes for his daughter,” without which her marriage will “scarcely seem valid” (Austen, 341). It is this highly cruel punishment to his own daughter suggested by Mr. Bennet that his wife finds most incomprehensible. She, being “alive to the disgrace, which the want of new clothes must reflect on her daughter’s nuptials” (Austen, 341), reveals her wild exasperation toward her husband’s negligence of a custom essential for women. That is exactly what is the most intolerable for her. Mrs. Bennet is clearly aware of how important it is to buy new clothes for her own daughter by her use of knowledge as a woman, a lack of which obviously shows Mr. Bennet is rather indifferent to his child. Also, while Mr. Bennet is made furious by his daughter’s deviation from patriarchal values, his wife actually does not mind it at all. Even though Lydia has totally trampled morality in terms of her wild challenge to social expectations of what women are supposed to be like, her mother feels no shame about that. For Mrs. Bennet herself has “never really acknowledged the validity” (Wylie) of patriarchal values. After all, she might feel even proud of Lydia’s accomplishment, in which her elopement lets it proved that any woman is capable of doing anything she wants to if the situation demands.
Thus, what we must notice from the way Mrs. Bennet reacts to the whole event is; firstly that she is more attached to her own daughter in her feministic desire to make her marriage proceed smoothly and successfully; secondly that she is not so much offended by as satisfied with her own child’s ignorance of patriarchal ethicality, happy that woman’s ability to perform things has been verified. In both cases, it is obvious that Mrs. Bennet is portrayed as an incarnation of every feministic wish to subvert a conventional approach to women in society, as is Lydia and Elizabeth also.
As we have observed so far, a number of evidences are employed in the whole plot to make readers estranged from the conventional view on women and therefore conscious of new aspects of them. Women must not be discriminated merely for being women. They have as much amount of power as men to advance in life and establish their own adamant identity. Reading “Pride and Prejudice” is surely the best medicine to kill our prejudice toward women deeply rooted in the way society has been.






Works Cited


Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Penguin Groups, 2006.

Cohen, Paula Marantz. “Jane Austen’s Rejection of Rousseau: a Novelistic and Feminist Initiation.” Papers on Language & Literature. 215. From Literature Resource Center.

Greenfield, Susan C. “The Absent-Minded Heroine: Or, Elizabeth Bennet Has a Thought.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Detroit: Gale, 337-350. From Literature Resource Center.

Johnson, Claudia. “Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Jane Austen : Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 73-93.

Kaplan, Deborah. “Pride and Prejudice: Cultural Duality and Feminist Literary Criticism.” Jane Austen among Women. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. 182-205.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile. Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic, 1979.

Wylie. Judith. “Dancing in Chains: Feminist Satire in Pride and Prejudice.” The Free Library. July 16 2009.

How Does the Technique of Poems Have an Influence on the Poems Themselves?

First, one of the most famous techniques used for poems is “metaphor”, which can be defined as the use of words or phrases that imply there is a figurative connotation hidden behind their literal meaning. In the verse “Spring and Fall: to a young child,” an obvious metaphor is seen in the portrait of “fallen leaves.” To all appearance, it is unquestionable that the general image about “fallen leaves” is nothing but ominous, making people feel melancholy. No matter how ephemeral, it is possible for one poem to influentially dominate its readers’ frame of mind in whatever way it wants. It is this totally-at-will psychological manipulation on which it completely depends whether people spend their time ― both temporary and permanent ― with their mental mood kept fine or bad, that the power of “metaphor” seen in poets, particularly in this Hopkins’s poem, can exert on their readers. Needless to say, this “psychological manipulation” is achieved only when a poem provides readers with some actual image of things. For example, suppose that there is no specific description discoverable of any picture like “fallen leaves” which represents the implied concept that nothing is undying in this poem, and that all readers can find is the too uncreative direct message just saying exactly “Yes, everything is fated to die after all.” No readers would feel any empathy with Margaret; because “no symbol in a poem” approach fails to excite their imagination and therefore manipulate their feeling. Having a lugubrious atmosphere attached to itself, the image of “fallen leaves” lets readers feel all the more sentimental and as a result, expedites their identification with Margaret. Yes, readers cannot help sharing subjective experience with Margaret. They are forced to recall their own personal incidents which have ever happened that brought home to them the lesson that nothing is imperishable, like a collapse of marriage, decease of a long-time pet, and so on. In conclusion, it can be safely said that the use of metaphor in a poem, often seen in some tangible portraits, exercises highly arbitrary mental operation over readers, making them identify with a protagonist in the verse.

The second technique to be considered is suddenly bringing a rather complicated sentence to between other simpler lines. For example, in the verse “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, the top sentence is like this: “Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.” Here is a modified grammar rule used in this spot, and the original form would have been: “If we had but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, would be no crime.” Usually we feel the more amount of senses of incongruity toward the “grand” grammar uses like above when they are employed in everyday colloquial talks than in such academically rhetorical expressions as include complex anaconda-length sentences, for example. For using elaborate grammar rules is thought of as against the unspoken agreement between speakers trying to make themselves understood clearly: “the simpler, the better.” Given this assumption, it is natural that when used in the form of poet, closer to the style of everyday talks for its casualty than of academic papers, the pompous grammar use draws people’s attention more, therefore encouraging them to analyze the sentence carefully. So in the previous example of “To his Coy Mistress,” readers, faced with the magnificent ellipsis of “If” and inversion of word order in the subjunctive mood, cannot help being more perspicacious to a syntax of this sentence; and as a result, they successfully receive the topic message from Marvel more properly. Thus, it follows that popping the sentence with a splendour use of grammar into between other normal lines has an influence on a poem itself in that the part it wants to emphasize becomes very convincing and outstanding to readers.

Poems

Here are my reaction papers to two famous poems, the first is "Spring and Fall: to a young child" by Gerard Manly Hopkins, the second "The Prophet" by Abraham Cowley.

Margaret, are you grievingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leaves, like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! as the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you will weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sorrow's springs are the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It is the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for [ Gerald Manly Hopkins].


The key to understand this poem is to realize that there is a dichotomy detectable of the figurative concept between spring and fall throughout the verse; the former representing that something auspicious is going to visit us with all the fresh atmosphere, and on the contrary the latter that it is destined to leave behind us someday though, serving as a reminder of the crucial fact that nothing is everlasting. The lugubrious sight of fallen leaves symbolically functions as the incarnation of an ultimate form of this fact － the death is inevitable. Generally speaking, children tend to believe in the existence of infinity; for the freewheeling use of fantastic imagination always encourages to try to take a look of trifles which grown-up adults would dismiss as too insignificant and lets unrestricted by conventional rules every child who sincerely reveres any tincture of immortal things. In fact in this poem however, Margaret seems to half recognize the concept that man is fated to die after all. Actually she starts to notice the truth in a vague manner by superposing the mournful sight of leaves falling on her own life. But particularly intriguing is that it is this “vague” awareness of mortality that keeps all the children including Margaret away from becoming pessimistic unlike adults, who are invariably caught by doubtful ways of thinking. The immaturity of being too young enables her to be still pure and ingenuous and believe in anything imperishable, no matter what a cynical thought assaults her. Such is Margaret’s innocent approach to everything around her still left within herself that no one would yet find any appearance of the sceptic in her. So, it is naturally possible to interpret that she unconsciously discloses to readers her subconscious inclination for the world on the part of spring, not fall, predisposed to the unadulterated mind-set of “fresh thoughts”.



Teach me to Love? go teach thy self more wit; I am chief Professor of it. Teach craft to Scots, and thrift to Jews, Teach boldness to the Stews; In tyrants courts teach supple flattery, Teach Jesuits, that have traveled far, to Lye. Teach fire to burn and Winds to blow. Teach restless Fountains how to flow, Teach the dull earth, fixt, to abide, Teach Woman-kind inconstancy and Pride. See if your diligence here will useful prove; But, pr'ithee, teach not me to love.
The God of Love, if such a thing there be, May learn to love from me, He who does boast that he has bin, In every Heart since Adams sin, I'll lay my Life, nay Mistress on't, that's more; I'll teach him things he never knew before; I'll teach him a receipt to make Words that weep, and Tears that speak, I'll teach him Sighs, like those in death, At which the Souls go out too with the breath; Still the Soul stays, yet still does from me run; As Light and Heat does with the Sun.
'Tis I who Love's Columbus am; 'tis I, Who must new Worlds in it descry; Rich Worlds, that yield of Treasure more, than that has been known before, And yet like his (I fear) my fate must be, To find them out for others; not for Me. Me Times to come, I know it, shall Loves last and greatest prophet call. But, ah, what's that, if she refuse, To hear the whole doctrines of my Muse? If to my share the Prophets fate must come; Hereafter fame, here Martyrdome
[Abraham Cowley].



It is a universally acknowledged fact that no one can be called a “teacher” without being the professional. Only when you have successfully built up your “muscle” in the process of developing and expanding your skill, to win the title as a veritable expert, are you justified to exhibit your own pet theory to others even in the most obtrusive manner. Given this principle as to a prerequisite to become the “professional”, it is obvious that the speaker in the verse The Prophet is never qualified at all; he keeps trying to make himself seem as if he were a “love expert”, saying, “I will teach him things he never knew before,” and “I will teach him a receipt to make,” when in fact he has no girlfriend; namely he is really anything but an expert. That is why some of the readers might regard the speaker as too conceited, or even treacherous to what he really is. But most people perhaps know that despite his every masquerade as a love specialist, they feel no sense of repugnance against the speaker, because his way of speaking and displaying himself is filled with such a humour and archness as helps to prevent him from seeming unlikable and obnoxious.

How to Learn English Effectively

The composition below is the homework I was required to write for the first time in this semester. The title is “How to Learn English Effectively.” I wrote about listening and writing; the former is what I’m not good at, the latter otherwise.


In this paper, my personal opinions about how to learn English effectively will be presented from the two views of listening and writing. As for the listening skills, I think that it is the most significant that we try to make it a rule to listen to various kinds of English: news programs, foreign movies, model passages of some English tests like TOEFL, and so on. When studying other languages, no learner should be so optimistic that he overestimates his own English-listening skills with the hyper-positive notion that there will be no situation unmanageably going beyond his real ability. No matter how overconfident a learner one is, there is no denying that it can easily happen for example, that one who is really proficient in listening to foreign movies with perfect comprehension one day suddenly faces a ruthlessly discovered reality of his actually not being able to understand English news programs. I, rather getting used to hearing formal English, am extremely allergic to spoken casual English; spoken English can easily make itself sound so hardly understandable due to its obnoxious deviations from prescriptive grammars, as for there to have been a commonly held realization among English learners for a long time that sometimes the colloquialism particularly seen in everyday conversations goes too far for them to keep their confidence, and even interest in spoken English, at last to give up studying it. Listening to various kinds of English will give you a lot of opportunities for you to discern what kind of English is the most suitable for you, making it possible that your plan of listening studies becomes more concrete, and well scheduled.
About the writing skills, it seems very effective that you write down some expressions you personally thought were interesting and laudable in reading books, so that you can refer to them later when you are supposed to write something in English, both formal and informal. But what cannot be emphasized strongly enough is that we must always make sure that these expressions have to be turned into our own ones lest they should become suspicions about our committing on the most despicable measure of all － plagiarism. The elaborate phrases you chose will bring successful effects and punches to your writings, provided that you have transformed them so radically into unique “your-Esque” expressions with an ingenious mind, that no one can recognize or even guess what on earth the original source was.

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At no time in my life have I felt so strongly as now, the sense of apathy which almost incessantly obsesses me with all the magical power of enforcement to make me ignore such a curiosity-provoking scandal in the world today as would be an exact target of my bitter criticisms a few weeks ago; nor ever been so closely and potently aware of the looming malevolent fear of nothingness. I, coming back to stay at my hometown Shizuoka one week ago, had a really good time there. But after returning to Tokyo, somehow I’m in the middle of the mood of indifference, reluctant to do anything that demands me to engage myself in some tough stuff in need of my care even inside my home, let alone outside. However, maybe I might be allowed to let it give myself consolation to consider that given the fact that all the hundred hedonistic ways imaginable to cheer up oneself like TV games, shopping, Karaoke and so on completely failed to win back my enthusiasm after all, it is all the more creditable for me to decide to enliven myself by employing the highly academic way of updating this blog, instead of the other unprincipled ways like above. That really made me realize how deeply I’m inclined to the “writing”.

But now it still remains the same that an air of lackadaisicalness compulsively continues to assault me, melancholy enough to leave little hope of brilliant vitalities a few weeks ago recuperating again. The only hope left to me is class this semester starting from next week. I am supposed to take more specialized classes than ever, and therefore there will be a growing demand on all sides and by every professor in my department for a well-researched term paper, enthusiastically-participated discussion, and elaborately-organized presentation. My motto is “the harder, the better.” So, I really hope that the coming strict classes will encourage myself to get through this semester even without making me stop to think back about this lugubrious period I’m enmeshed in now.

A Hypocritical Husband

A Japanese actor Hiroyuki Nagato, 75 years old, held a press conference yesterday, to give detailed explanations about the sudden hospitalization of his wife Yoko Minamino, 76 years old. Minamino, who had been victimized by Alzheimer’s disease, fell into coma April 1, yesterday, being carried to hospital from her house emergently. Nagato, trying to stop the flood of his tears, explained his wife’s condition like this: “My wife, although she fell into coma, seemed to me to recognize that I was there, and smile at me. Sometimes she comes to, but not always. In fact, it’s really hard to tell she just slept, or she really lost her conscience.”
According to Nagato, Minamino got a serious damage on her left waist at night on March 28, due to an inadvertent fall from her own bed. Given her recent history that she has sometimes been on the verge of losing her consciousness because of mere constipation, it is plausible to regard this unexpected fall as caused by such disorder too. Although she was given an on-the-spot aid of a band-aid at that time, her pain still remained the same, making them decide to go to see a doctor.
But the next day, Minamino suddenly began to express no respond to her pain, and gradually lose vitality in her eyes, which made Nagato realize that something wrong was happening to his wife, and call the ambulance at noon on the same day. Minamino was sent to hospital straightly.
At present, Minamino is being under the remedy of an intravenous drip injection at hospital. “She reveals the strongest refusal to my kiss, so I asked her to promise me to get back her consciousness ― if I stopped trying to kiss her,” said Nagato, with full tears in his eyes. At the beginning, Nagato said, her condition was regarded as so hopeless that he once paid his imagination even to the possible sight of her relegation into a bed-ridden or vegetable situation, which if should happen, must be attributed entirely to him. But now, her condition turned out to be not so desperate as they had expected, as Nagato confessed that he was told by the doctor that she would be released from hospital within one month or so, expressing his temporal relief.
As for the career of Minamino, she left the entertainment world four years ago because of the deterioration of her forgettableness. Her hostility toward hospitalization has forced Nagato to take care of her at home since her retirement. At the press conference, he emphasized that it was extremely hard to care of the sick, at the same time saying that he also decided to believe in his wife’s strong will to live; “No one knows what will happen next. Nevertheless, she seems to have her own steadfast will to recuperate, and that makes me realize how strong she is.”

On a superficial level, we are given the impression that Nagato is just a dedicated, and sincere husband. But actually, it must not be ignored that there are some despicable histories of his hiding behind the suddenly invented movement in the world which tries to justify and glorify him, overlooking or even pretending not to be aware of, his past reprehensible problems with adultery, and showing as large amounts of sympathies as possible to him. Probably Minamino had suffered from his unfaithful attitude to their marriage for a long time, before finally she lost herself, even not being able to clearly identify her own self. And not until then, at last did her husband start to display himself as a sincerely devoted husband in a completely sentimental manner. Is that creditable? I do not think so. Even if he really rehabilitated himself and brought what he did home to himself with the largest compunction of penitence, he would deserve nothing otherwise than the acrimonious journey full of guilty supposed to obsess him all his life forever.

Departure for New Life

There are two big scandals coming to us as surprises in this week; one is, as already mentioned in this blog, the detailed reason of Norika-Jinnai divorce was brought into light at last, probably making people in the world throw the penetrating eyes at Jinnai’s disclosed true nature with a full sense of suspicion. Because of Jinnai’s displaying himself as an amicable and hilarious man, the discovered news of his nasty abuse toward Norika and flirtation with some other women must have flabbergasted quite a few of the Japanese all the more strongly. Among the most surprising facts betrayed is that Jinnai was actually exerting domestic violence on his wife, although he himself denied the allegation. According to one who knows this couple well, when interrogated on his alleged infidelity by Norika, Jinnai, far from showing any tincture of sincere attitude to her, got infuriated by contraries, outrageously insisting that she apologize to him for her skepticism, and finally drawing her hair violently. It was all the more disgusting for me to hear this news, especially when giving a little imagination to a never-likely-to-happen humiliating sight: the impeccably prestigious actress Norika forced to kneel on the ground in want of forgiveness from her husband the just mediocre comedian. Norika, coming back to Japan from Africa, where she had stayed on her business, revealed her honest feelings on her blog, saying that she, with the large amount of help by those willingly supporting her, had done her best to get over obnoxious problems lurking behind their conjugal life, only to find her arduous efforts ended in vein. She also emphasizes that all her concern is now focusing on future; there being no tiny fraction of nostalgic feelings about past.
The other news running into us this week reports that Miki Fujimoto, an ex-Morning Musume member, and Tomoharu Shoji, a comedian within a unit called “Shinagawa-Shoji”, the two of whom had been known as being in an intimate relationship, officially announced that they at last decided to be engaged. Susceptible to acrimonious diatribes by those cross-grained as the news of a decided engagement between a pop idol and a comedian generally seems to be, somehow this one receives a lot of gentle comments simply congratulating on the two. Probably one of the reasons they are so much celebrated without any criticism lies in the fact that they have built their own way into the goal of marriage through “proper procedure”: they have never been subjugated to the nasty temptation of an “unplanned pregnancy before marriage”. It is becoming one of the most serious social issues, as is represented well in a recent shocking scandal from Britain ― “A 13-year-old father and 15-year-old mother”. Although a recent DNA test revealed this 13-year-old boy was not actually a father of the baby, it still remains irrefutable that they “did it” before their marriage, not premeditative. I personally feel it is no problem for a loving couple to have a sex no matter how young they are, as long as it is based on a consensual agreement between the two, and the deliberate consideration for their future. But as far as recent examples are concerned, too many couples seem to cross the line without any responsibility and sensibility, oblivious to the fact that an unplanned sex surely brings them the once-and-for-all forfeiture of their hitherto normal and peaceful life. Given such a reprehensible tendency being rampant in the world today, Mikitty-and-Shoji couple might be said to deserve creditability for their prudence. Congratulation! Miki and Shoji, and don’t follow the same path as Jinnai and Norika!!