Scribble Issue 7 Zeitgeist Edition

S C R I B B L E Shrewsbury High School Literary Magazine, Issue 7 (March, 2021)

Zeitgeist Edition

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NOTE FROM THE

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elcome back to Scribble!

Thank you for picking up this ‘zeitgeist’ special of the magazine, which we are very pleased to now be sharing. On behalf of Lily, Grace and myself we hope you enjoy reading through the variety of articles that have been contributed. The theme of ‘zeitgeist’ is an emotion that is evoked from a particular event or period of time; I hope that this edition is one that can be viewed as an exploration of ideas. This edition is unique and something that I hope all readers find interesting; an array of exciting articles await you.

There has been a number of people who have put in lots of effort to make this next step in Scribble’s journey a reality. I would like to invite you to read Mrs Gutman’s interview as she explains her opinions on many different zeitgeist topics as well as information on why people should attend her weekly discussions. Also, there is a fascinating article written by Aaina Jassel on survivor stories, a riveting piece written by Willow Dowd on Jekyll and Hyde, an engrossing feature created by Libby Driscoll on feminism, and much more. I would like to thank Mrs Pardoe for her hard work in bringing this magazine to life.

Being involved in the mechanics of Scribble has been an insightful experience. After being included in previous editions, taking up the challenge of becoming an editor at the beginning of Year Thirteen was something that I believed would empower me to be expressive and creative.

Scribble has lived up to my expectations and more. For me, Scribble has been a chance to talk about the literature I love and to discover the thought-provoking opinions and ideas of others. It has given me a pathway to explore texts away from the curriculum and it has allowed me to compose articles presenting my interpretations. Being a part in creating such an enthralling collection of pieces is something that I will always be proud of. Every edition I have been a contributor of has been unique and that is the real beauty of Scribble. I have loved every aspect of it, and I hope that enjoyment is found when reading this edition. As my time as editor draws closer to an end, I know that this experience of seeing my work printed in such a wonderful magazine is something that I will always remember as being one of the most liberating opportunities.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this edition of Scribble.

Holly

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Editors

Contents

Holly Lovett, Lily Harding, Grace Turner

Editorial Contributions Clara Johnson, Holly Lovett, Dani Hales, Robin Aldridge, Alex Hale, Imogen Hollins, Willow Dowd, Isabel Clarke, Libby Driscoll, Madeleine Anderson, Aaina Jassell, Lily Harding.

Editoral Design & Typeset Tiffany Pardoe

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Front Page Illustration from The English Dance of Death, 1815

by Thomas Rowlandson

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2 Welcome from the Editor 3 Contents 4 Interview with Frau Gutman 8 William Blake The Man & his Zeitgeist 12 Should books be censored?

14 Was God an Astronaut?

18 “The Road” 20 Why do we read survivor stories?

23 From the Archives, Radical Chemist 26 How the 9-11 plane crash changed peoples outlook on life.

28 In each of us, two natures are at war - the good and evil 30 Pride, Prejudice and Pandemics 34 The romance genre, why do we love it so much?

32 A room of one’s own or her own 34 Scribble Lockdown Reads

Published by Scribble, Shrewsbury High School 32 Town Walls, Shrewsbury, SY1 1TN

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Frau Gutman

For this edition of Scribble, co-editor Lily Harding interviewed Frau Gutman about her Zeitgeist project in school. This extra-curricular club has been running successfully for over a year and attracts a diverse membership; it has also been one of the highlights of the recent lockdowns.

Zeitgeist is defined as meaning ‘the spirit of the age’ and encompasses ideas which reveal spiritual, cultural and moral dimensions of a particular age or time period. The Zeitgeist society has enjoyed ranging over a significant number of time periods, tapping into the ideas and thought of the day. We have chosen to give this edition of ‘Scribble’ over to the concept of Zeitgeist, encouraging contributors to delve into a particular era or writer, exploring what their Zeitgeist reveals.

Q1 What is your favourite English-language book and why?

How do you choose? I love “The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides, “Bleak House”, “The Cazalet Chronicles”, “Captain Correlli’s Mandolin”. Help, this rather varied and random list could go on! I seem increasingly drawn to American women writers such as Ann Patchett, Nicole Krauss, Meg Wolitzer, Anne Tyler, Brit Bennett - but then also love the novels of Sarah Moss, Maggie O’Farrell and other British female writers. I think I like books that have a strong storyline, but leave you thinking, laughing or crying. A few years ago I discovered The Hay Festival - I tend to go with my family and parents and I create a timetable of events-so that we all get some of our favourites for children and adults - I tend to mainly choose female writers and have been lucky enough to hear wonderful writers, such as Margaret Atwood, Judith Kerr and Elif Shafak. Having said that, I am reading a William Boyd novel at the moment and I love his novels-they are so varied. I also loved Ian Mcewan’s “Atonement”, despite the fact that Bryony (me) betrays Cecilia (my daughter).

Q2 What is your favourite Foreign-language book and why?

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I think the greatest novel ever written is the “The Tin Drum” (Die Blechtrommel) by Günter Grass). It literally blows your mind. It is about a boy, Oskar, who decides to stop growing by throwing himself head first in to the cellar, as he does not want to part of the society he sees around him-he lives in Danzig (now Gdansk)and is witnessing the rise of Hitler. The drum of the title is from a shop owned by a Jewish man and he loves to visit this toy shop, until it is destroyed during Kristallnacht. This was also the time my grandfather managed to leave Berlin and saved himself from dying in Sobibor - which was the fate of the rest of his family. It is part magic realism, very funny, extremely disturbing and changes you for ever once you have read it.

There are so many unforgettable scenes in the novel, such as Oskar joining a troupe of dwarves performing to Nazi soldiers or Oskar watching a Nazi rally descend in to chaos as he bangs his drum and causes everyone to start waltzing. Grass, a deeply political writer captures the despair of living in a world, in which the Holocaust was allowed to happen. There is a scene after the war, when Germany is re-building and fast becoming an incredibly powerful country economically, in which Oskar visits a Bierkeller, where you get served a beer and an onion on a chopping board-the image is so powerful - the need to chop up an onion to be able to cry in a post-holocaust Germany, in which such horrific atrocities were allowed to happen. He was one of the first writers to deal with the theme of guit in post war Germany.

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Q3 Do you prefer to read German or French Literature?

I I do not think I can answer that - I like to read books. I have read great French books, great German books, but also books from every corner of the world, such as the Egytian author Naguib Mahfouz , the Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez or the Indian writer Arundhati Roy. That would be a fun game for Zeitgeist a literary tour of the World! I also think there can be a difference in what the purpose of the reading the book is-whether it is reading a book purely for pleasure or reading books to discuss in a university seminar or reading group. I recently read and discussed in a book group the fantastic book, “Girl, Woman, Other” and I think this book has so much to discuss and talk about - so it is a great choice for the new Sixth Form book group. I was lucky to have the most fantastic French teacher when I was at SHS - Miss Appleby - I would like to write to her now if I knew where she lived, to say thank you for both inspiring and enabling me to read a book in another language. We studied a wonderful book called “Elise ou la Vraie Vie” by Claire Etcherelli - it felt so exciting to be reading a book in another language about a young woman discovering herself whilst working in a factory in France.

I also loved studying French realist novels of the 19th century and French Feminist writers at university. However, it was whilst living in Marburg that I really fell in love with reading foreign literature. We were just given the freedom to go to any lectures and seminars taking place that semester at the university. I just went to lectures and seminars all day, every day and it is just opened my mind to so much amazing literature. Since that time I am generally drawn to literature and art from the late 19th century onwards and particularly works from the 20th Century. In my last year at Bristol I acted as the “Good Person of Sezuan” in Brecht’s incredible play, in which the central figure, which I played, has to be a woman, who disguises herself as a man in every other scene and only leaves the stage for about 30 seconds at a time to change costumes - the director and my wonderful tutor at Bristol, who helped me to fall in love with Brecht, decided we had to bring out every word for the audience-so a lot of very patient Sixth Formers from around Bristol had to endure about 4 hours of Brecht, as well as my mother who speaks no German. On the first night I remember the curtain shutting and literally collapsing to the ground with exhaustion ( it does sound very indulgently dramatic - but it is not easy to remember that much German!) The following year, when I asked if I could direct the German Society Play Dr Ken Mills, who had directed the productions for the last 20 years very kindly - and rather amazingly - said yes. My first requirement, when directing Kafka’s “The Trial” (Der Prozess) was to get the whole thing wrapped up in 2 hours. That was an unforgettable experience with a cast of about 40 students, made up of both English students studying German and German students spending a year in England and we took the play on tour to Lancaster Uni for the German, winning the award for best production at the German Drama Awards.

Q4 What role does literature play in the A Level language courses?

When you take a language at A Level you get to study a film and a book or play. For the last couple of years I have taught “The Reader” (Der Vorleser) by Bernard Schlink. However, I have changed this year to the drama “The Visit,” (Der Besuch der Alten Dame) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and I am absolutely loving and have been blown away by the Year 13’s discussions about this fantastic play.

Q5 What is on your 2021 reading list (any language)?

SO, yes there is some literature, but there is also film, art, sociology, politics, psychology, as well as mastering the language. So there is something for everyone! The best part about the A level is that you get to choose any topic you like for the Individual Research Project, which is the for the spoken part of the exam. So, if you are into literature, you can explore this here, but you can choose anything as long as it relates to the German speaking world. Chosen topics since I have been at SHS have ranged from Punk Culture in West and East Germany, female artists and their representations of womanhood, the rise of Extreme Right politics because of the immigration issues in 2015 in Germany and also post war literature called “Trüümmerliteratur,” which translates as rubble literature, literally capturing the time at the end of the Second World War when Germany lay in rubble and ruin, only a few years before the Economic Miracle of the 50’s.

Q6 If you could go back in time to any literary movement to meet the writers, which would it be?

With all the celebrations of a 100 years of Bauhaus, I think I would go back to live in this design school. Students came here to live and breathe art in the broadest sense-whether it be painting, design textiles, furniture or dance. I would like to have a part in the avant-garde Bauhaus Ballet, go to the wonderful parties get to be creative all day everyday, regardless of whether you were male or female.

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Would you rather be turned into a huge beetle and cope with the ensuing existential crisis, or take part in the doomed June Rebellion of 1832 with the knowledge that one day your death will be turned into a multi-award-winning musical?

Why do I feel like it would be the beetle? - there is a wonderful moment in Kafka’s exquisite novella, where the beetle just walks upside down across the ceiling-just because he can to get the thrill of falling down on the ground and starting again. I can not see myself as a political leader, so I guess it will have to be the beetle! I think you would be taking part in the Rebellion?

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What is the one book you think everyone should read?

Oh goodness-for children, “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, “ by Judith Kerr or “Carrie’s War” by Nina Bawden. Poetry wise it would be either “Serious Concerns” by Wendy Cope - the first book I gave to my husband or The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats as it is so achingly beautiful. I think the book that everyone should read is that first book when you think, I chose this, I want to keep reading it and I want to now read more. It does not matter what that is.

In year 7 at SHS I had the most extraordinary teacher called “Mrs Garnons-Wiliiams.” She gave us each a card to record everything we read that year. I was so sad that she only taught us for one year-but with her I went from reading children’s books to classics such as “Jane Eyre”. She was just so passionate about reading.

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What is on your reading list for this year?

I have so many books that I want to read - I have a large pile of books by my bed -I would like to read “Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, as I loved “Half of A Yellow Sun”. I also look forward to reading Fleishman is in Trouble and American Dirt. I would also like to re-read “Tender is the Night,” which came up in a Zeitgeist session, when Maddy Chilcott took us time travelling to the roaring 20’s. I have to record all the books that I read on Good Reads otherwise I forget what I have read these days and I like doing the Reading Challenge.

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I like reading the longlists of books for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and sometimes the Booker Prize. I also love Instagram, as you can get so many good recommendations, particularly from America, Germany and France. I try to buy books from Independent’s such as Booka and love the recommendations from Daunt books. However, in my Amazon basket at the moment is “A Town Called Solace” by Mary Lawson, “Rainbow Milk” by Paul Mendez and “Acts of Desperation” by Megan Nolan. Those all came from recommendations from book sellers or writers on Instagram.

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Zeitgeist Iggy takes us to Regency England

Maddy took us in costume on our first time travel adventure to the roaring 20’s and led a really fascinating discussion on the culture, politics and social issues of the 1920’s - we also thought about the parallels with living in the 20’s a 100 years on. zeitgeist; the spirit of time; the defining mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time

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Why should people come to Zeitgeist?

Because it is great fun! There are always little gems of new knowledge. Folk are amazing - hearing students and teachers talking about their passions - it plants the seed to find out more - I want t-shirts saying something naff like “blow your mind with culture, creativity and curiosity, because Miss Pardoe found this amazing wooden head sculpture from the 1920’s for our new logo. When I was at school in the Sixth form, I was just desperate to discuss ideas and books. I hate the idea that culture should be seen as something elitist or boring - I never want people to say, “I should read more -” there is no should about it, reading a book is a pleasure and whatever you read is OK. However it is also fun to try and go out of your comfort zone - that is what is so good about a group like Zeitgeist - you get ideas from others.

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William Blake The Man and his Zeitgeist

By Mr Robin Aldridge

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For a guest Zeitgeist session in the Autumn term, Head of English, Mr Aldridge, delivered a talk on the poet William Blake and his awkward relationship with the world in which he lived and the values it held that Blake so objected to.

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illiam Blake was an English poet and illustrator who lived between 1757 and 1827; he was voted as the 38th greatest Briton of all time in the 2002 ‘Greatest ever Britons poll’ and has developed a cult following since his death. Blake’s works are full of mysticism and visions, maybe because he was such a dreamer and Romantic, but I think also because he was so at odds with the world he found himself living in.

Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his unique and personal views, but held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work – a man out of his time! It is this sense of not belonging to the late c.18th and early c.19th world that makes him a true example of a literary figure who lived his Zeitgeist in a public way – he found huge fault with his contemporary world and his work was often born out of the philosophical and philanthropic pain he felt so sharply as he looked upon many facets of society, including relatively modern topics as sexual identity and liberation and racial inequality.

collection for any Blake newbie, as it is an entirely accessible collection of poetry which ranges across a wide range of topics and ideas. What is central to the collection is the structure of juxtaposition, allowing Blake to present and question his ideas alongside the life he viewed in eighteenth century London.

Half of the collection is ‘The Songs of Innocence’ which has an unfaltering tone of positivity, celebration and joy – life as it should be; the second half is ‘The Songs of Experience’ which, by contrast, voices Blake’s pain and wonder at the priorities he sees in his modern world, where ‘experience’ - knowledge, learning, self-conscious thought – has replaced the innocence, and, in his view, destroyed the fundamentals of the human condition and of human identity.

A great example of this comes in the pair of poems ‘The Lamb’ and ‘The Tyger’. In the former, Blake celebrates the existence of a lamb, extolling its simple life and virtues. The poem is very child-like and lacks the artful complexity of its partner poem in experience, but has a very clear message: we are all God’s creations and should not have the arrogance to perceive that we are in any way powerful or self-governing.

The image of the lamb with ‘clothing of delight / softest clothing, woolly, bright’ is underpinned with the lamb’s ‘tender voice / making all the vales rejoice’, but is arguably an image used as a means of asking questions about the whole of creation. Blake repeats ‘little lamb who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?’, musing on how life is created on earth; he concludes, ‘he is called by the name / For He calls himself a Lamb’ asserting that God is the only creator of life and that mankind, created in Imago Dei, are all representations of God’s benevolence and all-encompassing love. For Blake, however, this rural idyll was quickly and significantly being shattered by the Industrial Revolution, factories springing up overnight, creating slums, poverty, a working class and extreme wealth and privilege in double-quick time. Blake explores this in the poem ‘The Tyger’, a masterclass in extended metaphor, but also the voice to the deeply unsettling thoughts he had whilst the world around him changed irrevocably. Centrally, it asks a question about creation: how can we understand a God who is capable of creating the innocence of the lamb and the fury of the tiger? However, it is far more complex than that, because at the same time Blake is suggesting an equivalence between divine creation and mankind’s pursuit of manufacture and power of the creative process. The poem is redolent with industrial imagery – ‘burning bright’, ‘what the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil?’, pointing towards Blake’s disquietude with the industrial processes he witnessed driving the country, at

William Blake was a man of deep faith and religious belief, but who lived in a world which couldn’t match what he believed. He lived through a significant amount of social and cultural upheaval, primarily the Industrial revolution in England (1750-1850), The Enlightenment movement of. C17th and c.18th Europe which sought to de-mystify the human condition by applying fashionable disciplines of Science, logic and rationality, Revolution and violence in Europe – principally the French revolution of 1789-1799, but also the rise and pursuit of the British Empire under King George III (1760-1820) as far afield as the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa. Blake’s works crave a return to a more innocent and wholesome life, where children could be children, where love was the dominant motivating force behind life, and where mankind could live with humility and honesty – a return to the concept of ‘Albion’ which punctuates so many of his poems and illustrations. Blake was living in an England he despised, and his Zeitgeist encouraged him to look back into the past for the blueprints to re-generate and re-align modern life to something he could support; of course, in his lifetime, this was a wholly futile pursuit.

For me, Blake’s pain, suffering and philosophical disquiet can be summarised by five poems, four of which appear in his collection ‘The Songs of Innocence and Experience’, published in 1794. I wholeheartedly recommend this

The Ancient of Days is a design by William Blake, originally published as the frontispiece to the 1794 work Europe a Prophecy.

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and more powerful than other Empire nations, including France, Spain and Holland. In ‘London’, Blake walks round the capital city at night, and is largely disgusted by what he sees and hears, representative not of a nation of great power and wealth, but a nation that is diseased and corrupt. In this poem, the moral ruin of the country is firmly placed with two powerful institutions – the monarchy and the church.

Blake points to ‘how the chimney sweeper’s cry / every blackening church appals’, suggestive of the church’s lack of moral care towards the poor of London, in particular the orphans who so often were sold as chimney sweeps, whilst building churches based on huge ostentation and bling; this idea is also explored in the two poems entitled Holy Thursday, where Blake vehemently criticises the immorality of celebrating the giving of alms by the Church once a year, by association suggesting the church’s absence for the remaining 364 days in the calendar. Back to ‘London’, however, and the monarchy is presented as equally immoral, in the image ‘the hapless soldier’s sigh runs in blood down palace walls’; the price of Empire then, according to Blake, is the blood he perceives as being on the hands of the King – the deaths of all those soldiers and sailors who died in pursuit and defence of the British Empire. The element of Zeitgeist that pervades this poem is rich for me – Blake, a proud and patriotic Englishman just simply cannot accept the dereliction of responsibility he sees in the nation’s foundation institutions; his is an Empire he cannot morally celebrate along with the rest of the nation.

the expense of the idyllic, pastoral Albion he prized so much. The poem concludes with a deeply philosophical, but ultimately unsettling, question – ‘Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’. Blake’s Zeitgeist is summarised in this pair of lines for me – if God is the creator of everything, then how can this omnibenevolent being create such beauty and joy, and at the same time create pain, suffering, destruction and a being designed exclusively to prey and maim?

Two further poems in the collection stand out to me as Blake questioning and reconsidering the world in which he lived – the presentation of Empire in ‘London’ and an extension of this when he tackles the slave trade in ‘Little Black Boy’. In the late c.18th, the British pursuit of Empire was all-consuming under King George III who used the might of his army and navy to travel across the world and claim lands for his Empire, in a bid to make his Empire larger

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Maybe the poem which places Blake at greatest odds with his time is ‘The Little Black Boy’, a poem which is so forward-thinking and c.21st relevant that it becomes striking in its simplicity of message. The poem revolves around two children in conversation – one white and one black – but children who symbolise White Empire and the enslaved natives of Empire nations. The critic David Punter points out that ‘while all the early parts of the poem might seem to suggest that the black boy acts upon his presumed subservience to white ideals, the conclusion magnificently undercuts that, suggesting that the black boy has his place in the grand scheme of things’ and actually is morally superior to his white peer. The poem opens in the voice of the black child, asserting that ‘My mother bore me in the southern wild…I am

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black as if bereaved of light’ and although this is a poem Blake located in the Book of Innocence, the black boy is given significant wisdom by the poet. The child goes on to state ‘we are put on earth a little space / that we may learn to bear the beams of love’, arguing essentially that mankind’s sole duty it to learn to love and be loved by God, and that they will be rewarded: ‘when our souls have learned the heat to bear, / the cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice’. The black child is used a cipher for all of those enslaved by the white man, but his voice is one of hope for racial equality and social justice, at a time when these concepts were not even a consideration in Blake’s world – anti-slavery debates were very new in c.18th England and once again Blake finds his thinking disconnected from popular thought. The black boy reaches the conclusion that ‘when I from black and he from white cloud free…I’ll shade him from the heat, til he can bear / to lean in joy…’, positioning himself in the role of teacher and support for the white child to become aware of the errors of his colonial privilege, in a time when white and black ‘clouds’ have become irrelevant. Fast-forward to 2021 and the world in which we live, and I think Blake would be appalled that the black boy is still waiting for his white counterpart to truly appreciate just how unjust racism is and to act upon this knowledge for the good of humanity.

The final poem worth mentioning is ‘Jerusalem’, which has become England’s unofficial national anthem and is often sung at national events. The is Blake’s ‘therapy’ poem in which he tries to offer himself solutions to what he finds so offensive and problematic about his own lifetime. In the middle of the poem he muses, ‘was Jerusalem builded here / among these dark Satanic mills?’, echoing his inability to balance what he sees with what he believes (in The Lamb and The Tyger), but then progresses to a rallying call to his followers, both in his lifetime and in the future. The imagery of conflict in the third stanza is obvious – ‘bring me my bow…/bring me my arrows…/bring me my spear…bring me my chariot of fire’ and here Blake is appealing to all writers, thinkers, academics, visionaries and prophets that will follow him across the centuries – use your weapons (words) to work towards a better world and allow people to see what needs to be seen. The final stanza is a powerful one, and effectively Blake’s own mantra; ‘I will not cease from mental fight, / Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, / Till we have built Jerusalem / In England’s green and pleasant land’. Far from giving up on his country, Blake wants to rebuild it with all of the priorities re-aligned and encourages everyone that follows him to continue in this fight.

Zeitgeist’s concept of embodying the spirit of the age is alive and well in all of Blake’s works; I firmly believe that very little of what he wrote would have not been possible should he have been at peace with his times.

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Image: St. Do

Should books be censored?

By Clara Johnson

What better to talk about other than one of the most dogmatic, ambivalent inscrutable topics of the Century?

Starting off with the big scary word at the top of the page: censorship. To censor something is 'The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.' according to the Oxford Dictionary. To think that censorship has been around since 213 BCE, when the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang buried 460 scholars for the power of his kingdom alive IS kind of scary.

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ominic and the Albigenses, Pedro Berruguete

For books on the other hand, censorship has undoubtedly been lurking around ever so quietly in the dark alley ways of publishing. Whether it be for the censorship of new ideas that challenge religious thought, e.g. Charles Darwin's Origins of Species (published in 1859) or the infamous reign of Nazi Germany, where burning books was 'cleansing' for literature and was done through public festivals to celebrate the bonfires, it is hard to deny its ever-lasting impact. In the modern world, we are witnessing the improvement of accepting different opinions... we hope!

As for the year 2020, it has proven to be one for the history books with the BLM movement, LGBTQ+ rights campaign and people being brought together through the pandemic. Indeed, reading has also been something of which many of us had finally found the time for. So what does this mean for censorship? Does it still occur today?

The simple answer is unfortunately, yes. Censorship although on a smaller scale, still happens today. For instance, the beloved Harry Potter Series by J.K Rowling, has been seen as a genuine threat to devoted religious groups who are opposed to 'black magic'.

The article "A surprising list of recently banned books" by Matt Blake states that in September 2019 St Edward Catholic School in Nashville, US, banished this book from their library due to discomfort of magic. Emails were sent to the parents as the school which depicted it as 'a clever deception'.

I will leave it up to you to decide if you think it is Rowling's darkest desire to convert the youth into wizards and witches (personally, I think we need more of them). Nevertheless it beckons the question of whether we censor what people read?

Maybe we should if it is a threat to children. For example, we probably shouldn't let them read 50 Shades of Grey by E. L. James, or American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

From a personal experience maybe I should've left Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler on the shelf when I was 10 years old...

But back to the burdening question: should books be censored? Should avid readers choose from a wide selection of books that challenge society's normality? Or let others pick and choose for you, narrowing your quest for discovery short?

In order to challenge this superfluous idea of censorship, I strongly advise you to read anything and everything. You should never feel the need to suppress the exploration of new ideas or authors, you should never avoid a book due to its controversial topic; give every opportunity to discovering through literature no matter what anybody tells you.

Feel free to take that beyond the realm of books too!

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Was God an Astronaut?

By Holly Lovett

“It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it”.

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his is the opening of Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? first published in 1969 which explores an array of thought-provoking concepts involving extra-terrestrial life.

On the whole, the text provides an intense journey of theories, strongly brought to life by Daniken, that suggest it is important to question everything. One of the main concepts that is woven through this piece is the idea that aliens from another planet may have visited Earth in the past, and the humans present, resulted in labelling them as ‘Gods’. The retelling of these visits were then passed down through the centuries to such an extent that they became branded as myths, stories and legends. Whilst reading it is important to keep in mind the year of publication,

1969, as it was in this same year that humans succeeded in their mission to the moon. In society, there was a shift in peoples opinions relating to religion and science, many people either loved the developments in the world or despised them all together. There was lots of tension in society at this time, particularly with the US Civil Rights movement and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was debated that the ‘Space Race’ was wasting natural resources. But nevertheless, approximately 600million people watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on television and forgot their differences for a moment, joining together to experience this huge symbol of human achievement. It could be derived from Daniken’s theories that the

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moon landing plays a big part in his own personal beliefs, and when reading this book, it is clear that the event created a hinge in civilisation that allowed people to think bigger than ever before. This concept is illustrated perfectly by Daniken’s comment that “even imagination needs something to start it off”. We are given an insight into many interesting points with the most striking one for me personally being “if our way of thinking worked the other way round, it would mean that intelligences on another planet took their living conditions as a criterion”. Daniken then segues into a wider debate as to whether planet earth has already been visited by extra-terrestrials through a description of different architecture, cave paintings and historical buildings.

The author appears to be in awe of technological advances.

He claims that “nothing is incredible any longer. The word ‘impossible’ should have become literally impossible for the modern scientist” and with this determined attitude he moves onto a series of ideas as to why we should consider human potential to explore space further. He discusses his theory that “astronauts from distant planets visited the earth thousands of years ago” and poses the concept that “since the question of space travel did not arise a hundred years ago, our fathers and grandfathers could not reasonably have had thoughts about whether our ancestors had visits from the universe”. There may be many different interpretations of what the moon landing means for different people. Daniken believes that now nothing is preposterous, and many people viewed this movement into the ‘space age’ as being exciting, however there are people who argue that it is pointless to study extraterrestrial possibilities and human efforts should be focused on our own planet. To this, Daniken questions “can we still afford to close our eyes and stop up our ears because new ideas are supposed to be heretical and absurd? After all, the idea of a landing on the moon was absurd fifty years ago”.

He follows on from this by stating that “as soon as we look into the past with our present-day gaze and use the fantasy of our technical age to fill the gaps in it, the veils that shroud the darkness begin to lift” and it can be inferred that he is suggesting the advances in technology, although being used to discover space, may also aid us with a wider knowledge of the origins and occurrences happening here on Earth.

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As an author, Daniken is unapologetic, making bold statements and introducing complex proposals.

and the author moves onto a series of reasoning as to why this idea is somewhat believable. He explains how “finds in Egyptian tombs provide example after example of the preparation of embalmed corpses for corporeal return” and that “drawings and sagas actually indicated that the ‘gods’ promised to return from the stars in order to awaken wellpreserved bodies to a new life”. This powerfully composed theory links together the idea that Gods may be highly intelligent astronauts from other planets. It is interesting in its proposition however

Petroglyphs from Val Camonica, Italy. Ancient astronaut proponents believe these pictures resemble modern astronauts.

Occasionally he pushes the boundaries of the readers dependence, it becomes easy to challenge his judgement. It is in the seventh chapter where Daniken delves into ancient Egypt more deeply, he attempts to present the reader with a viewpoint that many ancient activities were influenced by the society’s knowledge of space. Beginning with a discussion on the development of the Pyramids in Egypt, Daniken also comments on the theories of Egyptian gods. He claims that “it is well-known that ancient Egyptians practiced a solar religion” and by having a distinguished belief such as this unites a community and is a reason behind beliefs and tradition being passed down through generations. It is commented on by the author that “Mummies… stare at us from the remote past as if they held some magical secret” and this way of interpreting such a unique and aged practice is thought-provoking for readers. A possible view is constructed of a Pharaoh which describes that “the gods promised to return and wake me up (or doctors in the distant future will discover a way to restore me to life again)”. And, after considering the study carried out and published in 1965 by physician and astronomer Robert. C. W., Daniken writes on the scientific research from the biologists of the University of Oklahoma. It was confirmed that the skin cells of the Egyptian Princess Mene were capable of living “and Princess Mene has been dead for several thousand years”.

This fascinating take on a possibility that humans may be able to be brought back to life is stimulating,

the way that the opinions are clustered together makes it appear as though it is simply a collection of thoughts, rather than a convincing hypothesis.

This may be what Daniken set out to achieve as he comments regularly that it is important to question everything. It is important to note here that we are given an interesting insight into a particular era of conspiracist white society, Daniken's ideas may be controversial as he appears convinced that indigenous people were incapable of such knowledge and achievement. From this he suggests that praise should be directed at extra terrestrial beings. The

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quote “but the questions are there, and questions, thank heavens, have the impertinent quality of hovering in the air until they are answered” encapsulates this perfectly.

In order for the Apollo 11 mission to succeed there was a host of technological advances required involving innovations in space-age materials such as computers and rockets. The 1960s brought a new era of technology with its historic developments. Daniken debates that “today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the Pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical

Daniken frequently attempts to acknowledge why his points may be controversial but is quick to cover himself up with reasoning and interpretation. His opinion on research is outlined through the remark that “without this study of the future, we should probably have no chance of unravelling our past”.

Daniken consults with the legend that surrounds Easter Island, a location famous for its huge monoliths carved into the shape of human heads. After a discussion over the theories as to how the material for these structures may have been transported across the land and into position, Daniken confers that the islands natives title their home as “land of the bird men”. It is claimed that “an orally transmitted legend tells us that flying men landed and lit fires in ancient times” but this is a questionable idea as even though the author attempts to make some truth of the legend, his confident affirmation that “the legend is confirmed by sculptures of flying creatures with big staring eyes” we become suspicious of his reliability. Many would argue that this assumption has little grounds to make it seem trustworthy and this puts the author in a compromising position as we begin to doubt whether his cluster of unique theories are legitimate and worth pondering over.

On the whole, this controversial text has some incredibly enthralling topics that can set the brain on a spiral of possible theories. Yet it is Daniken’s casual tone and sweeping statements that make us view his debates as occasionally problematic. As Daniken suggests himself, “the forest of question marks grows”.

resources of every continent were at his disposal”. This forces a question as to whether Daniken is really trustworthy as a writer.

He is confident that humans cannot recreate such complex building but is he looking at all of the reasons as to why humans would not want to build such vast structures that may be seen as largely impractical for the modern-day world?

Details of the carved lid of the tomb of K’inich Janaab Pakal I in the Temple of the Inscriptions

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‘The Road’ How Cormac McCarthy challenges anthropocentrism and depicts the terrifying world our generation could end up inhabiting.

by Dani Hales

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e believe that ‘human life is the central fact of the planet’ – we are an anthropocentric species.

I view ‘The Road’ as a trailblazer of 21st century ecological writing. It contradicts these stereotypical beliefs of writers being unable to fathom the sheer danger and unpredictability our planet holds and the fact that our race is exacerbating this sense of impermanence. McCarthy is eloquent in his raw style of writing, revealing the reliefs and downfalls of two characters with generational differences fighting to survive. He highlights in this novel that he is siding with ‘deep ecology’, and that the earth in all its power refuses to protect

even the most innocent children from peril.

In this dystopian world it could be argued that McCarthy is pointing the finger at humans and hence projecting an image of our dismal future, that in current times we are at the point of spiralling into, as we continue to worsen the disequilibrium of anthropogenically induced climate change.

McCarthy’s use of anonymity in the way in which he characterises his protagonists struck me as a particularly significant form of symbolising subordination. By taking the identity away from such pivotal characters in this text it allows a process of reader to character detachment to take place, take the forefront of the reader’s 18

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be suggesting are blocking the human race from saving the planet. Not only are we subordinate to the planet, but so are our societal issues, as the environmental problems we face are far more dangerous and significant; McCarthy chooses to victimise a broken son and father to echo these ideas. The language displayed throughout the narrative is quite basic and almost primal, offering an emphasis on the visual description McCarthy is trying to offer. The burning of humans in the middle of the novel creates grotesque imagery as ‘the burning snakes twisted horribly and some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses’. The imagery, toying alongside the metaphor of humans being snakes gives a sense of the man and boy experiencing hell on Earth, and the entire setting of The Road is actually one of purgatory, an eternal punishment for what our race has done to the planet. This symbolism would tie in well with McCarthy’s conversion to Catholicism and the idea that ultimately, the Earth is superior, and without it, we wouldn’t exist. In contemporary society, it’s evident that due to the lack of action taking place and the flakiness of certain globally influential nations, climate change and the future of not just our race, but our planet, is undermined and almost patronised. It is therefore only acceptable to agree with the criticism that ‘The Road may not be a climate change novel, but it is a novel that owes much of its cultural impact to climate change, at least to the anxieties that have accompanied it’.

Another angle that this idea could be analysed is that the man and the boy could be acting as microcosms for the peril that is occurring in third world countries today. This could mean therefore, that this novel is not demonstrating a dystopian image of our planet but is simply a construct of what inhabitants of third world countries today view the Western World doing to their livelihoods. It is with this then, that McCarthy is arguing that our race cannot concentrate on the ways in which we are ruining our planet, as our anthropocentric nature means we focus on human vs human destruction within our societies; humankind is subordinate to the planet, but we are too selfish to realise this currently.

overall thoughts on The Road. Alongside this, unidentifiable protagonists amplify the power and superiority of the burning Earth. It is perfectly encapsulated by Monbiot’s criticism of it being ‘the most important environmental book ever written…

It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world’. This transformation of a reader’s outlook on the world is fairly instantaneous, as McCarthy immediately pursues the harrowing and broken arguments the man has with himself when facing danger. The rhetorical questions ‘Can you do it? When the time comes? Can you?’ relating to whether one day he will have the strength to kill his son for the sake of safety emphasises the overpowering and solemn nature of the postapocalyptic world they live in. This, alongside McCarthy’s juxtaposition of developing rounded characters whilst simultaneously maintaining their flatness through lack of identity, solidifies this idea of disorientation and true despair expressed by the man and his boy as they hold no sense of direction on their destroyed Earth. McCarthy therefore proves that he actually challenges the conflict that Kerridge questions: ‘why does the realist novel have such difficulty in involving itself with environmental issues?’. Furthermore, keeping dialogue simple and minimal as well as giving his characters a lack of identity provides a disjointed character arc that, for readers, can appear quite confusing.

McCarthy may have employed this difficulty of reading to align readers on a similar level to the characters, and by doing this would give readers the opportunity to acknowledge how they would cope in this dystopian situation, and upon meeting another person, whether they would be selfless or adopt the attitude of ‘I wouldn’t have given you anything’, as the man does later on in the novel.

A pastoralist novel has ‘one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the non-human’ and in my opinion, McCarthy perfects this balance in The Road. His raw style of writing, signified by his unapologetically vivid depictions of the man and boy talking on how to commit suicide, reveals contemporary societal insecurities that he could

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Why do we read survivor stories?

by Aaina Jassell

For this article I will be focusing on a novel which I read recently called “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Heather Morris. It follows the true story of a Slovakian Jew named Lale Sokolov during 1942 in the Holocaust which took over Eastern Europe. It shows his tale of finding love during arguably one of the darkest times in history as well as how he managed to survive these atrocities.

Whilst reading this novel I was struck by three main things.

1.

I now know a lot more about the Holocaust than I ever learnt in history at school.

2.

My emotions went all over the place and during some moments I truly did forget this was a survivor’s story, I felt for sure that Lale would be caught and killed.

3.

I realised truly how lucky I am to not have had to go through something like that.

Survivor stories are not just novels which give us entertainment, they have a deeper meaning, a darker meaning. These stories feed our souls; they allow us to go back in time to a place of persecution (which realistically wasn’t that long ago in this instance). Reading a survivor story can spread the truth about what happened. This was their life and unlike some of the history books they have nothing to gain by covering up information. They are the truth.

The idea that this novel is an insight into history, and an opportunity for learning, shows a lot. I had no idea that in the camps the Nazi’s had put in place, the prisoners had different jobs. The prisoners were used to build the camp, to go through all the clothes and belongings of other prisoners and to tattoo the number onto the prisoner’s arms. I also had no idea that people from the surrounding areas came into the camp willingly every day to help build or sort through belongings and at the end of the day they could return home, like this was just a normal job. This raises the question of did these civilians know what they were doing? Did they know the purpose of their work? As well as the civilians and the prisoners, we get an insight into the lives of the Nazi’s. In this particular novel we become very familiar with a SS soldier called Baretski. We learn that he is deathly afraid of his boss, much like how the prisoners were afraid of him, and that he has the

power to kill Lale anytime. Baretski throughout gives Lale advice on how to stay alive and even conducts favours for Lale, such as getting Gita, Lale’s love, a job at the administration building so that she can stay warm. This shows us how these SS soldiers were just young men with little education who had lost their way. Even though we are shown how Baretski can be kind we are often reminded of his lack of empathy and his love for power by him frequently shooting prisoners and laughing at troubling sights. Lale says that he hopes Baretski won’t survive again reminding

us of the demonised SS soldiers. From this we can learn that most of the time these SS soldiers weren’t trained and therefore they were often very volition with their weapons and actions.

Before reading this over I genuinely thought that the SS were some machine military solders who just killed everyone in their wake however this most certainly was not true. These SS soldiers casually walked around the camp and looked over the prisoners, the majority of them were young and untrained and they are nothing like machines. Though they did kill a massive amount

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of people it was not in a uniformed style like I once thought. There is a harrowing moment in the novel where a couple of prisoners are outside going to the toilet at night when a few SS soldiers who happened to be walking past just shoot at these two men out of nowhere and walk off laughing. This moment was key for me in realising although the SS soldiers were just young, uneducated men, they had a massive amount of power and control over these unarmed prisoners.

During this novel my emotions truly went off on a rollercoaster. For the majority, I was devastated and shocked with the whole camp and the events however there are little moments in which I felt happiness and a sense of unity which I never would have thought would have a place in a book like this. The sense of time was so vague that you could never tell how long had past until Lale casually mentioned it as a passing thought. I felt just how I imagine the prisoners would have felt, capturing every moment in case it would be their last, finding happiness in one of the most dreadful places and never knowing how long you had been stuck in this place. I was in absolute awe of how these characters were in the worst place in the worst time yet they still managed to live, not just be alive but truly live. They had friends which became family, there was community and a sense of togetherness and even romance! These people had been brought together from all over Eastern Europe, speaking all different tongues yet they managed to live their lives and celebrate all the small things. Every survivor is brave and an inspiration to us all as I am pretty sure if I was in a situation like the one they faced I would not be the one spreading hope, I would most certainly being the one giving up.

These stories remind us of how lucky we truly are that we do not face these problems, that these events to not haunt us. If you ever feel the need to remind yourself of how lucky you are then a survivor story is the novel for you. Whilst reading this I was reminded that although it hasn’t even been 80 years since this happened on such a huge scale, the world has not changed as much how we would have liked. This specific holocaust was an enormous shock to the entire world, that someone could treat other human beings this bad and get away with it for so long and no one knew. I would love to believe that we have moved on and put events such as these in the past however that is not the truth. Currently while we are all at home doing online school or online work in China the Uighur Muslims are being forced into concentration camps much like the ones from this book in terrible conditions filled with famine, disease, death and worse. I, like all of you, am so lucky that I did not have to go through the 1940 Holocaust but, as well, I am lucky I am not going through a holocaust now in 2021. I fear that we will have many more survivor stories to read in our future.

This is why we read survivor stories, not just for education but to understand the atrocities which men before us have committed on a deeper level and to avoid them. It seems we as a race have not completely learnt this lesson but, I am hopeful that one day we will have no need for survivor stories and that we will finally be at peace. This is a very hopeful wish but until it becomes true, we should all keep reading the stories of these strong and brave survivors.

From the Radical Archives Chemist

By Alex Hale

Shrewsbury High School’s Archives contain an extensive collection of photographs, documents and artefacts offering a wealth of history about our School. As proud stewards of such rich history since 1885, Scribble publishes poems, stories and history from this period to the present date. In this edition of Scribble we go back in time and look who resided at Tower Place, 28 Town Walls.

T

he most famous scientific son of Shrewsbury is undoubtedly Charles Darwin, known for his work on the theory of evolution and rightly recognised as one of the greatest scientists of all time.

Another Scientist born in Shrewsbury just over 30 years after Darwin, went on to make a fundamental scientific discovery that not only explains how many chemical reactions work, but also has implications in human health. The contrast between these two scientific pioneers could not be more stark; very few people have heard of Thomas Porter Blunt.

Thomas Porter Blunt (1842-1929) was a pharmaceutical chemist, public analyst for Shropshire, Montgomery and Merioneth, and was responsible for the botanical collection at Shropshire Museum. He lived at 28 Town Walls from at least 1881 until his death in 1929.

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Thomas Blunt (By kind permission of Jeanette Jerome).

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The Blunt’s Chemist shop in Shrewsbury (By permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge)

It is likely that his father Thomas Blunt (18031874) also lived at this address. T. P. Blunt ran a pharmacy at 23 Wyle Cop which had been run by his father and grandfather before him, also well-respected chemists. Thomas Blunt supplied distilled water and laboratory equipment to the Darwin family when they lived at the Mount, Shrewsbury.

Letters from the Darwin Correspondence Project at the University of Cambridge reveal that Thomas Blunt continued to correspond with Charles Darwin even after Darwin had left Shropshire and was living at Down in Kent. In December 1864 T. P. Blunt took a first-class degree in natural sciences at the University of Oxford and Charles Darwin wrote to Thomas Blunt in 1867 congratulating him on his son’s degree:

In 1870 he started a collaboration with Arthur Downes, another Shropshire native, studying the effect of light on various chemical substances as well as bacteria. Blunt and Downes discovered that sunlight could be used to kill bacteria, but the effects differed depending on what filters the light passed through first. These findings were published in 1877. Blunt and Downes proposed that each molecule splits into two equal parts, or ‘radicles’ as they called them.

Another letter by Emma Darwin (Charles Darwin’s wife) refers to Thomas Blunt’s pharmacy as the “best chemist in the world”.

“I most sincerely congratulate you on the success of your son in his scientific studies.

Science runs in your blood.”

Thomas Porter Blunt sent three of his youngest children to the High School. Mildred Frances Blunt started on May 5th 1885 aged 15. This made her, along with the other 30 senior girls on that day, one of the very first High School pupils.

Her younger sister Ethel Marion Blunt started at the High School a week later with the other 18 juniors, and their younger brother Hubert joined kindergarten in 1886. Records of the three Blunt children that came to the High School can be found in the school’s admissions books. Ethel’s

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Above: Ethel Marion Blunts signature found on Miss Cannings’s Commemorative Manuscript dated 1893

signature has also been identified on a manuscript from 1893 which commemorated the headship of Miss Cannings, the High School’s first headmistress. Marion left the High School in December 1885 to work for the Post Office. Ethel left in 1895 aged 17 and would eventually emigrate to Canada. Ethel’s granddaughter, Jeanette Jerome, who lives in Canada has conducted an huge amount of research into the Blunt family, their time at Town Walls and their scientific discoveries at Wyle Cop. T. P. Blunt seems to have been a popular neighbour as the school magazines have revealed that he regularly judged the school’s annual Bulb Show and Flower Show and gave talks on botany.

The school logbook, which kept a record of important events throughout the school year, has an entry on February 8th 1929 which reads:

“Mr T. P. Blunt died. He had been a great friend of the school and was especially interested in the botanical work and at one time gave a little coaching. He regularly judged the flowers and bulbs at the Bulb Show and the wildflowers at the Flower Show and gave interesting talks on flowers and produced lists on growing them which we much appreciated. His kind and courteous personality made him many friends on the staff as elsewhere.”

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Above: Evidence of Mildred Frances Blunt attending SHS in 1885.

Below: Thomas’ daughter Ethel Marion Blunt who lived at Tower Place and started Shrewsbury High School in 1885

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How the 9-11 plane crash changed people’s outlook on life

By Madeleine Anderson

I don’t think I know one person who hasn’t heard of the 9-11 plane crash. This just proves how shocking and life changing the catastrophe was. On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and they intentionally flew two jet airliners into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. They hit between floors 93 and 99 of the North Tower. Of the 2,977 victims killed in the crash, 412 were emergency workers, this included 343 fire-fighters. Minutes after the crash the atmosphere was awful, family members were jumping off buildings, children were trapped in their rooms and the building was falling apart in the immense flames.

I’m sure many of you have heard the despairing phone calls the victims left for their loved ones and realised how lucky you are to be alive and have your family beside you, and for a lot of people (including me), these phone calls and messages have changed their view on life and realised how precious life is. Many people were getting ready for the day and leaving for work forgetting to say ‘I love you’ to their parents or partner but in this busy, modern day society we all work at a very fast pace and just expect that we will live another day.

A great example of heroism is Welles Crowther’s story: Just a few minutes after United Airlines flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center, Welles called his mother calmly and left a voice-mail saying “Mom, this is Welles. I want you to know that I’m ok.” Crowther was an equities trader at Sandler 0’neil and Partners on the 104th floor. After making the voice-mail, he made a move on helping people as he was a volunteer fire-fighter in his teens and to the 9-11 survivors, he was known as the ‘man in the red bandanna’.

Via mic: “Amid the smoke, chaos and debris, Crowther helped injured and disoriented office workers to safety, risking his own life in the process. Though they couldn’t see much through the haze, those he saved recalled a tall figure wearing a red bandanna to shield his lungs and mouth.”

“He had come down to the 78th-floor sky lobby, an alcove in the building with express elevators meant to speed up trips to the ground floor. In what’s been described as a “strong, authoritative voice,” Crowther directed survivors to the stairway and encouraged them to help others while he carried an injured woman on his back. After bringing her 15 floors down to safety, he made his way back up to help others.”

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“Everyone who can stand, stand now,” Crowther told survivors while directing them to a stairway exit. “If you can help others, do so.”

“He’s definitely my guardian angel - no ifs, ands or buts - because without him, we would be sitting there, waiting until the building came down,” survivor Ling Young told CNN. Crowther is credited with saving at least a dozen people that day.

For myself and many readers, Crowther’s selflessness has inspired us to prove that in those frightful moments even though you want to escape and put yourself first, helping people is such an influential act that inspires millions to this day as we are very focused on ourselves and don’t help people as much as we need to.

Another example of heroism is Jason Thomas and Dave Karnes, two former US marines: Thomas was dropping off his daughter to her mother in Long Island when he heard about the crash. He had his marine uniform in the back of his car and put it on straight away and drove towards the crash. He said “Someone needed help. It didn’t matter who. I didn’t even have a plan. But I have all this training as a Marine, and all I could think was, ‘my city is in need.” Around the same time, Dave Karnes was working in his office watching the attack unfold. He drove towards the crash too. Once both marines arrived at the crash, the atmosphere was gloomy and dark, it was covered in debris and ash. They began searching for survivors shouting in the atmosphere “If you can hear us, yell or tap!”. Two officers, William Jimeno and John McLoughlin were alive but seriously injured, trapped 20 feet below the surface. It took the marines 3 hours to dig for Jimeno, and another 8 to reach McLoughlin.

These two examples prove how important teamwork is and that by using your work you learnt a few years ago is still helpful and can change people’s lives!

A different example of how the 9-11 plane crash has changed people’s outlook on life is about a woman named Sybil Ramsaren and a man named Hiram Gonzalez: Every year, Ramsaren comes to the memorial to honour her daughter named Sarah Khan, who died in the World Trade Center at the age of just 32. Ramsaren said “It was just terrible”,“it was just like yesterday.” Although the city has moved on from the attack, some people have been so affected by it that it is impossible to move on and they feel stuck in time.

This is the same feeling that Hiram Gonzalez felt as he lost his sister who was working on the 98th floor of the South Tower that day. He said, “Every time this day comes by, it’s unexplainable, the feeling of how much I miss her.” He said, fighting back tears. “I never had the chance to hug or talk to her.”

I hope this article and these stories have made you think twice about your family and how fortunate you are to have them right beside you. If you have the time and chance to help someone, do it because in someone’s eyes you are their hero.

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‘In each of us, two natures are at war- the good and the evil’.

By Willow Dowd

T

he Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a novella written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was a work well ahead of its time, reflecting the zeitgeist of the Victorian era.

The 19th century for Britain was a period of great adjustment. There was an influx of people moving from the countryside to the cities looking for work, which led to mass overcrowding. This sudden increase in the numbers of the working classes caused discomfort for the upper classes. It led to class divisions in cities for example the West and East End of London. In Victorian Literature the theme of a criminal underworld was common, take for example, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. The Upper classes were the intended audience and the lower class were the subjects of these stories. This

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created a further divide as those at the lower end of society were by association perceived as criminals.

Stevenson opposed this division between the rich and poor in society and in Jekyll and Hyde he explored the duality of both an ‘upper class’ person and a ‘lower class’ person combined in one body.

The respectable, wealthy and intelligent Dr Jekyll and an evil, murderous Mr Hyde. Stevenson shone a light on an outwardly pious Victorian society, where desires and feelings were suppressed and through his use of setting in this novella he depicts the tough reality of Victorian London. In the first chapter the street that Enfield and Utterson walk down shows the juxtaposition of living conditions: ‘With its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.’ Quickly contrasted with: ‘A certain sinister block of building thrust forward… in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence.’ This mirrors the strange reality of the respectable and disreputable existing in close proximity.

This way that Stevenson describes London foreshadows the duality of his main character. In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species.

Many people saw the introduction of ‘evolution’ as an attack on their religious beliefs because it questioned the words of the Bible. Darwin’s main theory was that humans had evolved from primitive forms. In Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson describes Mr Hyde as an ‘ape-like creature’. He is drawing on Darwin’s theories to reveal a primitive nature inside us all. By linking to The Origin of Species perhaps Stevenson was questioning religious beliefs in order to affect his readers.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to some readers might just be seen as a classic detective story. The novella includes everything a mystery should, a big question - who is Mr Hyde? A detective like

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figure, Mr Utterson (‘If he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek’) and plenty of suspense. However, it did not receive acclamation because of this, but because of Stevenson’s exploration of psychology, thus causing a huge stir, selling over 40’000 copies within six months of publication.

Stevenson’s work closely resembles the later work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud split the human mind into three basic sections, the Id, Ego and Superego. The Id controls humans’ basic instincts, needs and desires such as hunger or sexual drive.

It is operated by the principle of pleasure, meaning that every impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences. The Ego revolves around the aspect of desire and fulfilment and finally the Superego controls the combination of the Id and Ego through moral ethics. Freud’s model of the human psyche helps us to understand the relationship between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson’s character has the Id and Ego but lacks the Superego, which leads to the instincts of freedom and temptation engulfing Jekyll’s personality. Theodore Dalrymple an English cultural critic and psychiatrist asserts the idea that if a person practices evil, they will become evil because character is habit. This can be seen in the book when Mr Hyde consumes Dr Jekyll, resulting in the death of them both.

This idea shook Victorian society because it suggested that every person was hiding their inner Hyde. Jekyll represents the mental mask which conceals the inner sins, ‘the Hydes’.

The beauty of this book is that 135 years after its publication, through the craftsmanship of Stevenson’s writing, readers do more than enjoy a good mystery – they are left to ponder at length on their own inner Jekyll and Hyde.

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Pride, Prejudice & Pandemics

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HOW THE CURRENT SITUATION HAS AFFECTED THE POPULARITY OF PERIOD PIECES.

By Isabel Clarke

I

Photo: JASNA.org

have always had a fondness for curling up in a chair and reading for hours on end. For many, myself included, books are a form of escapism – each provides an entirely different reality which enthrals one in its pages. One becomes entangled in the adventure, the intrigue, the story: this new fantasy a stark contrast to the mundaneness of ordinary life. Last year, however, has been far from ordinary.

in Austen’s work – and is something that many of us can relate to now especially when, as for many of her protagonists, walks are often the most liberating thing on offer.

But, one may ask, what do these similarities have to do with us?

To answer, let us take a look at the new hit series, Bridgerton, which has already been watched by 63 million households according to Netflix. Its cultural significance is apparent; searches for corsets have increased by more than 100% since the series aired on Christmas Day. New data from eBay shows that 39% more of us are in the market for a vintage piece inspired by the Regency-era too. The series has spawned its own niche fashion trend – ‘Regencycore’, which encompasses all manner of ruffles, empire lines, elbow-length gloves and pearl-encrusted headbands. People have embraced its clichés, but also the modern take on the traditional genre, seen with its ‘colour conscious casting’ and seemingly more scandalous

Photo: Netflix

2020 will of course go down in history, and not for the right reasons. We experienced flooding, bushfires, and most memorably, the global corona-virus pandemic (to name only some of the calamities of the past year). However, while on the surface the current pandemic has caused chaos and great upheaval, in reality the vast majority of us have been granted time – time to reflect, or perhaps to daydream. I recently came across a tweet that I found rather amusing; it stated that life at present was not dissimilar from life back in the regency period, especially when it comes to relationships – people stand 2 metres apart, cannot touch each other, and constantly enquire as to whether the other’s family is in good health. Furthermore, for many daily walks with non-household members, or going to the shops is the only form of social interaction they can have, aside from letters (or rather texts and emails nowadays).

This same separation would’ve undoubtedly been faced by Jane Austen herself; at Chawton House, her brother’s estate, it was a good half-an-hour walk from the closest market, so isolation was apparent. The sensation of feeling both trapped and surrounded by familial friction is also a prevalent element

The first season of Netflix’s Bridgerton aligns with the first book in the series, The Duke and I, which follows the story of the eldest Bridgerton daughter, Daphne, and Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings.

nature. Others have also found amusement during these times, through fantasising about being the ‘diamond of the season’.

Through this, one can see the romanticisation of lockdown life, potentially as a coping mechanism; there is a certain joy that can be found in taking the positive aspects and similarities between now and two-hundred years ago, and idealising an otherwise turbulent time.

Of course, when it comes to period dramas, Bridgerton is not especially ground-breaking – other series have seen just as much success, such as Downton Abbey, which is still to date the

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November last year, compared to the same period in 2019.

Her huge impact on literature is greatly recognised, such that the 245th anniversary of her birthday, celebrated last December. There is something delightfully clichéd about her writings, which adds to their comforting charm which has lasted beyond the novels’ own era. Austen’s novels are filled with tropes and stereotypes, which are rather predictable by nature. In almost all her novels, the plot revolves around two people realising it was quite literally written for them to be together; in several, the heroine becomes convinced that the man she loves is going to

most watched television show on both ITV and PBS, the 1995 Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth as the iconic Mr Darcy, which had 10 million people tuning in to watch the final episode, and also the 1981 TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, which won multiple awards, including best drama serial. However, it is clear to see that Bridgerton offers a different atmosphere to the characteristically more decorous and euphemistic one seen in the likes of Austen, being described by Vogue as

‘ a regency romp that seeks to redefine the genre itself’ ‘

What with its diverse cast and far saucier script, it is refreshing take on an otherwise formal type of novel. Yet, traditionalists like myself may still remain more partial to the originals, for Jane Austen has undoubtedly influenced all period pieces after her, her works acting as a template for various future novels.

marry someone else even if the reader knows b e t t e r.

Conventional Novels-of-Manners are often widely criticised for being ‘dull’ – though they are naturally interesting from a character point-of-view, due to the fact their sole premise relies on social interactions and relationships, in terms of plot, one must admit there is very little action involved. On one hand, while this isn’t ideal for those who love a fast-paced murder mystery for instance, it does allow for an easy, relaxed read. What with the larger amount of time on our hands now, along with rules restricting our regular routines, our lives too can seem dull at times. So, why not read a novel which can immerse one in this world of courtship and love, reminiscent of our own lives, with this newly granted time?

Emma, Released 2020 Photo: Amazon

It seems many others also felt the same way, for in the UK, Austen experienced a rise in sales of 20% between 15th June and the 7th

Take Emma, who only after realising her own feelings towards Mr Knightley, worries that he instead intends to marry her friend Harriet Smith, or Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, who exemplify the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope. Yet instead of making the story boring, the determinateness of the stories adds to their standing as ‘comfort films’, and in this tumultuous year this is especially reassuring; at a time when the future is so uncertain, there is solace to be found in endings one can guess easily. Then again, it is important to recognise that during her contemporary period of writing, her works were not viewed as commonplace. Novels at this time usually featured exaggerated characters and events and were highly sentimental or dramatic in tone. Austen’s focus on everyday life therefore marked a major development in the history of literature, and proves useful from also a historical context, by giving a detailed insight into the various mannerisms and rules adopted by the upper classes of Georgian society. Also, beforehand, novels were written in either first or third person, both of which had limitations: first person narratives allowed one to enter into the mind of a character, but only through what they wished to tell, whereas third person narratives gave the reader a god-like view

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of the characters, but prevented one from really seeing their true feelings, shown only through their actions. Austen is known for perfecting free, indirect style (aka. free indirect discourse), which combined the two. For the first time, readers read a novel through a certain character’s perspective, and according to a contemporary review from a Lady Gordon, ‘you actually live with them [the characters], you fancy yourself one of the family; & the scenes are so exactly descriptive, so perfectly natural, that there is scarcely an Incident or conversation, or a person that you are not inclined to imagine you have at one time or other in your Life been a witness to, born a part in, & been acquainted with’.

present is the refreshing lack of severity of the problems faced.

Though extremely important to the characters, their dilemmas revolving around love and friendship are really, in the grand scheme of things, not concerning in the slightest to anyone who is not wrapped up in their stories. This serves as an appealing contrast to the current situation, and it is a pleasant distraction to immerse oneself in a world where the main issue is to do with romances and minor scandals, as opposed to global pandemics.

Through this technique, readers can follow along with the characters’ journeys – in Austen’s novels, one sees the protagonist’s emotional growth into a better person and the theme of perseverance is shown throughout. For instance, we as readers are practically present when Emma mocks Miss Bates on Box Hill, and afterwards we empathise, feeling her shame along with her. We see her transition into a better person after realising she was wrong about another character - one sees her change from the almost selfish, spoiled person to one who is far kinder and more compassionate, asking herself ‘how could she have been so brutal, so cruel to Miss Bates!’ and resolving so show her remorse the following day. The theme of resilience can be seen in Sense and Sensibility for example – Elinor Dashwood demonstrates great strength of character through her stoic suffering, believing her happiness to be lost forever she tells herself ‘I will be calm, I will be a mistress of myself’, prior to this too at the start of the novel, we see the Dashwood sisters and their mother being forced to leave their home and being stripped of inheritance. This struggle is even more poignant nowadays, with the corona-virus pandemic drastically impacting the economy, resulting in many losing jobs or being furloughed, and it seems Austen too was writing from a place of experience. She spent a period of 8 years travelling between small properties in Bath, homes of relatives and seaside resorts, after her father unconventionally passed the vicarage down to her brother.

Seen also not just in Austen’s novels, but in Romantic works in general, is the similar tone – hopeful and jovial, yet mournful too. Austen simultaneously comforts and challenges us, embracing the dark and lonely aspects of life but with a lightness of touch and much-needed humour. Likewise, many pieces of writing in the style of romanticism combine beautiful imagery and lyrical description with underlying themes of loss and remembrance of the old ways pre-industrialisation.

Look to the likes of Blake’s London, Shelley’s Ozymandias, or Wordsworth’s epic poem the Prelude, which can all be interpreted as a warning against the further urbanisation and destruction of the natural world, following the period known as the Enlightenment (where we saw a movement away from religion in favour of science and logic). The atmosphere currently is greatly reminiscent of this; we too long for the lives we had pre-Covid, yet we remain hopeful that this too shall pass.

From this, the idea of good always triumphing is prevalent; once the characters realise the error of their ways and attempt to rectify their flaws, they are given their happy ending. Take Emma again, who is forced to revaluate her actions, and is consequently rewarded as a result at the end of the novel.

This concept is one that especially draws readers to novels of manners today. The promise of good things to come as a remuneration for their hard work is alluring, especially when it seems there is so much grief at present. It is as Lady Russell says in Persuasion: ‘Time will explain’, and there is an apparent calming quality in the way Austen’s novels tend to span a calendar year and her style of writing seems to have a slowing down effect, encouraging leisurely reading; relaxing in an otherwise fast-paced era.

Furthermore, it is not just now that people have turned to Austen in times of great crisis; Austen’s writings have such a sense of solace that she was actually prescribed to soldiers in WWI, suffering from shell-shock, known today as PTSD. In a letter from 1984, author Martin Jarrett-Kerr wrote: ‘My old Oxford tutor, H F Brett-Smith, was exempt from military service; but was employed by hospitals to advise on reading matters for the war-wounded. His job was to rate novels and poetry for the ‘fever chart’. For the severely shell-shocked he selected Jane Austen’. Similarly, writer AA Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh) has stated that he bonded with fellow soldiers over his love of Austen, and that while in the trenches, the men would frequently keep classics in their pockets. Even Winston Churchill depended on her in times of war, who was reportedly consoled during illness by having his daughter read him Pride and Prejudice, after being bedridden in 1943. This all goes to show, if novels-of-manners have been able to help us through one global calamity, they can definitely help us through another.

Another feature which is particularly pleasing to readers at

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that period pieces have a universal appeal, though far removed from modern society, everyone will probably be able to find something resonant with their own lives within them. And now, one can even more so, in light of the challenges faced by the world. They provide a welcome distraction and a way of coping with these uncertain times. So now, I recommend that if you are feeling a little out of spirits, you ought to sit down and curl up with a good period drama, their stories being one of the few things remaining constant in an ever-changing world.

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The romance genre: Why do we love it so much?

By Imogen Hollis

Read with caution: you may relate!

We are all guilty of going back again and again to a book that comforts us, whatever the genre.

Romance is a big business where writers successfully use escapism to entice the reader in. They use powerful descriptions, tension, passion and fantastic protagonists to enhance the narrative.

Romance sweeps the reader up into a specific type of emotional roller-coaster of suspense, arousal and romantic desire. The reader falls in love with the narrative and the protagonists as they live vicariously in a ‘fantasy’ life. Successful romance writers are ‘sitting pretty’ as romance is a major industry with annual revenues that reach hundreds of thousands of pounds. So, what is it that compels women to be so susceptible to this particular genre?

The romance genre is typically adored and cherished by women of all ages, whether it be literature or television, we seem to have a natural predisposition to it. Whatever your role model, the ‘bunny boiler’ in Fatal Attraction or the soft and innocent Sandy in Grease, we have a weakness for the tension and the mystery and the proximity of our favourite protagonists.

There has been ‘romance’ for as long as we can remember. Although now disproved, for a long time we were led to believe that in prehistoric days we ladies were hit over the head and taken advantage of in a cave. Since the emergence of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, scientists now believe that once our brains were big enough to produce the right hormones for desire and the much-needed parent-child bonds we still see today, we sought a ‘partner’; A partner that showed the characteristic to survive- strength. This partner needed to make us feel good enough to stay with long enough to start a family. Once the family was established, we were free to move onto another partner and have other children, the honeymoon period was over. Today, this is seen in many relationships once the first flush of desire is gone, we settle for a more comfortable relationship or even, another relationship. The behaviour of our caveman ancestors is still alive in us today but isn’t quite so easily replicated with today’s societal expectations. If we are not inclined to move on, could it be that romance gives us the escapist feelings that we are hard wired to expect. (BBC Earth The sinister reason why people fall in Love 2016).

Although we are led to believe that romance through history has been about simpering heroines being domineered by the ‘hero’, it is not always true. Romantic heroines have often taken center stage and saved themselves and sometimes the hero too. They have been characters who have challenged societal values or changed the genre’s tropes. Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra depicts the Queen of Egypt as someone who had everything but she fell in love with a Roman General. Although it was love at first sight, Shakespeare depicts their relationship as volatile and as is often the case with his plays, their love story ends in tragedy. Readers love Cleopatra despite her faults, as she was witty, smart, independent and deeply charismatic.

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In the 1950’s and 60’s, heroines were moving to exotic locations and they had careers outside the home. Although these books had predictable plots and happy endings, as the feminist movement grew, the plots became as important as the romance itself with the heroine taking an active role in the stories.

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We generally now don’t seek out the bodice ripping romance of Mills and Boon. We look for books and films which portray women as valiant protagonists struggling against gender and class limitations. Critics of the romance genre, like Germain Greer said readers of romance were “submitting themselves to nothing more than serfdom to their heaving, rippling fictional heroes; alpha males with giant pectorals, important lives, patriarchal views and very little interest in love… until just the right petite, witty heroine comes along”. Today, we can be guilty of belittling the genre, associating it with being an enslaver of women and their rights.

As we enjoy romance so much, heroines can’t surely be that pathetic? According to statistics, 33% of all books sold are romance novels and 84% of the readers are women. Would all those modernday women wouldn’t enjoy reading about a belittled character who has a brief love affair before disappearing into drudgery? We like romance because the heroine is usually likeable, someone we would like to be. We need to identify with her consciously or subconsciously, we need to empathise, to be carried away on her feelings of desire, fear and excitement.

The formulaic romance novel or film is so firmly established in our minds, that we don’t like to see it changed, even in soap operas the usual formula is followed. The target couple meet, they are often ‘cool’ to each other, if not openly antagonistic. Yet one or both parties have a hard time dismissing the other; the attraction is illogical and yet compelling. As they warm to each other, complications arise, they have a shared ‘trial’ to overcome and then they are free to revel in their love and future happiness.

This formula and its escapism through literature has never been more poignant than it is now. With the global pandemic, I for one have been thankful of the sanctuary in which literature provides.

The safety that the permanency of a narrative can provide in an impermanent environment, has been ever present throughout the centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Napoleonic wars were commencing. During this period Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. In these works, France was only mentioned around three times, however some characters were given anti-French qualities. Her avoidance of the important events shaping the life around everyone, allowed the readers to find an element of escapism.

Winston Churchill commented that in Pride and Prejudice the characters ‘had calm lives… no worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic wars.’

We are hard wired to seek our hero and the comforting formula of a romance is as old as ancient fairy tales. Although the form of romance sought is not always concluded with the happy every after, think of Romeo and Juliet; our hero isn’t always as perfect as our beloved Mr Darcy When we pick up a romance novel, are we exploring a subconscious desire rooted in our DNA from our predecessors or are we escaping into a world where men are portrayed as being just as invested in love and relationships as women are?

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“A room of One’s o

V

irginia Woolf’s extended essay ‘a room of one’s own’ has been repeatedly reviewed, critiqued and analysed since its publication in 1929. It examines the educational, social and financial factors that have historically limited women’s place in the literary hall of fame and has been called ‘the epitome of firstwave feminism’. Although it contains her famous argument that ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction…’, she calls this ‘an opinion upon one minor point’ and the essay explores the ‘unsolved problems’ of women’s role in fiction ‘to show you how (she) arrived at the opinion about the room and the money.’

It follows a character ‘Mary’ who explores the British museum to discover everything that has ever been written about women, and through her Woolf constructs the argument that literature and history is a male-centred construct that has traditionally marginalised women. She refutes the widely held opinion at the time that women were simply less talented as authors and less interesting as subjects, instead highlighting their material and social circumstances as explanations for her gender’s literary silence. She constructs the hypothetical of ‘Judith Shakespeare’, Shakespeare’s equally talented sister who she claims ‘would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.’ She says that it is ‘the masculine issues that prevail… this is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.’

Let us take a step back. If I asked you to name your personal female literary role models, the ones who you consider to have contributed the most to the world of female literature, I highly doubt that yours would differ much from the list Woolf had in 1928 – the Brontë sisters, Shelley, and Jane Austen. Woolf is seen to be incredibly dismissive of their talents, ‘give her another hundred years, I concluded, reading the last chapter – people’s noses and bare shoulders naked against a starry sky, for someone had twitched the curtain in the drawing-room – give her a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these days.’ She appears to not value the power of the feminine literary voice, and seemed to believe that the culture at the time indicated the demise of great literature – ‘nobody, it

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor, 1901.

seemed, was reading Antony and Cleopatra. London was wholly indifferent, it appeared, to Shakespeare’s plays. Nobody cared a straw – and I do not blame them – for the future of fiction, the dearth of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her own mind.’ There is a shocking similarity in her critique of the misogynistic treatment she envisions for Judith Shakespeare who ‘would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people…’ and her critique of Brontë that the strength of her emotions in her writing led her to ask ‘how could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?’ (linking to the widely spread rumour that the tragic subjects she spent her time on led Emily Brontë to die of melancholy.) Through her perception of “strong feminine emotions” which led her to the conclusion that female authors ‘will

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own or her own?”’

By Libby Driscoll

David Daiches, a literary critic who wrote an analysis entitled ‘Virginia Woolf’, claiming that Woolf’s work is not only feminist in terms of women and their relationship to fiction but of all geniuses who have not had opportunity to explore it due to their lack of privacy and money.

As Professor Wendy Nicholson said in her lecture on this piece, at the period Woolf was writing, feminism, by popular definition, meant wanting suffrage for women. This is clearly not Woolf’s feminist perception; having received the news of her inheritance around the time that women won the vote, Woolf wrote that ‘of the two – the vote and the money – the money, I own, seemed infinitely more important.’ But although such matters were key parts of the early waves of feminism, the movement has evolved to include many other aspects of gender equality. The thesis for Woolf’s essay, that women should be allowed equal opportunities to write fiction, is feminist by the broader definition of the word. In Bennet’s time, however, when the words ‘feminist’ and ‘suffragist’ were synonyms, Woolf’s blatant nonchalance about the franchise movement may have been considered not only non-feminist, but anti-feminist. This makes his interpretation of the work not only understandable, but raises questions as to which box of feminism Woolf’s personal brand fits into; was she simply waves ahead of her time?

Bennett claims that Woolf ‘comes to no satisfactory conclusion about the disparateness between men and women.’ He’s right, she does make no attempt to ignore these differences, yet does not attempt to explain them. She believes that these differences are important to recognise in order to write fiction of integrity, “The weight, the pace, the stride of a man’s mind are too unlike [woman’s]…for her to lift anything substantial from him successfully”, warning against women trying to write in the style of men. She later queries, ‘ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences (between the sexes) rather than the similarities?’ She is certainly aware of the differences between women and men and advocates that these should be cherished. However, her concern is that women have not been allowed to develop their own literary style throughout history – they have not the time, the money, the privacy or the tradition. Only a few women have been given the chance to shed their impediments that afflict their sex and write ‘as women write not as men write’. Bennet limits her essay by narrowly defining her intention as explaining the differences between the sexes, whereas Woolf’s intent is to

. Oil on canvas. Statens Museum for Kunst, courtesy: Scandinavia House

write in rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters.’, we can see that she is not totally immune to the sexism of her day.

As well as offering my personal insight into Woolf herself and her work in terms of feminism, I will discuss two alternative interpretations – that of Arnold Bennet, an early twentieth-century novelist who claimed that Woolf’s essay is not feminist and reduces the scope of the essay to simply a set of musings on women in literature, ‘it is a book a little about men and a great deal about women. But it is not “feminist”. It is non-partisan.’ and

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praise the difference between the genders and focused her essay as to why, if there are such big differences between them, women had not been able to develop their own personal style in fiction. To me, this stands out as a point of contradiction.

She appears to want to foster a more ‘female’ literary voice, yet, as discussed earlier, puts down the romance of the female author’s works at the time to ‘someone (twitching) the curtain in the drawing room’ and diminishes this more traditionally feminine take on literature as a flaw that reduces its value.

literature, not the universal problem of unrealised potential across society.

Woolf begins her essay, ‘but you may say, we asked you to speak about women in fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?’ Hence the thesis emerges, in order for women to write fiction, they must have 500 pounds a year and a room of their own. Though both critics were incorrect, they did both point out important limits on her feminism. As Bennett highlights, her lack of political interest does limit this, and as Daiches points out, it does not point to a ‘larger democratic’ feeling and only applies to British, upper middle-class female writers. Although she can be considered a feminist by modern definitions, and this essay was certainly ahead of its time in ideals, the borders of class, culture and profession that composed her views certainly limit the scope of her feminism. Personally, I think that her take on the role of females in literature is ignorant. As I pointed out before, she is attempting to establish that women have not had a place to shine in literature, which although that may be true, she is ignoring the extraordinary achievements of the writers discussed earlier which are at the centre of the literary canon.

To me, it is like trying to pave the way for female pilots and saying that they only need more practice and money than men in order to get to the same standard, while completely ignoring the ground-breaking work of people such as Amelia Earhart and Harriet Quimby who revolutionised the role of women in the industry only 100 years prior to the statement as Woolf did to Austen, Brontë and Shelley. Although she seems to dislike ‘the critic’ and their view that literature is good because it appeals to masculinity, she only reinforces that by claiming that the works of the great women that preceded her were subpar and they needed special treatment in the hope that they would write ‘a better book one of these days’. It is possible that she is viewing the authors of the past through rose-coloured glasses, as I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of – leading her to romanticise Shakespeare, who was considered brash at the time for his dirty, innuendo laden work, and diminish her contemporaries’ talents.

Daiches, in his later criticism, also appears to have misunderstood her intentions. As opposed to Bennet’s interpretation, he labels her feminism as ‘rooted in a larger democratic feeling’ and asserts that Woolf utilises her analysis of women’s role in fiction to make a more universal statement.

His take on her larger theme is that ‘all those who have talent should be given the opportunity to develop and use it… (and) should be allowed to have an income and a room of their own.’ Though she often uses generalising statements about the possibility of the working class creating good fiction, she only does this as an argumentative tactic to prove her point about women – not visa versa as he implies. Woolf, in this essay, is only interested in women. She uses many devices to show this, such as the line ‘for genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among uneducated, servile people… it is not born today among the working classes’. This line could lead some to the same conclusion as Daiches, that she is addressing the larger issue of genius and the effect any kind of marginalisation has on its actualisation, if she did not quickly follow it with ‘how then, could it have been born among women…?’. Her focus is women, and upper middle-class women at that. As she explores money as an issue in the creation of art, she purely discusses the gender side of the economics of the time, rather than the class side. Women at the time, even aristocratic women, were inherently poor. Their husband owned the property and the money, and with that, the chance of writing fiction.

Through his attempted expansion of her point to be broader than it is, he ends up disappointed with her result. He describes her work as ‘largely concerned with ends and tends to ignore the discussion of means.’ He has universalised her view and placed it under perimeters it is unable to fill, and indeed was never supposed to fill. He seems to expect that Woolf’s sweeping statement about the nurturing of genius – with money and a private room in which to write – that she should make suggestions as to how to do this practically.

Through his eyes, her essay seems naïve, idealistic and silly, with no suggestions as to how those with potential for genius shall magically become well-endorsed. Woolf, however, is an intellectual not a politician, and does not concern herself with practicality. ‘A room of ones own’ is supposed to be a socially prescriptive work to better society; it is far more limited in application than he believes. Woolf is focused on the issue of the unestablished role of female authors in the world of great

Although I clearly disagree with her stance on feminism, I recognise that it is widely up to interpretation. It is up to you to decide where you stand on this controversial work, which I highly recommend reading. I leave you with the more pleasant note with which she ends her essay, Judith Shakespeare ‘would come again if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile… so long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say… it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people… therefore I ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast.’

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Scribble Lockdown Reads Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Holly Lovett

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1/5

When I began Moby Dick, I had little knowledge of what the novel entailed, aside from a big white sperm whale. In the beginning I was pleasantly greeted by a blossoming relationship developing between Ishmael and Queequeg. However, as I moved on with the narrative the contents of the storyline became blurred behind intense explanations of whale characteristics and anatomy.

The dense descriptions surrounding this animal frequently links Moby Dick to being ‘god-like’ but the different ideas that Melville attempts to discuss, such as this, become swallowed up in the colossal information being provided on this mammal for the readers. Although I enjoyed the sections of the novel involving the crew and the infamous chase, due to the relentless accounts of whale appearance and activity I decided that this novel is not one that I would be keen to revisit. It is not a novel that I would personally recommend in high regard.

Wuthering Heights by Emilie Brontë

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Lily Harding

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4/5

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A gothic romance classic, I went in braced for cliché and was treated to one of the most revelatory reading experiences in recent memory. The short version? Never underestimate a Brontë. The relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, often reduced to its base components by pop culture, shines in all its original nuance and ugly complexity; they are both utterly insufferable and all the better for it. Highly recommended, especially for young readers who might cast it off with the belief that they won’t get anything out of it- trust me, you will.

The Picture of Dorian Grey (Unabridged) by Oscar Wilde

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Lily Harding

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4/5

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Though perhaps more of an acquired taste, Wilde’s luxuriating prose and persistent self-awareness proved a fascinating read.

For all Wilde’s infamous flair and emphasis on beauty, the novel is surprisingly psychological particularly if you have any foreknowledge of Wilde’s personal life, but even without that it’s hard not to be taken in by the twists, turns and prescient social commentary of this gothic story. Recommended for those of you looking to challenge yourself and dive into some dense Victorian drama.

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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Aaina Jassel

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I read this novel over the lockdown after Christmas, and I have never felt more destroyed after a book.

This novel single-handedly destroyed my soul. Everyone is aware of the story of Achilles, but Madeline Miller has taken fresh eyes to this story and conveys it in such an inspiring way. Whilst reading this I was taken back too 8th Century BC, back to the way of the ancient Greeks and I loved every moment of it.

It is written from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ friend, and lover. This means we see the great Achilles from the perspective of someone close to him; we see how he acts publicly and privately and most importantly we feel connected to him. Without giving anything away (because you all should go and read this!) the story of Achilles is famous, Patroclus and other characters from the Iliad such as Briseis are not given so much time. Miller’s novel has given these characters time, a story worth telling and most importantly given them their voice. We see the change in the characters, we see how the Greeks camped outside of Troy became a family over their 10 years. We see all of this and at times forget that this is in fact a war. This, I can imagine, is precisely how Achilles, Patroclus and many others would have felt. The fact we can feel this too is completely down to Madeline Miller and her amazing writing skills. I cannot recommend this enough and I have gotten several of my friends to read this as well. You will not regret it!

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5/5

S C R I B B L E Independent Day School 32 Town Walls I Shrewsbury I Shropshire I SY1 1TN I 01743 494000 www.shrewsburyhigh.gdst.net scribble_magazine_shs

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