The Female Gothic and assorted notes

- Bit sorry to have commented on the Guardian time story and the Kate Bush album when, in the end, I like neither. Sad as that's a subject and an artist I'm typically fond of.

- Found out today our cat is 15 in human terms, if one believes 'cat years' as a relative indicator of development. Katy and I were a but surprised that 'one year old' was SO DAMN OLD. Get a *job*, Sasa, jesus.

- This Ikea Hackers DIY makeover of Ikea products site seems cool, and I want to check it out more: http://www.ikeahackers.net/

- If you have access to JSTOR or something like it, think about reading "House Mothers and Haunted Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic" by Roberta Rubenstein. It's an interesting retrospective on Shirley Jackson's career and life, the Female Gothic genre, psychoanalysis, mothers and daughters, and the uses and significance of food and home in her writing and life. I found it striking and resonant. The paper's prose style is a bit uneasy at first, but strong once it reaches We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Anna downloaded it and gave it to Katy, who gave it to me. V. good of them. It's made me want to read Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women, ed. Carpenter and Wendy K. Kolmar, which it sites. Good notes, too. Several quotes very resonant in them, re: eating disorders, object-relations psychoanalysis. This struck me for the beauty of 'love safely and hate safely': "As Thomas Ogden outlines Klein's position on this primitive mechanism of emotional division, "Splitting allows the infant, child, or adult to love safely and hate safely by establishing discontinuity between loved and feared aspects of self and object," in The Matrix of the Mind: Object Relations and the Psychoanalytic Dialogue."

This description of the Female Gothic seemed, oddly, particularly resonant for the Radiosonic Workshop Shalka audios:

"More specifically, Jackson's later narratives contain distinct elements of the type of Gothic narrative that has been termed "Female Gothic." Claire Kahane identifies the characteristics of traditional Gothic narratives, including "an imprisoning structure" within which the protagonist, "typically a young woman whose mother has died, is compelled to seek out the center of a mystery, while vague and usually sexual threats to her person from some powerful male figure hover on the periphery of her consciousness" (p. 334). Kahane notes that critical approaches to Gothic narratives characteristically emphasize an underlying oedipal or incestuous struggle between a powerless daughter and an erotically powerful father or other male figure (p. 335). She proposes, instead, that the central feature of Female Gothic is not an oedipal conflict but, implicitly, a preoedipal one, embodied in the daughter's search for/ fear of "the spectral presence of a dead-undead mother, archaic and all-encompassing, a ghost signifying the problematics of femininity which the heroine must confront" (p. 336). Thus, in these narratives authored by women and focusing on female protagonists, traditional elements of the Gothic genre are elaborated in particular ways, notably through the central character's troubled identification with her good/bad/dead/mad mother, whom she ambivalently seeks to kill/merge with; and her imprisonment in a house that, mirroring her disturbed imaginings, expresses her ambivalent experience of entrapment and longing for protection."

We spend a fair amount of time making the TARDIS a space of imprisonment and safety, an unheimlich home, confining and freeing, in this series. There's worry about the disintegration of the self and the body and the personality for our TL protagonists, the mysterious Forces on the Phone (no spoilers) exerting a 'bad father' sort of control over them. There's threats that aren't deliberately dealt with, hovering over the narrative. There's a deliberate problematizing of existential senses of inside vs. outside.

TAKE THE FOLLOWING WITH A GRAIN OF SALT because I am always a bit ambivalent about psychoanalytic literary theory: Does the way that Slash treats male characters as psychologically female enable this? In an object-relations way, you COULD talk about D/M as simultaneously a post-Oedipal conflict and rivalry, a man's eroticized worshipful admiration for and wish to be rivaled (with a possibility of being bested) by another man, and as a pre-Oedipal relation, with the distinction between Who They Are being a contested subject, and a tension between liberty and being subsumed in one another, with either option posing risks to their autonomous selfhood. I *think*, though I might be wrong, that a traditionalist would say most men aren't eligible for a pre-Oedipal reading, thus the 'slash men are actually women' Joanna Russ and others postulated (She did it, I believe, in 'Another Addict Raves About K/S') here would play out in the narrative with some interesting psychological/character conclusions.

In which it is nice to feel appreciated

Our nerd-only new flatmates ad (http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/nice-double-rooms-in-camberwell-green-for-fun-nerdy-folk/91663126), posted on Gumtree (Craigslist for the UK) late last night, has several responses already. Woo!

A particularly nice one:

From: Gumtree Mail
Date: Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:13 AM
Subject: Isobel replied to your ad: Nice double-rooms in Camberwell
Green for fun, nerdy folk

Ohhhh, I wish to god that you laydeez were living somewhere that
worked for me coz that was the BEST AD ON GUMTREE. I said it, I'm
sold, but I am not applying, sadly enough.
But I just wanted to say that your ad made my day, and good luck in your quest.
-Isobel.
p.s. I would hella have fit your nerdy requirements... I roleplay.
Something way more obscure and nerdy than DnD. :|

From: Isobel

I am frustrated as shit with Cambridge and I haven't even gotten in yet

God fucking dammit. After all their utter bullshit with the 'type in this box and only in this box do not c/p your essays!!' LINE AND CHARACTER LIMIT!! thing, and the ONLY UPLOAD DOCUMENTS AS PDFS!! and the rejecting the Required Photo without giving any reason so that you just had to Keep Trying different ones until the gods were inexplicably satisfied, and their EIGHT PAGES of stuff to do to apply without even counting documents--FAR worse than anyone else, Cambridge is refusing to accept letters of rec in THE ONLY FORM UIOWA DOES THEM. What do I have to DO to even apply to these people, jump through hoops of fire while being taunted by secretaries?!

Cambridge wants people to enter text in a box on their website after making a little password/saying they are who they say they are. Iowa wants professors NOT to send individual letters of rec, but to log one per student with Interfolio, which will then send your confidential letters anywhere you ask at $6 for a batch of sending and $19 a year. It's annoying b/c why is that automated service not free? But I see Iowa's point. It's a one-off, so their profs can spend time teaching, it's safer than everyone trying to Send Shit, theoretically it's a HUGE time-saver, on their end. It's getting other people to say 'sure, that's absolutely fine' that's an issue

All the other unis grumped but were like 'sure, fine, send it here'. But did you know Cambridge is ***!!***special?***!!***

I said:

Thanks very much [for your earlier help clarifying a point]. I have now completed my application and sent in all the documentation required of me.

I have a problem, however, regarding letters of recommendation. My
undergraduate university uses a popular American service called
Interfolio to hold and send confidential letters of recommendation,
and does not allow their professors to send out letters to individual
services such as your electronic referencing system. Is there an email
address I can advise Interfolio to send these letters to? I'm sorry to
be difficult, but it's really the only way the university will handle
this.

Erin

Then Cambridge was like:

Dear Erin

I'm afraid that the University of Cambridge does not accept references from services such as Interfolio. Under the circumstances I would advise that you request your referees to submit your references to us on paper and we will upload them on receipt.

For information regarding paper references please see the following webpage http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/gradstud/prospec/faq/
My referee is having difficulty accessing the electronic referencing system. What can I advise them?

Best Regards

Some Lady
Graduate Admissions

That... does not really respond to my email. This person has clearly not quite understood what I'm saying/is not helpful. It's not a problem that paper references could possibly solve. Fucking fuck, Cambridge. It seems like a Bad Sign that I'm INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATED with this uni and I haven't even been accepted yet.

The thing is, though, it's about Actually being okay with how international programs are different. They make a HUGE deal of saying they are, but the INSTANT they run into 'actually here's a slight accommodation you might need to make for that difference', they get all OH HELL NO. CAMBRIDGE IS FOR PEOPLE FROM UK EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUNDS, THX.

*

Rebecca

Here are some things I thought about Rebecca AGES ago, courtesy of Zaf.

In Gaskell's North and South the Moral Conflict is such a nonentity that I don't know HOW to enter into it with the heroine. The unnamed heroine of Rebecca might have a kind of similar nonentity/Mary Sue problem, or perhaps I'm not getting her from my position of modernity. The thing about Rebecca that's sad is even though Nameless is so essentially decent, there's NOTHING to like about her. I know I'd find her dull.

Zaf interestingly suggested that she didn't know whether the reader was *supposed* to like Nameless: "She's supposed to be Nothing to you." If so, that's an interesting problematization of the gothic novel heroine being the audience's object of interest/stand-in. If Nameless is still working as a blank stand in (her name is never given because it is yours?) it could take the Gothic conceit of crises of the dissolving self and make your loathing for her a kind of self-hatred, which is an attack on the integral self.

Desire in Rebecca is REALLY interesting. Nameless makes such deliberate calls to public school life? 'I adored him like I was a first year and he was my prefect and I had a crush' or 'I don't expect you to love me, I want to be your boy'. There's this entire construction of Rebecca as Woman and worthy of romantic love, and herself as adolescent and boyish and deserving of Sex: but Sex that isn't even sex just sort of the power-divided rituals of 'fagging', in the 'initiation process' sense (not the bundle of sticks/dude you're such a ___).

This dynamic is, however, so eclipsed by Rebecca-and-desire. Rebecca is CONFUSING from a feminist perspective. Is she self-directed or is she just a scoiopath? Because I have NO idea if she's not just. fucking. crazy. There's also the matter of her lesbian connection with Danny, the head of household, the housekeeper who still keeps her room /perfect/. This is stranger than all Rebecca's other desirous entanglements, especially, as Zaf put it, because of their extreme age difference/familial relationship. 'I've been here since she was a bride' give you a certain understanding of their relationship, and then 'I had the charge of her since she was a girl' remediates that understanding, then the thing between them morphs again, becoming that incredibly sexual description of Rebecca with her hair out on the pillow, in bed.

Technically the book's ancestral relationship is between Rebecca and her cousin, but they're English and a bit period, and given the eerie power of her mother/obsessive lover relationship with the housekeeper, it seems almost negligible.

Rebecca and Namelesses' husband, Max, is stranger still. He claims to have NEVER felt for Rebecca, to have always had doubt, yet he married her? It's good that its VAGUE what Rebecca gets up to, because that makes her a more sinister figure. It makes it creepier. Actually saying 'she has promiscuous sex' doesn't do much for a modern reader--it's very 'Oh. Um. Okay? And? We're supposed to be okay with shooting her about it?'

Zaf feels Max picked Nameless as his second wife because he can abuse her, citing that he shows at most apathy for her, even after he professes to love her. "He sort of treats her like a dog, and she welcomes it when he kicks." She sees a narrative of covert emotional abuse, in response to being abused by Rebecca. "He wants the opposite. Someone he can control."

I read it somewhat differently. I think he's definitely in search of a Child, but that when Max says he loves Nameless--maybe he's just too detached, too traumatized, to give that due weight.

I guess his paternal relationship with Nameless creepily parallels the maternal Danny/Rebecca thing, for me--the sexual/parent figure. All the narrator's 'I wanted to be a woman, I wanted to be his wife, his mother' sort of makes the rebecca relationship she's alluding to FEEL like abusive incest that Max has been exposed to. This, btw, is sounding really like the Shirley Jackson article last night--interesting reverberations within the Female Gothic).

Its interesting that NO ONE in the novel fucking has parents, and, as Zaf pointed out, there are no children. As Nameless's female employer points out in the very Jane Austen beginning, this wouldn't be possible if Narrator had parents. Nameless only has the aunt who got her this position. We know she's without siblings, friends or parents--I find it a little incomprehensible that you COULD be so cut off from the world. In a modern Western setting---it's almost no longer possible, and so I feel at sea trying to enter into her lack of Context. I mean we're of the facebook generation. You can't escape everyone you've ever met. You can be parted from them geographically, but you can never be entirely without people. The only *child* is the one Rebecca threatens Max with, as an heir. Max and Bea have no parents--only vaguely alluded to

I LIKE Manderley's destruction because that's the sacrifice Max DIDN'T make circa Rebecca, and should have made. As Zaf says, it's very cleansing by fire. Which I always think is an interesting phrase, because fire is SO dirty. ?ike how is this a theme in literature? There's nothing filthier than a fire-stripped building. Perhaps as Ana suggests in legal/financial terms fire is a convenient means of removing things, but when I was sifting through a burned building site in hs I kept going 'this is not cleansing--LITERATURE HAS LIED TO MEEE, augh I smell of ashessss.' And it GETS done so dramatically--it accomplishes that work.

After Danny lights the estate on fire and walks away with her bags, I almost feel she *should* be dead. I like that there's the possibility she isn't, but death would SEAL her story. She has nothing but Rebecca, and Rebecca lingers on here. When her ghost has been burned out, Danny's gotta die.

Zaf mentioned that it's interesting that the 'evil' person doesn't die, but punishes the 'good' people, who stay punished, and presumably suffers no consequences. I'd add that Danny's fucked up inside forever. Max and Narrator are exiles (living on the run off his riches in a parody of a certain type of love-story), and like it's Brax in Gallifrey, not allowed to THINK of the Thing, but they have, idk, personhood? And Danny doesn't anymore. "She's sort of had everything taken from her. If we assume that Rebecca was bad, it doesn't necessarily mean that Danny was."

Zaf then wondered if we shouldn't view Danny as the 'good' person. I mulled it over. She's the one who grieves--which is valid, the one who loved and kept loving in the face of Rebecca's apathy, and then her absence. "And having Nameless as a narrator--we must assume that she is unreliable. At least sometimes," Zaf pointed out. But ultimately I think there's no morally coming back for Danny from Jump Off This Balcony, Nameless, You Know You Wanna.