Wikipedia

When I first saw the title of the article, I immediately thought that Schiff was going to begin and end with bashing Wikipedia for its inaccuracies, the ability of just about anyone to edit it, and so forth.  Gladly, she did not.  Schiff made a great effort to begin with the good that Wikipedia provides and the quick access to general information that comes in handy.  She even mentions that it got some things right that Encyclopedia Brittanica did not and has an entire webpage dedicated to that.  She eventually gets to an interesting point that, while I had not thought about it before reading the article, really sums up Wikipedia’s shortcomings.   When confronted with evidence of errors or bias, Wikipedians invoke a favorite excuse: look how often the mainstream media, and the traditional encyclopedia, are wrong! As defenses go, this is the epistemological equivalent of “But Johnny jumped off the bridge first.” Wikipedia, though, is only five years old. One day, it may grow up.

This is a fair argument.  Certainly Wikipedia is very convenient for looking up who won the 1998 World Series or who invented the rubber band, but I would not trust it to provide accurate information when doing a paper or project.  Even if I did, the fact remains that it is not a scholarly source, so it would be no use anyways.  The idea that a ten year old from Nigeria can sit behind a computer screen and provide me with”psychoanalysis” of Stonewall Jackson doesn’t really conjure up confidence in Wikipedia.

Pygmalion

I read Pygmalion my senior year of high school.  We did a video project in which I was a terrible rapper.  My friend Matt claimed he could teach me to rap, and my friend Michael said he couldn’t before the talent show in a week.  Matt taught me, I won the talent show, and Matt won the bet.  It was fun and it got the general concept across.

For whatever reason, I’m a sucker for 90’s movies.  I love stuff like “Summer Catch”, “A Few Good Men”, and “Not Another Teen Movie”.  One of the movies that I liked was called “She’s All That”.  It was funny and it taught a good lesson, but I had no idea that it was basically a modern-day remake of Pygmalion.  It never registered with me that it was until I read Pygmalion in high school, and when I looked it up on Wikipedia out of curiosity one day, I saw that “She’s All That” was listed as an adaptation. 

This is actually one of the few instances in which I kind of enjoy seeing adaptations of a play rather than just reading it.  It certainly is not a boring play to read, but I it seems to me like the idea of betting on someone’s success is a more modern activity, so it feels natural to put it in a modern media display.  I think the best thing about the play is the theme of “collateral damage”.  Even though Freddy and Higgins didn’t mean to hurt Eliza, they did.

Orwell's Essay

I absolutely loved Orwell’s essay.  It was very refreshing to see that someone who is very well-respected also does not appreciate when people talk and write in a language that makes their point impossible to understand.  He said that all five of the passages he analyzed had either “stale imagery”, “dying metaphors”, or both.  The people that wrote them probably consider themselves to be writing in an elevated, sophisticated language.  In fact, they are simply combining complicated words with hazy meanings to their passages. 

It reminds me of a politician answering a question about an issue he was not prepared to discuss.  He searches for words that will sound good enough and make him seem intelligent, but in reality, he just spits out generalities.  A lot of times, I find myself wishing they (politicians) would just be straightforward, so no sentences of the like had to be used.  If he does not know the answer, let him say so, not fumble around for the right cliché. 

I also liked all six of Orwell’s points.  I certainly have been told the opposite of them before, but I think for the most part they would be good for us to follow.  Taking out unnecessary words allows us to be more precise and to-the-point.  Using the active instead of the passive keeps us in the moment.  The only disagreement I have is that sometimes, a longer word is more descriptive than a short word.  “I went to the store” is boring.  “I frolicked to the store” lets you know that I went merrily without a care.  

Feminist Criticism

Pickett’s observation of the two Catherines is very interesting.  She recites the Catherines that Lockwood observed in the books he saw and mentions how they all come about, except for Catherine Heathcliff.  Pickett presumes that identity reveals itself after both Catherine and Heathcliff’s death when they will together “wander the moors eternally”.  She goes on to talk about how Catherine’s decision with Heathcliff not only raises the question “What does a woman want?”, but also “What is a woman?”  During the course of the novel, Catherine made the transformation from simple to sophisticated for Earnshaw’s liking, but stayed the simple girl whenever she and Heathcliff were alone.  I found myself getting annoyed with the whole acting game and just wanting her to make her choice, whether it was the right choice (Heathcliff) or not.  She ultimately did, and I was not as relieved as I thought I’d be.  Certainly today, we would consider a “real woman” to be a variety of things.  If they aren’t proper, love fighting, and drink a lot, that’s all fine.  In the era in which Wuthering Heights took place, a woman was defined as sophisticated and proper.  She dressed nicely, spoke well, had a firm hold on her children, and a clean house.  Today, we embrace the idea that everyone is different, and they are, but in those times, different was likely to get you chastised.

Wuthering Heights: Cultural Criticism

Wuthering Heights was written around the same time as photography started to become somewhat prominent in society.  It was expensive and not very common, but it was coming about.  I personally appreciate the fact that there are no photographs of the Bronte sisters because it adds greatly to the mystery of their existence.  Fiction is my favorite type of literature, and while I sometimes like at least an idea of what a place or scene looks like, I am much more imaginative with out one.  Movies often disappoint me because they do not portray something as exotically or romantically as I would have thought.  In the same way, if I just knew what moors were before reading Wuthering Heights, the setting of the novel would not have been nearly as spooky or mysterious as I made it out to be in my mind.  Because of that, I enjoyed reading it a lot more than I would have.  I also love the picture on page 450 that may or may not be Charlotte Bronte.  It is just a black figure standing against a brick wall, but it is of course, in black and white.  Maybe it is Charlotte; maybe it is not.  The truth is we will probably never know, and I am perfectly fine with that.  Keep the mystery alive.  

Wuthering Heights: Cultural Documents & Illustrations

I am a very visual learner, so I am automatically grateful for anything that has some sort of picture or visual representation that I can look at and connect with my reading.  I actually had to google what a moor was the first time I read Wuthering Heights.  The picture of Top Withens, which is considered the site the novel takes place, is really much different than I imagined.  I always pictured it on top of a hill, a house that once looked like a majestic castle, now slowly decaying.  Instead, it looks almost like it was built into the side of a hill, and reminds me a lot of just a nice English country home.  The picture that shows an artist’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights from far away though, looks a lot like I imagined it.  The moor itself is relatively empty except for the images of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange in the background.

             I find it interesting that all of the Bronte sisters were buried in Haworth Church, which is located close to the moors.  I think that really enforces their interest in the moors and how much they liked them.  The Law Hill School is also very interesting, because it is noted that the idea of Wuthering Heights may have come from the story of an adopted student who eventually gained control of all of the family property, much like Heathcliff.  It seems almost a stroke of luck that Emily Bronte even wrote Wuthering Heights, because she did not teach at Law Hill for very long.

Wuthering Heights, Part One

I remember being rather frustrated with Wuthering Heights when I read it in high school.  I think I just got all of the different names and who was related to who mixed up.  This second time reading it though, it makes a lot more sense.  I do remember that when I read it the first time, I had the same feeling toward the Heathcliff and Hindley relationship as I did this time.  I remember whenever I had friends over to my house to hang out, my parents always treated them a little bit better than they treated me, just because they were guests.  Something like my dad offering my friend Josh a drink when he was up and neglecting to offer me one kind of got under my skin because I didn't understand the concept.  Because of that experience and others like it, I can certainly relate to how Hindley felt when his parents brought home the orphan Heathcliff.  All of the sudden, the favorite and oldest child becomes "second fiddle".

Another thing that stood out to me was Catherine's great desire to keep social order intact.  She said that even though she loved Heathcliff more than anything in the world, she had to marry Edgar because Hindley had demeaned Heathcliff so much that he kind of became a lower class.  It has always driven me crazy in stories like this and Romeo and Juliet that people were so concerned that everything they did had the potential to damage their public perception.  They had an attitude of "This is just the way things are and there is no changing it".