Wikipedia: Friend or foe?

For me, being brought up in today’s age of technology, such things like Wikipedia have always simply been there for my research/curious needs.  I personally always felt that Wikipedia was a good place to do some quick research for a quick read and synopsis of information, but I never truly considered it to be a vital or accurate site for my researching needs for school.  I feel like my entire scholarly career has been filled with pro and anti Wikipedia debate and I am still unsure where to stand in regards to the situation.

I feel that the general idea of people from all different backgrounds, education, and age can share information online with ease while correcting wrong information and posting it for the common good.  However, it is no news that there are people out there who simply love to mess everything up and not play by the rules.  After putting some thought into what Wikipedia stands for, I feel that it is much like communism— Wikipedia works extremely well in some cases, but it is not bulletproof.   Ideally, Wikipedia works extremely well and potentially can be the most effective and efficient way of sharing information, however, this is an idea that will only probably work as well as Jimmy Wales conceives on paper.

Do not get me wrong, I am an avid Wikipedia user.  I love being able to search the most obscure and random things with ease, I would not however consider Wikipedia to be a credible, scholarly source because it is so prone to errors and hackings from people with nothing better to do on a Monday night.

Pygmalion Response 2

As I stated before in my last blog post, I had never read the play or seen any sort of on-screen adaptation.  With this being said, Act 5 of Pygmalion left me feeling strangely empowered and relieved that the whole drama did not end with the atypical, easily digestible, romantic Hollywood scene involving Eliza and Henry.  I actually found their entire argument to be my favorite part of the entire play.  One of my new favorite lines comes from when Eliza makes an impressively blunt observation of what I have been thinking about Henry throughout most of the play: “You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like.  Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you cant appreciate what you’ve got, youd better get what you can appreciate” (Shaw 103).  Perhaps I just enjoy literature that empowers me to yell at brutish men and burn my bras, or maybe I just feel like I have had a similar rant to an ex-boyfriend.  For whatever reason as to why I enjoy this act, I feel that Shaw certainly made himself immortal through not the overall idea of the play, but the very last act.  Because I know some of us are tired of the same old happy ending nonsense.

Pygmalion Response

Before actually reading the first two acts of the play, I realized that I had no idea what the title of the play meant.  I did a quick search in Google and according to thefreedictionary.com, Pygmalion is a king in Greek mythology who fell in love with a statue of a woman he created.  Eventually, the goddess Aphrodite brought the statue to life as Galatea.  After the little research I have done,  I feel that I can give an educated guess as to the story of the play.

After reading the first two acts, I believe that Higgins represents King Pygmalion and Liza is essentially the ball of clay Higgins sculpts her from.  Since Higgins is determined to show that he can turn a poor, street vender into a classy woman, this transformation is likely to lead to a romance (in my opinion/educated guess).  I have never read this play before or seen the movie My Fair Lady, so I am interested to see if in the process of “sculpting” Liza into a refined, young woman, does Higgins eventually fall for her? How does that pan out in the end? I guess I will find out tonight after I finish reading the play J

Feminist Response- Wuthering Heights

One aspect I found interesting in Lyn Pykett’s essay is the idea of feminine “strategies” (stealth and indirection).  Although at first the closet fem-Nazi in me was somewhat angered and disagreed with this statement, after a while of pondering and a quick observation of my own behavior, I could not disagree.  Women tend to go about handling conflict or extreme negative emotion with sneaky ideas and in my opinion, are better are ruining things from the inside-out—rather than inside-in like men. 

Pykett discuss how both Catherine and Cathy use these strategies and the point I find the most interesting is her brief discussion of how Cathy uses them to rekindle Hareton’s interest in literature.  Cathy uses these tactics to not only gain control over her own life, but in teaching a man, she establishes control over him.  As a teacher, she has something over Hateton.  Although it is not made clear in the novel, I would think that Hearton would look up to Cathy.  Perhaps it is not made clear because the character of Hearton is too ashamed to say that a woman is better at something than he is.  It would hurt his already battered ego (thanks to Heathcliff) more and would cause him great emotional pain I may be delving too deeply into this thought, but if his character was more deeply discussed in the novel, maybe I could make a better assumption.

Critical Marxist Reponse: Wuthering Heights

Personally, when I first hear the name Karl Marx, the first things that I think of is the basic ideas of the bourgeois and proletariats: the idea that there is a higher and lower class.  The ideas that there are inequalities in the world and are heavily pronounced in Wuthering Heights. The idea that these two sides are always at a struggle for power: a sense of power and a sense of struggle similar to the ones in the novel.

In Terry Eagelton’s “Myths of Power: A Marxist Study on Wuthering Heights, Eagelton discusses in depth the character of Heathcliff.  She gives evidence of the two sides to Heathcliff with a quote from the novel: “See here, wife; I was never so beathen with anything in my life; but you must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (p.51).   Mr. Earnshaw eventually begins to favor and give Heathcliff special treatment which makes Hindley very jealous (and eventually vengeful) and creates inequalities among the Earnshaw children.   This eventually causes turmoil among Heathcliff and Hindely.  After childhood, the couple is still not on good terms with one another and Heathcliff becomes obsessed with taking his power.  The idea of Heathcliff, the lower-class, adopted, outsider child rising up from his humble and poor beginning is the ultimate Marxists goal (or at least I think it is). 

Wuthering Heights Response p. 203-288

As the first half successfully sets up the plot and develops characters, the second half of the novel is equally as successful in creating a sticky, unpleasant tension and climax that is destined to result in disaster.  Also, in the first half of the book, I believe Bronte does a fantastic job in setting up Heathcliff to be the ultimate underdog in the novel: not only do I find myself cheering and rooting for his success and revenge, but I also empathize and feel sorry for the poor boy. Although a small fraction of this initial emotion remains throughout the book, the second half really shows how truly insane and unstable Heathcliff is.

Heathcliff’s sanity and physical health take a major downward plunge in chapter 33.  He opens up to Nelly and exclaims, “I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!” (p.277). Not only does he admit to digging up Catherine’s body from her grave, but is obviously losing his mind and possibly having delusions of Catherine.  He either a) cannot bear to live without his beloved or b) is truly being haunted by her ghost.

One of the mysteries of this novel is that you never know if Heathcliff is really being haunted by spirits, or if perhaps he was mentally unstable from the start.  The gothic element of the supernatural and unexplained plays out loud and clear in the novel and still successfully gives a modern readers goose bumps.  Although I personally like to still like to believe that Heathcliff has been a victim throughout the novel and was set up for disaster form the start, it is ultimately up to the reader to decipher his or her personal feelings.

Wuthering Heights Response p. 3-108

After discovering that the novel we would focus on this semester would be Wuthering Heights (which I read in honors World Literature in the tenth grade), I figured that reading it again would be a piece of cake.  Oh, how wrong I was.  I was truly amazed at how much of the plot I had actually forgotten.  I had also forgotten how much I loved the character Heathcliff-- the loner with mysterious origins; the black sheep, the dark protagonist that spoke to my fifteen year-old heart, and still resonates with me today five years later.

In the first couple of chapters of the novel, the adult Heathcliff is portrayed as a callus and bitter man with a personality disorder.  However, as I continued to read and remembered the back and forth rags to riches story of Heathcliff, it made me remember why I felt so deeply for this character.  His mistreatment from society and living on the streets of Liverpool makes me sympathize and then feel joyous after his discover and adoption from Mr. Earnshaw. Sadly, his happiness is not permanent.  He is teased and talked down to constantly and is constantly called a “dog” or “vagabond”.  After practically losing his best friend and love, Catherine, he is again forced to live in a hell of torment and slavery from people who, for lack of a better phrase, think they are “all that and a bag of chips”.  This is when I felt like I could personally relate to Heathcliff and his struggles.  Perhaps it was just because I was picked on a lot in high school and was not one of the cool kids, but I still cannot help but smile when I read the text “I shall be as dirty as I please, and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty!” (p. 65).  It makes the little rebellious teenager inside me want to high-five Heathcliff and go throw hot applesauce in a stuck-up kid’s face.