It is not often that you read something which confirms your personal ideology as much as it challenges it, but in this modern day adaptation of a traditional story about sisters and princes, Ania Walwicz, has effectively created a text that is as unconventional as it is thought provoking. The fast paced story details the lives of three sisters, but foregrounds the lives of the two ugly sisters who go to great lengths to achieve educational success and establish themselves as independent career women. Throughout the story the sisters realise that they also want to be married, and so embark on a campaign of violence as they literally tear men apart in order to piece back together the perfect prince. In the end, though, the ugly sisters decide they much prefer their individual pursuits.

My initial reading practice and position was genuinely resistant as I grappled with the difficulties of reading such an unconventional text. I felt the preferred reading position was to be engaged and enlightened by the choices made by the ugly sisters in the story.  The story is clearly sending a message that women want it all and when they get it, they are still not content. My own personal values and ideologies, as a young woman involved in social organisations seeking to better opportunities and outcomes for women in society, definitely played a key role in my taking such a resistant position on the text.

Specifically, I felt that the story crossed a line, almost into the satirical genre, through the ridiculousness of the story. Not only were the ugly sisters physically violent in nature through their deliberate maiming and killing of innocent men, but also in the silliness of some of the choices of language, such as “these men would wake up sometimes dead”. This story also assumes a high level of previous cultural and literary repertoire in order to decode its meaning, which would make this a difficult task for someone who has not grown up with Western society’s literary canon.

The most obvious and important textual feature of this work is the lack of punctuation. This plays a predominant role in contemporising the story. There are however, some more conventional features in the text including the structure (beginning, development and ending) as well as the, arguably, ‘happy ending’ that finalises the closed text. Binary oppositions are also apparent, particularly between the descriptions and attributes of the sisters, one beautiful but stupid and the others ugly but clever. Despite this, the text is undoubtedly unconventional, as it tries to bridge major generation gaps through references to old world concepts like the plague, princes and aristocracy with contemporary ideas about tertiary education, PhD’s and women performing laboratory work.

The workshop discussion was interesting in that I found most people had taken a more open and preferred reading and that I seemed to be one of only a few who felt the underlying tone of the reading was actually anti women’s rights. These discussions did, however, highlight to me the many important intertextual references included by Walwicz, such as the throw backs to both the story of Frankenstein and Cinderella.

After considering how the text could be effectively used in the classroom, I came to the belief that I would not seek to use the text in my English lessons with secondary students. I felt the ideas and messages were not only complicated, but could be misinterpreted or trivialise the very important issues which it seeks to discuss. However, If I was in a position where I needed to use this particular text during a lesson I would consider scaffolding a task for students which would aim to contrast and analyse the similarities between this modern day fairy tale and the more traditional version of Cinderella.

References

Moon, B. (2003). Literary Terms A Practical Glossary (2^nd Ed.). Cottesloe: Chalkface Press.

Walwicz, A. (1985). Fairytale. In Hawthorne, S. (Ed.), Difference: writing by women. Australia: Waterloo.

Interchapter VII is a quick, interesting read which transcends rules of tense and convention, to leave the reader thinking about issues beyond the surface level subjects of war and religion, into much deeper questions about the human condition. This reading, found between two chapters of a novel by Hemingway, grittily outlines the reality of war in terms of both the immediate and ongoing repercussions that ripple throughout the lives of soldiers.

I believe that I took a dominant and open reading practice into this reading, mainly because my past literary experiences have shown that I enjoy short prose, poetry and stories so I am usually more willing to actively engage with a short text. Whilst I would say I became a little more resistant during further readings and class discussion, I believe that my relatively sheltered, middle class upbringing was a key factor in my willingness to be led by Hemingway down a particular path. Interestingly, I have not personally had any exposure to loved ones fighting in war, and as such I believe I was able to separate my own subjectivity and be more open to adopting the dominant reading position, which I believe was about justifying the actions of men, both during war and after. Hemingway is essentially providing a voice for leagues of returned service men needing to rationalise their behaviour under pressure and their feelings of failure and weakness afterwards.

So, what exactly is Hemingway saying then? I feel the text is cleverly constructed and jam-packed with content matter like religion, morality and sin and the horrors of trench warfare. However, I believe the underlying message is not so much about the indoctrination of structured religion in our lives, but rather that this is an allegory for the idea that in desperate times people will cling to anything – a god they may not really believe is there, or the distraction (more so than pleasure or comfort) that one can find in the arms of a prostitute.

After our workshopped discussion, where many of my peers had taken a reading position that judged and vilified the soldier, I felt as though my initial reading of the message had become more of a negotiated position – of pity and forgiveness of the soldier. The discussion also helped me to identify that the foregrounding of the central character, to the detriment and marginalisation of the prostitute, greatly assisted in establishing my reading position. Had the prostitute featured more centrally, I believe my own personal views about the plight of women in situations like that would have been more prominent. There is no question that the role of the prostitute is almost completely silenced in the text. There is no discussion or even reference to the prostitute’s name, background, motivations or perspective.

Gaps also exist throughout the text. These work effectively with the lexical choice of the verb ‘tell’ to create a narrative tone within the short text. Through the progression of the verb from ‘I will tell’ to ‘did not tell’ and finally onto ‘he never told’, Hemingway has very successfully engaged the reader into feeling the acute severity of the impact of war on the longer term actions and behaviours of the solider. I also felt, under further analysis, that the effective use of gaps and silences about the soldiers background (i.e. did he have a devoted wife and children at home?) made it very easy for me to not take up a resistant reading position where I despised or denigrated the actions of the soldier.

The use of binary oppositions is somewhat prolific throughout the short text and helps create a mood that is descriptive with both feelings of light and shade weaved throughout. Specifically, ideas like day and night and noise and quiet are mixed with more layered oppositions like ‘down in the trench’ and ‘upstairs in the Villa Rossa’ and the question of loyalty to one’s country in the trenches and betrayal to one’s personal values out of the trenches. This pairing also reflects the deeper sentiment of the piece and the dark and lighter sides of issues such as war and morality.

As a pre-service Secondary English and History teacher I can see great value in using a text like this to highlight the complexities of war and the way in which the glorification of war in the past, through various texts and films, can not take away the very real impacts and changes that war has on individuals. I also think the text would be a useful text for analysis by students as it contains many interesting lexical and structural choices that could be highlighted to students as ways of increasing the readability of their writing. One possible strategy I would utilise would be to ask students to analyse why the prostitute is so effectively marginalised in the text and then practice rewriting the text from the perspective of the prostitute.

References

Hemingway, E. (194 1). Interchapter VII. In For whom the bell tolls. London: Cape.

Moon, B. (2003). Literary Terms A Practical Glossary (2^nd Ed.). Cottesloe: Chalkface Press.



Turned, typifies the privileged existence of an upper class married couple in England, probably during the early 1900s. The tale depicts what may be considered previously well-worn literary paths tracking complicated relationships including love triangles and transgressions involving ‘illegitimate’ children. What is, however, refreshing about this tale, is the way in which it makes some powerful statements about gender roles in relationships. I was impressed by the ease with which Gilman has been able to merge overt feminist ideologies into the text whilst still remaining true to the times by recognising the visible social class system and power dynamics between the central characters. The story not only heralds a message of empowerment for women to not allow themselves to be victimised but to rise above and out of situations that would usually serve to reinforce their place on the social ladder.

I feel that my middle class, educated background and gender identity definitely impacted on my initial receptiveness to the ideas promulgated in Turned. I was initially uplifted by the idea that this wife, treated so unjustly and badly by her husband and betrayed by a person she had cared for, could put all of this aside and do ‘the right thing’ by the vulnerable girl who had been taken advantage of by her evil and manipulative husband. There is no doubt that my personal cultural perspectives and socialisation assisted my initial dominant reading position of this text, particularly in so far as that the text reinforced ideas that women put their own interests behind those of the greater good, which is culturally a very well entrenched construct in modern Western societies like Australia.

Only upon rereading and analysing Turned, did I realise that Gilman (whether by design or mere accident of her time) has poignantly illustrated the true lack of equality in society for individuals like Gerta. She does this most aptly through the way in which Mrs. Marroner, whilst a heroine and role model for women to take control of their lives, clearly does not see Gerta as an equal partner but rather as a subordinate. As a result, Mrs. Marroner acts in an accordingly patronising way by taking control of Gerta’s life choices rather than empowering and enabling Gerta to take control of her own future.

Textual features prominent within the text include the structure, which separates the story into a number of passages. This actually serves to highlight the binary oppositionspresent between the two female characters. Mrs. Marroner is depicted as strong and dominating, independent and intelligent and Gerta is written as weak and impressionable, completely dependent on Mr and Mrs. Marroner and also not very intelligent. These opposing ideas clearly show the power and privilege afforded to Mrs. Marroner and the lack of credibility and respect given to anyone who possesses the attributes which Gerta represents. This is really putting a unique spin on the expression that ‘everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others’.

Dissection of the text through the workshop was useful in further illuminating Turned’s broader social commentary, regarding feminist discourse and associated stereotypes. As well as the stereotypes described above, of Mrs. Marroner and Gerta, the workshop also identified that Mr. Marroner was being used as a ‘scarecrow’ figure in the text to sovereign all that the feminist movement says is wrong with men- unfaithfulness, cowardice and narcissistic tendencies to put his own interests before the welfare of his wife and Gerta. I would say that this is a downfall of the text as this puritanical approach diminishes its ability to send a clear message, as it tries to swing too far to both sides at once. It is safe to say that, after further analysis and the workshop discussion, I took the metaphorical blinkers off and found that the extreme characterisation of all three central characters detracted from my acceptance of the overall narrative.

I found this reading to be a fascinating one and quite pioneering for its time with respect to the subject matter and story ending and as such I would definitely use it within the classroom. I think that a comparative analysis of this text with one similar in subject matter would prove an interesting task for students in identifying the similarities and contrasts between Turned and another text. Some of the specific activities outlined in Reading Stories, pages 25-31 (Mellor, 1990) could also be used effectively to highlight the complex commentary contained within Gilman’s well constructed narrative.

References

Gilman, C.P. (1990). Turned. In B. Mellor, M, O’Neill & A. Patterson (Eds.), Reading Stories (pp 13-22). Scarborough: Chalkface Press.

Moon, B. (2003). Literary Terms A Practical Glossary (2^nd Ed.). Cottesloe: Chalkface Press.

-Anna.