Final Proposal

       In my final proposal for this class, I am very interested in exploring Mieville’s “The City and the The City” and Virginia Woolf’s “Street Hauntings”.   Through the semester, i have been very interested in the idea of sight and being seen in a city. The concept of seeing and unseeing in Mieville’s novel was incredibly interesting for me because of how completely it affects every person in that city. I want to compare this with the enormous eye image in Woolf’s piece. I have been imagining Breach as the manifestation of that enormous eye because it has the power of seeing both cities, which Virginia does by seeing all sides of London. She ‘sees’ her true self by imagining being on a balcony while walking to the Strand. This is startlingly similar to seeing and unseeing. 

I also thought it would be interesting to look at Mieville’s novel through Woolf’s quote “Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves?” (Woolf). This suggests to the city of Orciny and the whole picture view of Ul Qoma and Beszel. Overall, I just think that these pieces enhance one another.

       From this point, I really need to work on refining a specific argument that can be support by these pieces of work. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them!

    

Essay 4 proposal

For my final essay, I will be using Virginia Woolf’s, “Street Haunting” and Millen Brand’s The Outward Room. I will be comparing how both women go on a “journey” to find themselves and what they see and experience on the way. Obviously the “journey” in Woolf’s piece is much shorter compared to Harriet’s in The Outward Room but since they are both female characters I can close read how they feel about themselves throughout their journeys.

In my first essay I wrote about how the character in “Street Haunting” is trying to find herself by becoming other “selves” but I think I can expand on this idea and compare it to how Harriet had to completely start over and rebuild herself to make it in New York. I think my claim will be comparing how both characters adapted in the city to find them selves and be able to survive. I am not sure if that is an adequate argument or not but I need to figure out how to compare the pieces a little better considering the character in “Street Haunting” is only roaming the streets for one night where as Harriet in The Outward Room is exploring and living in New York for much longer. I could maybe use this time to compare how the amount of time they spent exploring, and searching for themselves affected them. Right now these are just ideas that I know I need to expand on but this is what I have so far!

ESSAY 2 IDEAS

For the next essay, there is no doubt I want to use Millen Brand’s, The Outward Room to write to another piece. As of now I am thinking about using it with Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” because I love that piece so much, however, after I finish reading The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keum, I may change my mind and pair that with The Outward Room instead.
I am not sure how I would form this into a thesis statement yet, but I want to talk about how both Millen Brand’s book and Virginia Woolf’s essay are feminist pieces. I want to explore the actual message both authors are trying to portray in their pieces. I hope to have some of my questions answered including, why the character in “Street Haunting” is so obsessed with beauty and why Harriet in The Outward Room doesn’t want to get married. These are just some ideas I have for my essay but it all might change after I read The Artificial Silk Girl.

Being Haunted By Who You’re Not

For my essay, I have decided to write about Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting: A London Adventure”. I will be addressing the theme of her character trying to find who she truly is and wants to be – which self is most beautiful to her. It is clear that who she is at home does not make her feel beautiful and is not who she wants or wishes to be at all times, otherwise she would not have fled from her house to explore the streets of London (exploring herself).

 

In Woolf’s “Street Haunting: A London Adventure”, the narrator is described as “an enormous eye” (Woolf,1), which is a metaphor because the eye is depicted as having “… this strange property: it rests only on beauty: like a butterfly it seeks color and basks in warmth.” (Woolf, 2). If the narrator is an eye, she wants to see beauty- or be beautiful which she cannot do if she is at home. Like all people, if they are not completely satisfied with whom they are, then they will go out in search for their true selves, haunting at every corner until they find exactly whom they wish to become.

Reinventing in London

In “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” by Virginia Woolf, I enjoyed reading how the character reinvented herself on the streets of London. I say reinvented because as she walks out of her door, she becomes a new person just like every other person who walks out of the comfort of their own home, “As we step out of the house… we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers….” (Paragraph 2). She goes on to talk about objects at home that bring back memories, but once the door closes after each person, all of that doesn’t even matter anymore. As she walks around the streets, she finds different “selves” and I feel like those are the “selves” she dreams about being.

I think the reason she is so excited to go out on an adventure, as she calls it, among the streets of London, is not only because in her time, it was rare for women to go out, but also because there is always something new around every corner in the outside world as oppose to home, where everything stays exactly the same, “Here again is the usual door; here the chair turned as we left it and the china bowl and the brown ring on the carpet” (Paragraph 18). She uses the lead pencil as an excuse to go out because really, nobody wants to stay cooped up at home all day and the moment she gets home, I feel like she is disappointed that she has to become her home self again and soon, she will come up with another excuse to be able to go out again and find more of herself.

Ramblings on Street Hauntings

“Street Haunting” by Virgina Woolf was nothing that I expected it to be, and I was pleasantly surprised. This story took me on a trip through the streets of the city not as myself, but as the shell-less soul mentioned in the third paragraph. The things the narrator sees help paint a picture of a society in the past as well as today.

Prior to the dwarf’s appearance in the story, Woolf states, “For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks color and basks in warmth” (6). This line really caught my attention because it is incredibly true of all people. As a society, we focus our attention on glamour and perfection, but choose to ignore those who may not fit that bill. When Woolf continues on to say “What, then, is it like to be a dwarf?” (6) I couldn’t let that train of thought go.  I imagine the dwarf to be someone that society sees as strange and unfavorable. After all, the eye does not want to look at ugly things. However, as soon as the dwarf is given a chance to be beautiful with her perfect feet, she can suddenly be seen. I thought this was a really interesting distinction between what it feels like to be invisible and the power that comes with being recognized as an equal. The whole dwarf paragraph was really interesting because it could be interpreted in so many different ways.

Joys and Sorrows

In her essay “Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” though perhaps not as central themes, Virginia Woolf addresses—or, at the least, mentions—the contrasting ideas of happiness and sadness as evoked in the narrator or noticed in others when walking the winter evening streets of London. Woolf describes the idea of second-hand bookshops being a place to “balance [oneself] after the splendours and miseries of the streets,”(Woolf 12), suggesting that the streets are home to images which elicit a wide range of emotion, so as to incorporate both splendorous and miserable substance, not merely one end of the emotional spectrum or the other. She also mentions that, thinking back to six months before this particular city stroll, she had known “the happiness of death,” but that now she feels only “the insecurity of life”—she explains that six months ago, she metaphorically had had “no future,” but that “the future is even now invading [her] peace,”(Woolf 15). Perhaps these mentions of bliss and melancholia are intended to describe the diversity of the emotions of city streets, exemplifying how neither pure contentment nor pure distress are products of walking in the city.

Rambling About Woolf

As I read this essay, I realized how tough of a read it actually was, but once we discussed it in groups and as a class I was able to understand it better. I think that the woman is metaphorically a ghost because as soon as she leaves her house, she sheds of her current soul and goes out in search of other souls (selves). I also think this story is kind of a big metaphor – or an allegory – because I think that every person sometimes wishes that they could leave who they are at home, and go out and be somebody completely different. It is clear that the woman needed some sort of excuse to get out of her house, ““Really I must buy a pencil,” as if under cover of this excuse…” (Woolf). For a woman back in the 1800’s, when the story was written, it is uncommon for a woman to be going to town, at night, by herself. Reading between the lines, I would say that the woman does not enjoy being home so much (maybe her husband keeps her there) so she just wants some freedom. Also, as she is wandering the streets of London, she notices other people, like the dwarf, also trying on new selves, who seems to lift her spirits as well, “She looked soothed and satisfied. Her manner became full of self-confidence.” (Woolf).  I think that the haunting part plays into the fact that everything eventually goes back to reality, which is sad because who doesn’t wish that they could be someone else for a while?

A “Woolf” is Haunting in London

In Virginia Woolf’s “A Street Haunting: a London Adventure” a woman goes through the streets of London looking around the city and envisioning herself in different situations and trying on “new selves” and seeing other selves as she is walking about the city. As I began to read this I though to my self, why is it called a street haunting? That’s so strange. But as we discussed in class more and more I realized that she is a ghost that is haunting the streets. “The shell–like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughness a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye” (Woolf). I began to think that she is just a ghost of herself, and ghosts seem to haunt places. No one ever really sees her as she is wandering. I just picture her as a floating eye through the city. She is is a ghost of herself and now feels as though she as the ability to find other selves of her. But she isn’t the only one that can change her “self” from place to place. She realizes that people can also shed their reality selves and find other selves in other places. The girl in the shoe store for example, the girl although she is poor still finds a new self as she tries on many shoes and prances about with them on (Woolf). I think the haunting is important because she goes unnoticed through the streets and projects herself and how she would act if she was in that situation. that is how I viewed it.

What do you guys think?

Post #1: On Woolf and Rambling

For this first post you are free to “ramble” on Woolf’s “Street Haunting” so long as you do it in 1-2 grammatically clear paragraphs and use at least TWO moments of textual support for whatever it is you’ve chosen to ramble about. Be sure to properly cite your textual support in MLA format. Please be sure to include tags!

Due Tuesday 1/21 by class time.