Brit. Lit qoutes for 15 May 08

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Pied Beauty lines 2-4

“For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;”

It’s fun to see how Gerard is using the words like music in language. He is going for a bizarre language in poetry. He is appreciating the beauty in the world. He is the most modern of the victorians and I wonder if he influenced Dylan Thomas.

Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Act 1

“The Flower Girl:…I never spoke to him except to ask him to buy a flower off me.”

I like how Shaw uses this dialogue between classes to show the suspicious traces of prostituion. Flower girls were usually one step away from prostitution, and this was an easy way to discredit someone.

Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Act 1

“The Note Taker: You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. I could even get her a place as lady’s maid or shop assistant, which requires better English.”

Ohhh…this is the qoute of the play! This is the essential foreshadowing that will change the lives of all the characters involved outside the church at this moment. This is an exact recipe for a perfect first few pages of a play.

Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Act 2

“Higgins:…I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe.”

Something about draggletailed guttersnipe I just thought was so funny. It alludes a bit to a snake I think, hanging about in the dirty gutters up to no good. What a funny set of words to call somebody. I wonder if he made it up of if this is a common thing at the time to call a flower girl.

Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Act 4

“Liza: I sold flowers, I didn’t sell myself. Now youve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. i wish youd left me where you found me.”

And it all comes toward a close. They played with her like a doll after they bought her. Now she has grown up as they expected, and like a couple of kids who don’t know what to do with a grown up, they want to leave her to figure it out for herself by giving up. What a crude couple of chaps.

Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Sequel

“Higgins:…If you cant appreciate what youve got, youd better get what you can appreciate.”

I just thought this was a good moral lesson that Higgins learned. Also it is a good instruction from Shaw through his character for readers. Nice.

Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Sequel

“…Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much: and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as ‘biting off more than they can chew.’ They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties.”

I think it is totally true. We see all too often marriages gone wrong. What is wrong? Are we as a whole rushing into marriage simply to live up to society’s expectations, or is Shaw right? Many many other things, things that most don’t like to face, must be considered before the joining of a union other than just “I love you and you love me and this makes sense.” Then again, what the hell do I know. I’ve never been married.

William Butler Yeats

The Wild Swans at Coole lines 15-16

“All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on thisi shore,”

W.B.Y. has changed; life is different. He sees nature as more profound I think. Remenisent of William Wordsworth.

T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock line 6

“Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels”

Sounds like an old motel 6…what, they had motel 6’s back then? I picture a noir scene, smoke in the room, a one night stand. Very picturesque.

Virginia Woolf

A Room of One’s Own.

“…any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at.”

Terrible oppression over women for too many centuries. Even worse for slave women who had no rights to live basically. Nobody cared about them. Imagine if a great big voice like Arethra Franklin’s were suppressed. How hard that must have been for so many women to contain.