"My Cat Jeoffry"

This poem by Christopher Smart is an seems like such a scandalous and visionary thing for a man to write in the mid eighteenth century.  To personify a lowly creature like a cat and then to attribute god-like characteristics appears to be drastically different from the preceding religious works that we have read in class.  I also thoroughly enjoyed the connection Smart makes about seeing and learning about God through nature and animals.  He make Jeoffry's miniscule, commonplace actions to be these beautiful things that reveal God's nature and the nature of the physical world.  The speaker finds that "for by stroking of him I have found out electricity" (66).  This bridges to gap between the high class and isolated audience that was the likely reader of Smart's poetry and the everyday "lowly" things that "common" people interact with---this takes them out of their idea of a God who is only in the church or in the sacred religious things.

Gray's Different Take on Death

In Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray comments on the mortality of man. The poem takes place in a graveyard, where the narrator examines the headstones of the dead. In true literary form, there is a segment that describes the finality of death. The tone is one of lament for the dead. The narrator ominously states, “For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn” (line 21). Basically, the narrator feels sorry for the dead because they’re missing out on so much. This sentiment is nothing new to poetry about death. There are many lines that follow the same kind of tone. However, Gray takes a sharp turn when he continues on, saying “Let not Ambition mock their useful toil” (line 29). Just because the people are dead now doesn’t mean they never lived. He goes on to discuss the dead as they were in life. They had their joys, sorrows, beauty, wealth, and other things when they were living too. Instead of looking down on the dead or pitying them, Gray forces his readers to see the truth; the dead in the churchyard are no different from what the currently living people will be like in a century. Instead of mourning a live lost, Gray states that we should celebrate a life lived.

The Beggar's Opera

Oh the love/hate relationship I have with John Gay's The Beggar's Opera! I know that it is too easy for me to look back on time and literature with a revisionist mindset and be critical of the sexism that is rampant in the play; however, it is quite interesting to see the ideas about gender in British society in 1728. Traditionally stereotypical representations of women have almost always included the "bitch or whore" dichotomy and the belief that their sole value is in their bodies.  The women in this play are no exception. Polly and Lucy are consistently referred to as "whores" and "sluts" by their respective parents, others around them, and even the object of their affection, Macheath himself.   Both think themselves in love and married to him even though they meet the other mistress.  Most disgusting is that up until the bitter end, both Polly and Lucy are still truly vying for the captain's affections, asking "No token of love?" in the most pathetic of manners (Act III, Sc. XV.) Macheath doesn't even reply, instead four more mistresses with his illegitimate children enter the cell.  Really? The fact that the author decides to end the play without justice for Macheath's iniquities is unfathomable.  But the author does not even stop there---he goes so far as to have Macheath take his pick of all the women while they try to seduce him again.  Each objectified woman "calls forth her charms, to provoke his desires"; once again the womens' bodies are there only chance for power or happiness (Act III, Sc. XVII).  I know it is literature, but the layers of meaning in it all makes it difficult for me to read.

Beggar's Opera

While reading The Beggar's Opera, I realized that I had seen the play performed in high school and was in complete aww of the performance. Of course small high school theatre programs in Texas aren't big on opera, the play was modernized by rap and pop, but all the more entertaining! I had never read the play before and while I did, all the missing pieces fell into place. Before I had never known why Macheath was in jail and I just assumed he was a notorious bachelor who loved the ladies, not a thief who had multiple wives. One day I wish to see this play performed again, on a larger scale; it's such a great play and I like it a lot!

A fascinating concept I followed throughout the play was "love"; to love for money, or to love for love. In scene one Polly said she married Macheath for love and her parents disregarded the concept all together. Although the prostitutes don't actually "love", they do fond over Macheath and without hesitation turn him over to Peachum. Their love of money came before any regard they had for the man, to him he was just another man to earn a buck off. Later, Macheath claimed to love Lucy because he wanted to be freed from the jail and she was the only way out. His love was out of necessity, not out of love. When it came to his other wives, love was never really a theme with any of his previous marriages. In the end, Macheath declared his true wife was Polly, out of love, she was his wife. Being the helpless romantic that I am, I ate this play right up :)

Another notion I was brought back to was the women and their fulfillment of the role they were assigned to play. To her parents, Polly was property and not a young woman who sought love and humanity. The women thieves at the bar fulfilled their roles as women and as thieves for the shiny penny they would receive. Both Polly and Lucy's father thought about the money they would take from their daughters if they became Macheath's widow, seeing their daughter's for their worth to them and the profit they could make. Women had roles to fill and were subjected to fulfill them, to fall short of that role was unjustifiable. I think of freedom for women in this play and how it was restricted. To be a free woman was to be an outcast and separated from society, their was no freedom in marriage, and the was certainly no freedom in death.

Women in Beggar's Opera

Oh my goodness. This play had some very absurd moments. With wives meeting wives meeting wives. Despite the crazier moments between Lucy and Polly, John Gay had some interesting commentary on female-male relationships.  Women to women relationships were portrayed as mostly good in this play.  For example, when Macheath is with all the prostitutes, their discussion among themselves is really nice. Mrs. Coaxer says "if any woman hath more art than another, to be sure, 'tis Jenny" (2631).  This is just one of the friendlier things said in the exchange. The same cordial attitude can be found when the men are all together.  When Macheath is with his men in Act 2 scene 2 they are very nice to each other.  They attribute to each other the highest compliments, honor, courage etc.  When Macheath admits that he cannot go out with the men because he is in a spot of trouble, none of the men are angry.  When men and women are separate in this play, it brings out the best of all the characters.
Interestingly enough, the ugly side of the characters is only present when the opposite gender is brought in.  I think the best example of this is the interaction between Polly and Lucy.  Although we don't see Lucy very much before we meet her fighting over Macheath, we do see Polly.  When Polly thinks that Macheath is all hers, she is very sweet. It is when she is confronted with the fact that he has another wife that things start to become ugly. Lucy is so possessed with guilt she even tries to poison Polly. Yet all of this revenge and anger dries up as soon as Macheath is out of the picture, dead.  Since neither of them will have him, they bond over their sorrow, "let us retire, my dear Lucy, and indulge our sorrows" (2653).  In sum, Gay is presenting the idea that the opposite gender causes us to act our worse.  That without the other gender, we are actually pretty good people. Interesting.
-Molly Hakso

tragedy and comedy?

Something i find interesting is that "the beggar's opera" and a lot of other plays we have read have been "comedies" and also really tragic too! The whole plot of this opera is parents who have sold their daughter to basically a sex trade, tries to convince her to kill her husband! And also looking at "Duchess of Malfi" and the tragic things that happen it's interesting that they also make it into a comedy. I'm sure the audience was confused whether to laugh or feel sad. This play also took place in 1728 which was the time of George II. This king forbid the succession of protestants and was always in wars with spain. I think this play could relate to the political time period because of the opposition of many for the conservative whig party. Another thing is that i think Macheath is kind of like a christ-figure who is plotted after although completely innocent. I really like this play and it's my favorite by far.

--Andrea Yarnell

Epic Rape of the Lock

I think that it is interesting and ironic how Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," describing a man cutting a lock of hair from Belinda, is written in a very epic and stylized fashion. The form is in the canto style similar to "The Faerie Queene," and the style of writing very much calls to mind the epic style of "Beowulf" or even "The Odyssey" or "The Illiad." However, while the style is that of serious epics, Pope makes a simple card game into a vicious mythological battle, and scenes such as the card game as well as the premise of losing a lock of hair make the whole story a farce and a satire on the epic style. I also like how it shows the importance of hair and beauty to Belinda when Pope makes such a big deal out of the loss of a lock of her hair. If only a few words were changed, a reader would think that someone had died or something equally terrible had happened, but while I wouldn't like someone to cut off some of my hair and it was very shocking, losing some hair is not even close to the same scale of terribleness as death. Altogether, I really liked how Pope made a simple, though shocking, event into the main event of an epic story.

Rachel Means