October 28 2010

Transition from Victorian Period to the Modern Period

Queen Victoria’s Death Notice

(notice nobody posed her)

Victorian “values” gave rise to the modern “housewife.”

(Happy! Cleaning your clothes! Don’t ask me why!)

But not everyone thought this was swell…

(Are we mentally ill? Are we “acting out”? Can you tell? Does it matter?)

Hysteria!

Symptoms of “hysteria”: Faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and a ‘tendency to cause trouble.’

Essentially, if you were unhappy — as you had every reason to be — you were probably a “hysteric.”  It is not by coincidence that the ‘hysteric’ and the ‘housewife’ emerge at the same time.

On of the key “experts” on hysteria was Sigmund Freud, who classified hysteria as a “anxiety disorder” — which was about as useful as classifying Unicorns as horses: if it does not exit, it does not matter what you call it.

Treatment for hysteria was not pleasant. It ranged from the confinement to sexual  abuse. It was generally seen as a sexual disorder, or stemming from repressed or

“misaligned” sexual concerns.

(Either I’m crazy, or the world is crazy! OR BOTH!)

While Hysteria was not “real” in the sense that Alzheimer disease or depression is real,  it raised all kinds of questions about the possible connections between our conscious lives and subconscious desires.

They were similar to the questions that were raised by many of the Romantic and Victorian poets we have read, and that’s why we’re talking about it.

And this ground was explored by Sigmund Freud.

Now that we have a little bit of background, we can move on.

The Interpretation of Dreams

Journal: (Suggested: 10 Minutes)

For today, you read an excerpt from The Interpretation of Dreams. What are your thoughts on dreams? Do they mean anything? Do they have secret meaning? Can they be interpreted? What is the experience of talking or writing about dreams like? Are dreams constructed? Are they “inspired”? What do you think? Does it matter? Should it matter? Why don’t we find them interesting, if we don’t?

Discussion: (Suggested 5-10 Minutes)

Share your findings. Have we read any poems this semester that have seemed “dreamlike” to you? If so, which ones and why? Also, if they are dreamlike, what makes them that way?

Class Discussion: (Suggested 5-10 Minutes)

Share Reaction Papers/Discussion: (Suggested: 5-10 Minutes)

Mini-Lecture:

A few points to consider

1: Three Views on Dream Interpretation

• The Scientific View — no room for dream interpretation.

• The symbolic view — like poetry.

• The prophetic view — speaks to the future.

2: Freud sees the dream as the expression of a wish, wish-fulfillment.

3: He uses himself as a subject. And he interprets his writing about the dream — so we can say that what he produces is a weird kind of literary analysis. Dreams are particular to people and their neuroses, he tells us.

4: Irma — an “overdetermined image”. Is it his wife? His daughter? His lover? Notice how little he appears to know or care about this issue.

5: His analysis brings together a range of facts only he has access to, and which speak to the shape of his life. His comments are very revealing. He seems a bit like Pater in this way.

6: The dream is an opportunity to consider a larger subject, in this case the life of the analyst — we are learning about the _individual_ in a way we might not have expected. Is this what a new form of poetry looks like? Is this was Shelly was talking about?

7: This raises questions about what the artwork can tell us.

8: The analysis leads to the identification of a wish — or several wishes — that he or she has.

Mini-Lecture in Action: Psychic life and waking like are joined by the wish, by wish-fulfillment. How could this be represented in the medium of a novel?

We have not talked about novels yet — but will.

(Victorians are gross!)

Homework: Read the first ten chapters of “To The Lighthouse”