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ptrainor's blog
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal 13 Journal #13 I found it interesting in the work chapter that Winterson chose sales and an office as the medium for her exploration of men in the workplace. I thought this was a bit odd because I don’t find working in an office or doing sales to be a stereotypical enough of a man’s job. It especially didn’t work for me because she and her coworkers were doing door to door sales work. I see those people as kind of slight weasel like shady characters. In my opinion it is not all that manly of a job. I really only respect people who are selling things door to door for fundraising purposes like the Boy Scouts etc., not for profit. I think that Winterson would have gotten a much more positive and better view of men in the workplace had she chosen to participate in a more stereotypical male career such as a firefighter, police officer, soldier, sailor, airman, or marine. I think by going into one of these stereotypically male fields she would have seen that real men are not the shady characters that she met in the office. Also, she would have seen the bond that exists between people in these lines of work stemming from the fact that their lives depend on one another. Winterson would have also gotten a lot more insight into the male friendship bond that she didn’t necessarily get from her time in the monastery. I realize that it would be pretty much impossible for her to get into one of these jobs because of the security implications etc. so those thoughts were just theoretical.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal 12 Journal #12 The book Self-Made Man got better to read for me in this last section that we read for Monday. It was very refreshing to learn of Winterson’s dealing with rejection. As a guy I could identify with that and feel her pain. Women in that situation are in the position of power. Society has dictated that men are to be the pursuers and women the pursued. This makes it hard on a man because when he approaches her he is at her mercy. Rarely is it the other way around because of how society is. In my experience it is much less nerve wracking when meeting women in a casual basis like in class or at the store or something because there is not the assumption that one or the other party wants anything out of it.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal 11 Journal #11 The book Self-Made Man in the first section has been kind of boring to me since as a man I live through all the stuff that she is talking about as far as manhood is concerned. I don’t necessarily see the point of doing this experiment without it being legitimate research. I did, however, enjoy the two quotes from Shakespeare that preface the book. The quotes from Twelfth Night and As You Like it were very appropriate since both of those plays involve gender bending because of female characters taking the disguise of male characters. As a result bizarre romantic entanglements ensue such as in the case of Twelfth Night in which Viola (disguised as Sebastian) is in love with Duke Orsino, who is courting Olivia, who is in love with Sebastian (who is really Viola).
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal 10 Journal #10 I really liked the end of the novel Written on the Body. I liked it because the author doesn’t ever say if it is really Louise that is at the door, or if the protagonist is imagining that it is Louise from the intense memory that (s)he has of Louise. I like the idea that it actually is Louise more than the latter because I was really pulling for the main character to get back with Louise because I felt for him/her. Oh, and by the way I really hated the character Gail. She just seemed like this fat, disgusting woman who despite being told that the main character had no interest in her and was still in love with Louise felt the need to impose herself on the main character. I really just wanted to hit Gail and say get the hell out of here, no one wants you around. It was really nice when the real/imaginary Louise appeared at the end to displace gail.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal #9 I found this section of the book to be a lot more fun to read than previous sections. This is because there finally is a good amount of tension within the novel. I mean there was tension before but not as good as this. I wasn’t too surprised by the narrator’s choice to leave Louise with Elgin. I think that the narrator thought that by leaving Louise to be cared for by her husband and be able to get the medical treatments that she needs to live that he/she was proving to Louise that he/she loved her by sacrificing his/her happiness for the well being of Louise. I liked this section despite the later parts that involved the detailed descriptions of parts of the body. I felt that this was an unnessessary part of the novel and it would be better without it.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal #8 The second section of Written on the Body was much easier to bring myself through. I actually found myself getting into the story a little. I think the reason for this is that there are no actual chapters and since I want to find out just what the protagonist is, whether male, female, or other, I find myself tempted to read on past the assigned section. I still hold to my feeling that this character is a female, although there have been things in the second section that have swayed me to think that there is a possibility that the character could be a male. I have a feeling I will find at the end that the main character is transgendered or something more outlandish like that and it will give the novel a nice twist at the end.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal #7 The book we are reading, Written on the Body, is a fairly interesting novel so far. The thing that interests me about it is that the reader does not know whether or not the protagonist is male or female. I also found it interesting that the book has no breaks in it like chapters or any of that kind of a thing. The thing I don’t like about the book is that it seems to be pretty much one long epic love poem. I am not a big fan of poetry in the first place so reading this piece of epic love poetry is really hard for me to drag myself through.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon Journal #6 I found the ending of Egalia’s Daughters to be pretty disappointing. It seemed that although the masculist movement had made progress they really hadn’t done enough by the end of the novel. Also I felt that the whole thing with Gro at the end of the novel was pretty disappointing as well. I felt that the novel would have been more enjoyable to the reader if Petronius wasn’t such a militant masculist and could accept having a family and stuff. I don’t see it as too wrong for Gro to beat the crap out of him since he got her pregnant and then wanted nothing to do with her. If I was in that situation I’d be pretty pissed off too. That action by petronius is actually very masculine when it is viewed in terms of our society.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon 5-22-06 Journal #6 I found this section of the novel pretty jarring. I think this happened because Brantenberg does not really deal with the passage of time very well. Between sections 1 and 2 there was a period of time that went by in the novel but the author doesn’t specify, so it makes some things extra shocking. I was pretty surprised when Petronius and Baldrian decided to go to the gay club and began to kiss and all that kind of intimate stuff. This is surprising because the reader gets to feeling that Petronius and Gro are in love with one another, although, the author does talk early on in the book about Petronius’ appreciation for baldrian on a seemingly aesthetic level. The most startling part of the section was seeing spinnerman Owlmoss and Fandango at the gay club. There definitely seemed to be some element of pederasty to this scene. Kinda of like what you may or may not see in ancient Greece or Rome, the young boy with the older man
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon 5-19-06 Journal #4 When I first started reading Egalia’s Daughters I found it to be fairly interesting and a good mirror for how women are treated in society. The author does, however, go to extremes to make this work as we have discussed in class. For some reason while reading the section that we are to discuss in class on Monday I just got fed up with the male characters in the novel. I don’t see them as even being real human beings anymore. They are so accepting of their fate that it is ridiculous. Men even as portrayed in the novel (spinnerman Owlmoss is a perfect example, I mean come on he shattered a desk with one blow) are still physically more powerful than the women. I just cannot accept the fact that these men don’t produce enough testosterone to become aggressive and exert their dominance over the women and win some equality at least, if not power. At one point Ruth and Christopher talk about his being castrated so that they don’t have anymore kids. Christopher just accepts this and even someone looks forward to this. Obviously he doesn’t have the same male parts as I do because even the thought of castration is terrible to me. I know that today it is possible to chemically castrate someone but the way they talked about it in the book it seemed to me it was the kind that involves cutting. Also I began to be annoyed by how medieval their view of the world is. They seem to have a fairly advanced society yet the men in the masculine league couldn’t fathom how to raise a garden because they were incapable of menstruation. I suppose this is all just me ranting though.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon 5-17-06 Journal #3 I found the assigned chapters fairly interesting. It has become easier to understand the vernacular used in the novel and to interpret the events that are occurring. I thought the portrayal of the assault made by the three females on Petronius was an interesting depiction. Although it clearly would be considered sexual assault in both our own society, and the society in Egalsund I do not feel that it mirrors a rape as we would see it. Generally I and I think that most in society feel that rape involves penetration, and some sort of sexual intercourse. I don’t think that the suffering endured by Petronius can really be compared to that of a rape victim, male or female in our society. It was also interesting how the Bram family dealt with the assault upon Petronius. Although reporting a rape in today’s society can be embarrassing it is generally done to bring the assailant to justice. In the novel, however, the Brams do nothing about the assault. This is even despite the fact that Ruth is a high ranking official. As I predicted, Petronius is beginning to have rebellious thoughts about the conventions of society. I was surprised though that he seemed so eager to accept Gro Maydaughter’s fatherhood protection.
Patrick Trainor ENGL 360k Blackmon 5-15-06 Journal #2 The reading from the courses packet I found fairly difficult to get through, not because it was particularly hard to read, but because I found it uninteresting. I have never really found psychology interesting and thus have never taken a class of studied it on my own time. However, I found Egalia’s Daughters to be thus far a very interesting novel. I found the writing style used to be very reminiscent of that of Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange. I found them similar because of the fictional languages used by the characters of the novels to differentiate their societies from our own. Also, both novels tackle social issues in fictional societies in order to help the reader apply the novels’ lessons to the readers own circumstances. I found it interesting how the male/female roles are so perfectly reversed in Egalia’s Daughters. The author even goes as far as imposing a similar garment to that of the female brassiere, the pehoe, on the male characters in the novel. I think that the concept of this novel is fairly jarring at first to the reader, especially the male reader, because its society is so very different from that of our own society. I personally can envision no future or society on earth in which the gender roles would be reversed in that way. |
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