Notes Toward a Heroine of Sensibility

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The whole of anything is never told;
you can only take what groups together."
from
The Notebooks of Henry James
A couple of things happened over the weekend:

First, I had a note from the niece of my dear friend and literary colleague, Celine Carrigan, marking the 20th - year memorial of her passing. Twenty years . . . without Celine . . . it will never seem right.

Second, I had a call from my friend Sandy S - K asking me, on behalf of her studious daughter Rachel, how I used to prepare for my big exams. What came to mind was my typical strategy, suggested by Henry James (above) of taking "what groups together."

In fact, I remember applying that particular strategy when getting ready, with assistance from Celine, for a presentation on "The Heroine of Sensibility" (one of her specialties) -- and I still have those notes! So I pulled them to take a look and see what I had learned and hopefully retained from that study session.

Thus, I begin this post with a shout - out of "Congratulations!" to Rachel on the completion of her M.A. in English / Writing. And I dedicate these musings to the memory of Celine's scholarship and pedagogy. She was a gentlewoman and a scholar, a beloved teacher and a true friend, and a heroine of sensibility in her own right.

~ Heart - shaped ornaments ~ a gift from Celine ~

From the 18th Century through the present day, the heroine of sensibility has animated the British and American novel with spirited introspection and vibrant discourse. Despite lack or loss of legitimate authority in her life, her will is always strong enough to initiate a natural regrouping, restoring order and continuity. She strives for autonomy, self - determination, and a life not entirely bound by acquiescence. Modernist Carolyn Heilbrun suggests a more appropriate designation: "The Woman as Hero."

Such a character believes herself sufficiently in control of the situation at hand; she develops a sense of her own identity as she contemplates and searches for destiny. As with any male hero, the woman as hero struggles with the tension "between her apparent freedom and her actual relegation to a constrained destiny."

All you have to do is google "sensibility," and Jane Austen is all over the place. In chronological order here are a few additional authors and novels that capture the characters and the concepts:

Samuel Richardson / Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740)
My thoughts: Her focus finally shifts from the wickedness around her to a matter of confusion within her soul. She identifies herself as "an enemy she never thought of before." She names her own mind as the power with which she must struggle. Pamela holds out for being treated as a social and economic equal, for unrestricted, unclassed treatment as a human being.

Samuel Richardson / Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (1748)
"Steadily she [Clarissa Harlowe] has refused the marriage he offers: she cannot marry without love, cannot love without honour, and cannot honour the man who, by every action, has ruined his (not her own) honour in her eyes" (Elizabeth Bowen, from English Novelists, 1942). Clarissa transcends the limits set by the novel's world.

Henry Fielding / The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749
" 'Love,' says Squire Allworthy, 'however much we may corrupt and pervert its meaning . . . remains a rational passion' " (21).

Charlotte Bronte / Jane Eyre (1847)
"But Jane, like Clarissa Harlowe, still identifies virtue with the power to keep her fate in her own hands" (Elizabeth Bowen, from English Novelists, 1942).

"As Celine Carrigan notes . . . Charlotte Bronte's heroines, unlike their creator are generally 'free from the burden of imposed responsibility' (214, "Versions of the Governess: Narrative Patterns in Ellen Weeton, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Bronte." Diss. U of Notre Dame, 1988). They work to support themselves, but do not have others dependent upon them; rather, they assert her belief that work in itself is respectable and healthy for women" (Christine Doyle in Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Bronte: Transatlantic Translations, 140).

from Jane Eyre, Chapter 2: "How is he my master? Am I a servant?"

" 'Unjust! -- unjust!' said my reason."

Jane resolves to achieve escape from insupportable oppression.

Chapter 10: " . . . my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils."

Emily Bronte / Wuthering Heights (1847)
"The love in it is relentless, as pure of hope as it is of flesh. . . . here is the real English dark tower of passion above rationality. Wuthering Heights bears no definite feminine stamp -- though perhaps only a woman could have liberated her spirit so completely" (Elizabeth Bowen, from English Novelists, 1942).

Henry James / Portrait of a Lady (1881)
My favorite thing about Isabel Archer: when she says, "I feel very old." And Ralph responds, "You'll grow very young again. . . ." (Chapter 54, p 471).

James gives Isabel traits of himself and of his beloved cousin Minny Temple, who died young of tuberculosis and of whom he said: "She would have given anything to live."

Created late in the 19th Century, Isabel is a modern heroine of sensibility: honest, imaginative, innocent, intelligent, philosophical, presumptuous, reflective, soul - searching -- so many admirable traits! Even so, it is a struggle to order her own life and control her own destiny without being "ground in the very mill of the conventional." Thinking over the ways in which fate and friends have let her down, Isabel suspects that "she might have been a woman more blest."

E. M. Forster / Howards End (1910):
Of course, I have invoked Forster many times over on this blog for his iconic phrase "Only connect! (See Mission Statement, Commonplace Book, King & Queen, Handful of Dust, RedBear.)

Taking a closer look at the hero of Howards End: Margaret Schlegel begins the novel with an awareness of herself, her sexuality, and her lack of inheritance; by the end, she inherits from Mrs. Wilcox a sense of England and a sense of reality that allows her to pass the inheritance on.

Helen to Margaret: "But you picked up the pieces, and made us a home. Can't it strike you -- even for a moment -- that your life has been heroic?" (222 - 23).

E. M. Forster / A Passage to India (1924)
My favorite thing about Adela Quested: "She loved plans" (147). She speaks the truth, makes decisions, alienates everyone, shakes the world, and makes a fool of herself in the cause of justice. Unlike other characters in the novel, she is capable of public heroism. She finds her function beyond the range of her womanhood. As a heroine of sensibility, her innate quest is not necessarily bound by a desire for romance and children. [Likewise Miles Franklin's heroine Sybylla Melvyn in her 1901 novel My Brilliant Career. In the movies, both Adela and Sybylla are portrayed brilliantly by Judy Davis.]

Doris Lessing / The Golden Notebook (1962)
Anna thinks,"That will be my epitaph. Here lies Anna Wulf, who was always too intelligent." Anna and her friend Molly are "free women," but their emotional structure is incompatible with the fragmentation of real life: " . . . the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up" and our strongest emotions are irrelevant to the time we live in. Despite her notebooks, Anna fears that her words "have no connection with anything I feel to be true" and suffers from a lack of conviction and faith in her own significance. As a heroine of sensibility, Anna wonders "What anonymous whole am I part of?" Furthermore, she is willing to pay the price of seeing whole, including anxiety, exhaustion, and responsibility: "The world would never get itself understood, be ordered by words, be 'named,' unless [she] remained a woman who was able to be responsible" (651). [Likewise Margaret Drabble's character Alison in The Ice Age who must endure for the sake of her daughters.]

Though possessed of many gifts and talents, the heroine of sensibility still makes mistakes; in fact her very self - honesty and introspection sometimes lead her into inevitable error. The woman as hero is not always able to please herself, nor does she escape her share of the world's burdens. Yet her path is made more interesting to herself and to the reader because she consults her feelings and acts from the highest dictates of her intelligence.

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
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my running list of recent reading
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The RedBear Connection

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Welcome RedBear!
Back in early June, my older sister Peggy sent this "picture of a kitty who has decided we are his family. I think I'll keep him and see if I can convert him to an indoor kitty. When I saw him outside the front door this morning I just had to take his picture because it reminded me so much of your quote, 'a house where all's accustomed, ceremonious.' Doesn't he look like he just belongs here? If I keep him I'll call him RedBear because he's a ginger boy and built like a little bear."

In addition to the E. M. Forster quotation, the words of Mark Twain came to mind when I saw RedBear waiting so proudly and patiently on Peg's front porch: "A house without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house, perhaps, but how can it prove its title?" Clearly, my sister has a perfect house, and this cat knew it! As a discerning feline, he could sense that this dwelling proved its title and chose it for his new home!

Coincidentally, my older brother Dave once had a similar cat with a similar name, and shared his story: "This cat looks a lot like the cat we had in Crailsheim that we named Bear. He was a big old woolly street cat that learned the joys of being a kept cat indoors. When he died of kidney failure I spent the last night with him laying on the laundry room floor. He woke me up to say goodbye and then passed right before my eyes. Needless to say, it was a long weekend. Good luck hanging on to this boy. He really looks like a keeper!"

At the end of the month, I asked Peg if RedBear was still hanging around, and she sent the good news: "RedBear is now an inside boy. Very sweet and fits in like he was always here. . . . learning the joys of being an indoor boy after living outdoors . . . getting along fine with his 'brother from a different mother.' His biggest problem is that we have to control his food or he gets sick. He's so used to fighting for his food that he wolfs down any food put in front of him. He's a wonderful addition to my home."

Thanks to Peg
for sharing these pictures of RedBear & Squiggles
and for thinking of my Fortnightly Blog!
Thanks to other readers as well, who have entered so gratifyingly into the spirit of my various blogposts:

Tracy: "I love that you save these things, it reminds me I have a kindred spirit out there who takes joy in the little things of our past and, with that, those little things become bigger."

Brigit: "Kitti Carriker, you're a cultural force of nature!"

Evelet: "Kit o' my heart! . . . May you always err on the side of audacity."

Jan: You understand "the power of story and poetry to transform and transcend. I am forever in awe of you and so so grateful to know you."

Jim: Kitti, you are the Keeper of Memories. Thanks for sharing them with so many . . . you are an essential connection.

Milly: "Today we were discussing diary and journal genres. Then we talked about blogs. I told the students that one of my friends has a blog. They wanted to see it, and I showed them. They thought it was cool and so literary, but the boys were more impressed that Sam played football for Purdue!"

Kitti: That is so sweet! Thanks for doing that! I wish all my friends who teach would show their students my blog, or maybe give them an extra credit assignment to read one of my posts! I always LOVED the concept of extra credit (both as student and teacher)! Sam has now graduated from Purdue and moved on to New York City, but I'll be sure to tell him that his legend has traveled to Northeast Missouri!

Why Connection & Coincidence?
Because as Henry James says:
"The whole of anything is never told;
you can only take what groups together."

In closing, I share the words of the ageless, timeless Hafiz:
"Still, though think about this, this great pull in us to connect."

and this excellent song about
Coincidence & Connection:

Come and See
Look up here,
Most people can't make out the difference
But it could be a small change
In the light

And sometimes
We watch our lives align
But the questions remain:
Did you will it? Is Sight benign?

Is it coincidence or connection?
Come and See
Fall to your knees
and hear the call
Are you still lovesick for it all?

Is it you that
Brighthens the same sea that
Curves my path and life-lines
Is your shine like mine?

And the difference between
Betting your life or dying
Could reveal itself in a small change
In the light

Is this coincidence or connection?
come and see
fall to your knees
and hear the call
Are you still lovesick for it all? [emphasis added]

Sung by Young Galaxy
In one of our favorite summer movies:
The Way Way Back

P.S.
Just Look at RedBear . . .
Such a Foxy Gentleman!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, August 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Painting by Leonard Orr ~ Handful of Dust in the Wind
Mimi Allin writes:
"land sky heaped feathered leading discouraging
porcupined lit bloated muffled"
This Fortnightly's connections are all about the Ache of Modernism, the sudden tortured awareness of the unlived life, the life which dared nothing -- or not enough. As Carolyn Heilbrun writes of D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930): " . . . he understood that the mortal risk was not, or was no longer, death; it had become the possibility that life, the lived life, might be evaded." Historical discontinuity, alienation, asocial individualism, existentialism, melancholy -- these were the issues at hand. Horror to horror. Dust to dust.

Unlike the Romantic movement, which can be dated from a specific event -- the publication in 1798 of the Lyrical Ballads, Modernism begins less deliberately (unless you ask Virginia Woolf; more on this next time). There is not an initial document, such as the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads," which sets forth the tenets of Modernism and heralds a movement to which writers may rally. Instead, one must look in the works themselves to locate the key concepts shaping the tone of the canon. In chronological order, here are a few of my favorites:

Joseph Conrad / Heart of Darkness (1902):
"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, —
he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath —
'The horror! The horror!'" [emphasis added]

Henry James / "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903):
"So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. . . . It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baffled . . . The escape would have been to love her . . . This horror of waking-- this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze." [emphasis added]

E. M. Forster / Howards End (1910):
"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” [emphasis added]

T.S. Eliot / The Wasteland (1922):
" . . . I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you:
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. [emphasis added]

Jessamyn West / The Friendly Persuasion (1945):
"He, a live man, to die. He extended his hand, recalling its cunning, marveling at the way stiff, unpliable bones could be so cushioned and strung together as to be capable of music, of grafting a tree, of lifting a foal from it's mother's torn flesh -- and that hand to be dust. And the enemy present . . . He saw objects two ways, now, both as more beautiful and more pitiable: those which would stay, endure beyond men, stones, trees, the moving air, had new beauty, that of their own endurance and of his leaving; but men and women were more pitiable . . . Man's a sizeable hulk reared - up on his wagon seat and pulled about the earth by horses; dead, no more'n a spoonful of dust, not enough, spread thin, to take a small - sized horse track" (147 - 150). [emphasis added]

Jack Schaefer / Shane (1949 novel / 1953 film):
In the iconic closing scene, Shane bids farewell and rides off into the valley, ignoring young Joey's desperate cries of "Shane, come back!"

In his memoir 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal writes of the equally iconic moment in his childhood when none other than the legendary Billie Holiday (who was friends with his father) took him to see Shane at the movie theater. As the movie draws to a close and Shane rides off into the sunset, "Miss Billie whispered in my ear, 'He ain't never coming back'" (48).

Alan Sillitoe / "The Fishing Boat Picture" (1959):
"Then optimism rides out of the darkness like a knight in armour. If you loved her... (of course I bloody-well did)... then you both did the only thing possible if it was to be remembered as love. Now didn't you? Knight in armour goes back into blackness. Yes, I cry, but neither of us did anything about it, and that's the trouble." [emphasis added]

Iris Murdoch / The Black Prince (1973):
"The whole room breathed the flat horror of genuine mortality, dull and spiritless and final . . . (38)
"You understand nothing of -- the horror -- no wonder you can write real books -- you don't see -- the horror -- (224, emphasis added)
"The evening was overcast . . . I could smell dust, as if the quiet tedious streets all around me had dissolved into endless dunes of dust. I thought about this morning and how we had seemed to have all the time in the world. And now there seemed to be no more time. I also thought that if only I had had the wit . . . (285)
I awoke to a grey awful spotty early morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me . . . Everything seemed to be covered with soiled dust sheets. . . . I experienced horror, then memory." (341)

William Stafford / "A Ritual To Read To Each Other"
(1977, or somewhat earlier):

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. [emphasis added]

Kansas / "Dust in the Wind" (1977)
Click to listen:
I close my eyes
Only for a moment and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes with curiosity
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Now don't hang on
Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind

Dust Bowl

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, July 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Causality: King Then Queen

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The king died and then the queen died" is a story.
"The king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot.
~ E. M. Forster ~

Forster "also points out that the difference between the two is causality. Theorists have debated the validity of the distinction since Forster proposed it in the 1927, arguing, for example, that the very temporality of "and then" entails causality (or at least invites the reader to supply it) so that the only difference between the two versions is the explicit naming of the cause in the second. The debate also includes objections to defining plot solely in terms of causality, since many narrative artists build plots on other principles. Nevertheless the debate itself shows that Forster identified four elements of narrative—character (or agent), event, temporality, and causality . . . . Because narrative spells out the specific relations among agents, events, time, and causality, it is capable of explaining phenomena that escape more abstract analyses such as those based on science-oriented ideas of general laws."

from
"Narrative - E. M. Forster's King And Queen
And Narrative Across The Disciplines"
What always strikes me about the "grief" in Forster's second sentence is not only that it introduces causality but that it reveals the queen's emotional state. Narrative requires conflict, and the queen is a conflicted character. She is grieving; and we know what that means: denial, anger, bargaining, depression. She is in conflict with herself, and with forces larger than herself, such as Nature, God and Death. Now we have a plot.

Forster's brief analysis of royal death and grief always makes me think of that classic exercise in cause - effect analysis: the Drawbridge Problem:

As he left for a visit to his outlying district, the jealous Baron warned his pretty wife: "Do not leave the castle while I am gone, or I will punish you severely when I return!"

But as the hours passed, the young Baroness grew lonely, and despite her husband's warning, decided to visit her lover who lived in the countryside nearby. The castle was located on an island in a wide fast flowing river with a drawbridge linking the island and the land at the narrowest point in the river. "Surely my husband will not return before dawn," she thought, and ordered her servants to lower the drawbridge and leave it down until she returned.

After spending several pleasant hours with her lover, the Baroness returned to the drawbridge, only to be blocked by a gateman wildly waving a long, cruel knife. "Do not attempt to cross this bridge, Baroness, or I will kill you," he raved. Fearing for her life, the Baroness returned to her lover and asked him to help. "Our relationship is only a romantic one," he said, "I will not help."

The Baroness then sought out a boatman on the river, explained her plight to him, and asked him to take her across the river in his boat. "I will do it, but only if you pay me my fee of five Marks." "But I have no money with me!" the Baroness protested. "That is too bad. No money, no ride," the boatman said flatly.

Her fear growing, the Baroness ran crying to the home of a friend, and after again explaining the situation, begged for enough money to pay the boatman his fee. If you had not disobeyed your husband, this would not have happened," the friend said. "I will give you no money."

With dawn approaching and her last resource exhausted, the Baroness returned to the bridge in desperation, attempted to cross to the castle, and was slain by the gateman.

Drawbridge from the Liebig Collection
A variety of discussion guides are available for studying the motivation behind each character's behavior. Years ago, when teaching "The Drawbridge" as part of a unit on the short story, I asked the class to consider why the Baroness would have risked a visit to this unfeeling lover. One of my students, who was having a tough semester and dealing with a death in the family, shook his head in resignation and answered, "Maybe she thought he loved her." I continue to value his conclusion as one of the best commentaries of all on these conflicted characters. Looking for love in all the wrong places -- sigh -- as is so often the case.

******************
Speaking of causal analysis, a few weeks ago, my older son Ben, wrote to recommend a "decent John Green video on who started World War I, because it reminded me that I was going to talk to you guys about causality!"

My younger son Sam added: "Good video. I could go check more primary sources and learn more about WWI, but I'm chill with just blaming Russia," inspiring me to suggest that we could blame Queen Victoria.

See:
The Roots of World War I,
Tangled in the Web of Queen Victoria's Royal Offspring

and

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm:
Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
by Miranda Carter

******************
But back to the Drawbridge. Ben was ready to present us with some philosophically challenging material -- no glib conclusions! So here goes! Interestingly enough, Ben's narrative begins with a somewhat modified version of the problematic Drawbridge Exercise:

Intro
Trying to disentangle correlation from causation is what econ has been all about for the last twenty or so years (formally, this is called identification). It's been dying a little bit recently. People became increasingly focused on super small but well identified problems. The pendulum is swinging back to tackling and thinking about much bigger, but trickier problems. Either way, though, it's good to have a nice framework for thinking about causality. Without understanding what causes what and the mechanisms through which it causes it, we can't hope to design decent policies.

The setting: king says if princess runs away to be with peasant, he'll have her executed. peasant asks her to run away, she does, guy at moat lets down moat. King sends knight to retrieve princess. King tells executioner to cut off her head. He does. Princess dies.

The identification question: what/who killed the princess? For example, did the princess running away from the castle cause her to have her head chopped off?

The policy question: how to save the princess?

Necessary and Sufficient
To say that A is necessary for B means that A must be in order for B to be. Or that B cannot be unless A also is. Or that if A is not, then B is not. Or that whenever B is, A must also be.

Examples:
(a) A necessary condition for getting a good grade is handing in a term paper.
(b) A necessary condition for being a bachelor is being unmarried.
(c) A necessary condition for thunder is lightning.

To say that A is sufficient for B means that if A is, then B definitely is.

Examples:
(a) A sufficient condition for getting an A is getting an A on every assignment.
(b) A sufficient condition for being male is being a bachelor.
(c) A sufficient condition for thunder is lightning.

More colloquially, necessity means it can't happen without it, and sufficiency means that with it, we're definitely doing to have it.

Causality
We think of an order of causality. We'll start with the strongest form of A causes B. That is, A causes B if:

(1) A is necessary and sufficient for B.
(2) A is non-redundant and sufficient for B.
(3) A is a non-redundant part of a sufficient chain of events for B.
(4) A is an insufficient but non-redundant part of a necessary chain of events for B.
(5) A is an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient chain of events for B.

We call condition (5) the INUS condition, and it's where much of social science is concerned. There aren't a lot of necessary and sufficient causal factors for being employed, or having a successful IPO, or getting a line of credit extension, or graduating from college.

An Example
A good way to become familiar with this is to think through some examples. Did the princess running away from the castle cause her death?

Is the princess running away from the castle necessary for her head being chopped off? No. The King is obviously crazy; he might have had her executed when he found out that she wasn't his daughter because the queen had been sleeping with one of the minstrels because she thought the King was a prick and didn't want to marry him in the first place.

Is the princess running away from the castle sufficient for her death? No,the knight could have refused to go get her and bring her back to the castle. The executioner might have refused to kill her.

So, the princess running away from the castle didn't cause her execution? Well that's not quite right. It doesn't cause it according to the definition of causality.

Is her running away non-redundant? Yeah, see previous example of queenly infidelity.

We might actually say that her running away did cause her execution according to the third definition. Actually, yes. I'm going to say that that's where we get to. Turns out the princess running away did cause her death.

We leave the causal nature of the other story's actors as exercises for the reader.

Designing policy, though, is very tricky. First, it involves figuring out how much each actor caused her death. Something made very, very tricky without huge sample sizes. In this case, there's only one occurrence, so we can, empirically, say very little. Then there's all the logistics of the policy and its unintended consequences. And of those predictable consequences some valuation of their effects has to be made. Also often impossible to do satisfactorily.

New York Times
Kevin Mumford, and many professors since, have recommended going to nyt.com at any time and picking an article. True story.

Here's one about "Refugees in Afghanistan": "Such experiences have become increasingly common for Afghans living in Pakistan after the terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar in December. Though the attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan refugees say it fueled a new wave of resentment against them."

Did the attack on the school cause increased resentment towards the Afghan refugees? It's not immediately clear this is the case. Which kind of causality is it, if it is indeed causal? It's clearly not sufficient. The school being blown up by a terrorist group is not definitely correlated with resentment against refugees. What non-redundant link does it serve in the chain? It could be that the refugees have come, consumed resources previously going to Pakistanis, and this hit a threshold that fueled a new wave of resentment. The school attack is redundant in this case. Is the chain of events necessary? As before, nope.

We could precisely identify the causal effects of the attack on the school by comparing the levels of resentment faced by the refugees in the event there is an attack, and again in the event that there's not an attack (this is called the counterfactual). We often estimate the counterfactual by looking at a control group -- we can identify the effects of the drug by comparing what happens to the cholesterol of the treated group as compared to the control group. We can't do this with school attacks for quite a few reasons - expensive, unethical. And even if we could, it wouldn't be a perfect experiment, because it would happen on a different day and the circumstances wouldn't be identical. This is why economics is tricky snacks. Ultimately, we can't prove the attack at the school caused increased levels of resentment.

But we can use a smell test: would the levels of resentment been higher, the same, or lower if the school had not been attacked. That will shed some light on its causal nature.
Thanks to Guest Blogger Ben McCartney!

******************
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

P.S.
My friend Diane always sends the best Valentines!
The King & Queen of Hearts above is from Pier 1 Imports (2006)

Not a Memo, A Mission Statement

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song,
read a good poem, see a fine picture
and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words."
Back in February, when I clicked on "Create Blog," I picked this self - explanatory comment from Goethe to appear continuously as part of the header above. At the start I didn't think to explicate it any further, but now that my literary blog is six months old, perhaps I should.

When I designed this page, the space I had in mind was one where readers would encounter everything on Goethe's list: selections from all the wonderful poetry that I have been reading and collecting ever since forever, the song lyrics that make up the soundtrack of my life, and a few reasonable words of my own (or so I'd like to think!), tying it all together with the perfect visuals into an image that you won't forget.

Goethe makes it sound so simple, I thought I'd give it a try. For a title, I decided to start with my name. That would be easy enough: Kitti Carriker: A Fortnightly Literary Blog of Connection & Coincidence.

Fortnightly: Well, that just sounds so cool and literary, plus I felt pretty sure I could commit to an essay every two weeks.

Connection: I wanted, if possible, to create a place of connections, in the spirit of E. M. Forster, who implores us in Howards End to connect: "Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect . . . ."

Coincidence: As I wrote in an earlier blog post: "Sometimes life is so full of coincidences that I think my head will split open trying to take them all in! It's enough to make me believe in the whole Universe at once!" I stand by that. I want to capture all the unexpected connections that amaze and surprise and suggest a pattern.

Back in college when I worked on the literary magazine, I was known as the editor with "a poem for every poem" because no matter what I read, I was always reminded of something else -- kind of like that "Scooby-Doo" episode when Daphne asks Velma: "Do you have a book for every occasion?" And Velma answers, "Actually, yes."

A poem for every poem, and a book for every book! Those are the literary connections and coincidences that I am always on the lookout for, not that they require much tracking down, since they usually find me before I find them.

In addition, I wanted the blog to include my favorite passage from Yeats' poem "A Prayer For My Daughter." Naturally, he wants so many things for her, but chiefly a heart full of "radical innocence" and a life "Rooted in one dear perpetual place . . . a house / Where all's accustomed, ceremonious."

How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

From childhood -- perhaps impressed upon me when I first read The Little Red Story Book (more on that later), anyway long before I ever read Yeats -- one of my goals was to organize the kind of home described in his poem, where order would triumph over chaos and no holiday would ever go unremarked: accustomed and ceremonious, familiar yet celebratory.

Thus the line from "A Prayer For My Daughter" has became the perpetual caption for the pictures that change with every post. I hope that in some way (though not always in the same way) these photographs and illustrations portray "a house where all's accustomed, ceremonious." Sometimes it's my own house (or former houses), other times, a cathedral, a log cabin, a playground, an historical custom house, a neighborhood mural, a village mosaic, a medieval tapestry. I admit, these last two were not created by me, though I take most (not all) of the photographs and did help paint the mural!

And those raspberry parfaits you see up there? I didn't make them myself either (the credit goes to my dessert specialists, Ben and Karen . . . and to Gerry for growing the fruit). But I did line them up on the windowsill and photograph them. And I did eat one a little while later -- delicious!

So that's what's happening on this page every couple of weeks! Oops, I mean, every fortnight! Maybe it all made sense before. If it didn't, I hope it does now, perfect sense!

New Paint Colors: Silver Lace Vine and Raspberry Parfait