Women's Room

A ROOM WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Caution: Women!
A post to coincide with
Menstrual Hygiene Day ~ 28 May

“We don’t look into menstruation as a man or a woman issue . . .
both have equal roles to play in changing the overall perception.”
~ Dhirendra Pratap Singh ~
helping the Indian government build schools
that have adequate infrastructure for women,
including separate toilets

"We see a world where no woman is held back by her body.
We will work proudly and tirelessly until every single girl
has an equal opportunity for the brighter future she deserves.
By reimagining feminine hygiene products to provide support,
comfort, confidence, and peace of mind,
we aim to eliminate shame,
empowering women and girls around the world."
~ Miki Agrawal, Radha Agrawal, Antonia Dunbar ~
Co - founders of THINX

"Once I had a dream. In the dream I was to receive a diploma
as a spiritual teacher or guide of some sort. There were two of us
being presented with such a certificate at the time. The other was a man -- Swamibabaguruishiroshirabbaisoandso.
He wore long colorful robes and had a fist full of degrees and papers.
To receive his diploma he only had to step forward and present himself
with his long titles, flowing robes, and abundant credentials.
But before me there stood an enormous mountain of laundry.
To receive my diploma
I would first have to climb over this huge heap of laundry."
~ Polly Berrien Berends ~
from Whole Child / Whole Parent

Perhaps nightmares in this vein constitute one of the hidden narratives of the feminine consciousness, an experience that is shared by many but rarely written into the script. American novelist, Marilyn French (1929 - 2009) includes a similar narrative in her 1977 novel, The Women's Room, which follows the progress of a group of friends -- Mira, Martha, Val, Isolde, Clarissa, and Kyla -- through the graduate program in English Literature at Harvard. They struggle against the innate superiority which they sense in their male colleagues and professors. Their submerged feelings of inadequacy are illustrated in a dream that haunts Kyla shortly before her orals. As a prospective graduate student, she is forced to confront a sexist legacy and a pile of laundry similar to that described above by Polly Berrien Berends. In the Women's Room nightmare, Kyla has just entered the exam room, "when she spied the pile in the corner. Instantly she knew what it was, but she was incredulous, she was so ashamed. . . . She was horrified. Those stained sanitary napkins, those bloody underpants were hers, she knew they were hers, and she knew the men would know it too . . . but there was no way she could conceal them" (561 - 562).

The events of these nightmares suggest the ever - present tension between mind and body which informs the female students' educational pursuits. In these dreams, the women feel defined first by their physicality, second by their intellectual activity. When Kyla's test day arrives, the corner of the room is empty; nervously she endures the next two hours, and at last "the judgment having been whispered in her ear by the director, she trembled down the wooden stairs." Willing back the tears, she makes her way, gripping the banister, to her friends who wait below, asking "'How did you do?'" When she answers them, "the words gurgled out of her wet throat, 'I passed,' and they cheered, but they must have seen, must have been able to know" (562 - 563).

Jane Gallop, in her recollection of graduate school, remembers "trying to imagine my future place. How would I pass? In 1977, having 'passed,' I was trying to imagine being an academic speaker as a woman" (71). She places the word passed in quotation marks, giving it the connotation of passed as Blacks once passed for white (Imitation of Life), or Jews for Gentiles (Miss Rose White) in search of social acceptance, trying to surmount the labels of difference and the stigma of otherness. Kyla strives in frustration to battle both the imagined and the real blockades of sexual difference and to maintain a sense of legitimacy in the face of the patriarchy, embodied as it is for her in the three male professors who intimidate her at the exam table. Kyla's wary response to the all - male committee is typical.

In an intriguing essay, "Out of Mere Words," James Klein, says that it is symptomatic of our profession's emphasis on the spoken word "that most horror stories about Ph.D. - getting concern the oral examination." But Kyla's anxiety is informed by more than a fear of verbal articulation; it derives primarily -- as she herself points out -- from apprehensions concerning her gender; she feels invalidated by her own menses and confides in her best friend: " 'I really failed. . . . That's the truth. . . . They said I passed. . . . But I really failed. . . . They demoralized me, they had that kind of power, I gave them that kind of power. And you can tell from the dream what the grounds were. I can't feel legitimate in the face of them' " (563 - 564).

Kyla realizes that the structure threatens somehow to exclude her, sensing what philosophical critic Iris Marion Young (1949 - 2006) would call a threat to her basic security system (and perhaps her presence threatens her patriarchal professors at this same level). Drawing on the work of British sociologist Anthony Giddens (b. 1938), Young describes three frontiers of subjectivity where prejudice can be found: the discursive consciousness (e.g., it is no longer socially acceptable to say that a woman using a library calls to mind a dog dancing on its hind legs); the practical consciousness (e.g., women can no longer be denied access to campus buildings, yet having gained entry, their presence can still be dismissed by those around them); and the basic security system, i.e., "the subject's ontological integrity" and "basic sense of competence and autonomy." Young explains that "In everyday action and interaction, the subject reacts, introjects, and reorients itself in order to maintain or reinstate its basic security system" (Justice and the Politics of Difference, 131 - 132).

The basic security system is the point at which "bodily integrity" is threatened and "the subject must keep herself together." Prejudice at the second and third level is more insidious than at the first because it consists of unspoken "fears, aversions, avoidances, symbolic forms and association, abjection and border anxiety": "There are material implications (e.g., who sits behind what desk) to making judgments based on the feelings lodged at these two levels. Rationalization is very common among the empowered." Prejudice, Young suggests, is receding from the discursive level of consciousness and being internalized in the practical consciousness and the basic security system. What can no longer be said can still be done, can still be thought. Nor do these thoughts go unperceived by the subject at whom they are directed, even though the "dominant social etiquette" may find it "indecorous" or "tactless" to acknowledge these perceptions at the discursive level. Because our culture tends to "separate reason from the body and affectivity," it is difficult for characters like Kyla to trust or express what might be called their gut reactions. Groups or individuals "oppressed by structures of cultural imperialism . . . not only suffer the humiliation of aversion, avoiding, or condescending behavior, but must usually experience that behavior in silence" (comments noted when Young spoke at the "Colloquium on Cultural Narratives," Purdue University, April 1989; see also Justice and the Politics of Difference, 134).

Kyla confronts not only the verbal challenge of the oral exam but a tradition that for centuries cast women as the silent sex. She speaks not only as a student but as a woman; she will be evaluated not only as a Ph.D. candidate but as a woman, making her way in a world where "the feminine alone must bear the burden of sexual difference." Young, in her summary of Simone de Beauvoir, says that "Whatever might be her position in the world and whatever her individual accomplishments, a woman is appraised first as a woman, and only afterward for her position or accomplishments" (Throwing Like a Girl, 75).

The task of making herself heard is one which, by the end of The Women's Room, Kyla has begun to feel herself unequal too. Yes, she has made it into the room, no embarrassing feminine debris is cluttering the floor, and no one is giggling -- but is anyone listening? She may enter the library at will, may cross the quadrangle at leisure yet still feel invalidated, not to mention "slightly crazy": "The courage to bring to discursive consciousness behavior and reactions occurring at the level of practical consciousness is met with denial and powerful gestures of silencing, which can make oppressed people feel slightly crazy" (Young, 134).

Virginia Woolf likewise believes that "even when the path is nominally open -- when there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a doctor, lawyer, a civil servant -- there are many phantoms and obstacles . . . looming in her way ("Professions for Women," 241). If Young's model is applied to Woolf's image, then these phantoms are lurking in the practical consciousness and haunting the basic security system. In A Room of One's Own [see last week's Fortnightly post: "Room, Board, and Body"], Woolf refers to such obstacles as the structure of traditions, laws, and social policies which have consistently disregarded women; yet, concerning the ambiguous position and the dubious "tradition manque" which women have inherited, she says that "it was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control" (38); that is, they are driven by the need to maintain their basic security systems. One of the obstacles for Kyla, internalized in the practical consciousness and the basic security system is structural exclusion; and she intuits that there is more at stake for her than a pass / fail grade.

In 1977, Marilyn French's fictional students embodied Virginia Woolf's even earlier (1929) insistence upon higher education for girls. With the admission of women, even peripherally, to the academy, changes were required, difference had to be accommodated, and the presence of the Other acknowledged. At the most basic level, the tradition of critical thought intersected with the inevitability of "our bodily givens" and campus buildings began, however slowly, to feature doors which read "Ladies" or "Women." The body of the female student makes her way through the hallways of academia, where she strives to determine her own fate; and through novels like The Women's Room that explore the realm of academic experience from the perspective of a female narrator. In the late 1970s and early 80s, reading and re - reading this "profoundly influential novel" was a consciousness - raising rite of passage -- opening doors, discussions, and minds. Thanks to Marilyn French for re - thinking gender equity, popularizing feminism, and confirming our intellectual and physical experience.

P.S.

1. Fun Fact: Marilyn French is mentioned in ABBA's 1982 song "The Day Before You Came":
"I must have read a while,
the latest one by Marilyn French
or something in that style."
2. I've been trying to track down a poem that I've misplaced and thought I'd mention here in case anyone out there recognizes the reference. I'm almost certain that the title is "Feast Day." The narrator is a woman who is feeling sad on the first day of her period, and the concluding line is "languorous blood." Does that happen to ring any bells? I remember reading it back in the late 1970s, early 80s, but can't remember where. I've looked through all my old anthologies and notebooks but can't find it; and I've tried numerous google searches with no luck. I can't remember the poet, but vaguely thought that it might be Joyce Carol Oates. It seems to me that in the middle of the poem, she is looking out of a large window, watching children ice - skating on a pond and feeling fearful of their safety, but it could also be that I've borrowed that skating image from another forgotten poem -- that I also need to find -- and merged it with the "Feast Day" poem in my mind. [gmail, October 15, 2013]

3. June 14, 2015: It's tempting to think of Kyla's anxiety as obsolete in this, the enlightened 21st Century -- yet even here and now, a male recipient of the Nobel prize calls into the question the presence of "female students" in his science laboratories. Really?

4. Related posts:

FORTNIGHTLY
Room, Board, and Body

QUOTIDIAN
Throwback Letter to Editor
Too Beautiful to Go on a Diet
Weighing In
The Student Body in the Text
The Fire Was Hot Within Her

KITTI'S LIST
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 1
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 2
A Girl and Her Book

Room, Board, and Body

A ROOM WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

A Room of One's Own?
Photo essay from Victoria Magazine ~ April 1992
Looking through an old notebook, I came across the above article from twenty - some years ago, which I saved apparently in sheer dismay at its blatant misuse of Virginia Woolf. Usually I found the literary passages accompanying Victoria's visuals to be strikingly appropriate; yet in this instance, the editors were quoting from A Room of One's Own (1928) with little respect to the original context.

When Woolf thought "of the admirable smoke and drink and the deep armchairs and the pleasant carpets: of the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space" she was writing not of London but of Oxford. Nor was she praising the town's charm and elegance; rather, she was describing rooms from which, sadly, the women of her time were categorically excluded (emphasis added).

She concludes this observation from the opening chapter of A Room of One's Own with the lament that "Certainly our mothers had not provided us with anything comparable to all this -- our mothers who found it difficult to scrape together thirty thousand pounds. . . . To raise bare walls out of the bare earth was the utmost they could do (24, 23).

But Woolf's perceptions, however poetic, constitute a severe criticism of the structural exclusion of female students from the traditional institutions of higher education. For Victoria -- itself a celebration of the "luxury and privacy and space" now available to many women -- to suggest otherwise is a grave disservice to both Virginia Woolf and the readers of Victoria.

I suppose the Woolf passage in Victoria Magazine jumped right out at me because I myself had included it in an article that I was working on at the time -- "The Student Body in the Text" -- for Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies ~ 14.3). The narrator of A Room of One's Own is an imaginary and imaginative student, thrown into distress because of her gender, an outsider looking in, a character who is chastised for wandering into territory traditionally open only to men. The harsh reality for Woolf's female scholar is not only to be wished from the room by the social structure but to be physically denied entry in the first place. On her way to the library, "walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot," she is intercepted by a Beadle whose face "expressed horror and indignation. . . . I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here." Regaining her composure, she arrives at the library and is met by "a kindly gentleman who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied a Fellow of the College" (5 - 8).

Being denied access causes her to challenge the privilege of those who were admitted and those whose books lined the shelves: "young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree . . . Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women." She concludes that "The most transient visitor to this planet . . . who picked up [the evening] paper could not fail to be aware . . . that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence" (27 - 28, 33).

What accounts for the power gap between the diffidence of the female students and the confidence of the male students? One elusive element which may account for the discrepancy is the self - confidence that Woolf describes as that "imponderable quality, which is yet so valuable": "Life for both sexes . . . is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps . . . it calls for confidence in oneself." She further suggests that if there exists any short - cut to developing or appropriating this invaluable attribute it is "By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority . . . over other people." To precisely such ill - gotten gains does she attribute the "enormous importance: and power of the patriarchy -- not to mention the tomes of misogynist scholarship which she has encountered in the library. She puzzles over the refrain of misogynist anger which runs through text after text, the fear of losing power, the perceived threat to the homosocial contract: "Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting . . . because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price." As for the male students who are groomed professionally to inherit this rarest of jewels, their birthright is the conviction of saying "to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self - confidence, that self - assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind" (34 - 37).

Looking at additional discrepancies, Woolf raises bodily functions to the level of theory, particularly in her comparison of an exquisite luncheon at the men's college to a humble dinner at the women's college. She writes against the time - honored division between mind and body: "The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments . . . a good dinner is of great importance." The vast difference between the two meals brings to her mind images of fat cows and lean cows, bold rats and timid rats: "I have seen a dairy company measure the effect of ordinary milk and Grade A upon the body of a rat. They set two rats in cages side by side, and of the two one was furtive, timid and small, and the other was glossy, bold and big. Now what food do we feed women as artists upon? I asked, remembering, I suppose, that dinner of prunes and custard." For surely, "The lamp in the spine does not light on beef and prunes" (18, 54 - 55).

Woolf addresses here not only the division between mind and body but the distinction between educational opportunities for the two sexes: "Why did men drink wine and women water?" Why did the women's college lack and ample endowments and trust funds which provided the men's schools with "the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space." Why indeed had it been so difficult to raise the modest sum required to found the women's college at all when, on the other hand, immense sums for boys' schools could be raised with considerable ease? "Why," she asks, "are women poor?" (24 - 28, emphasis added).

Although Woolf heroically curses the discriminatory practices of the academy " . . . turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind," (78 - 79), she also points out that the freedom of the mind can indeed be hampered -- by deprivation and discouragement, by the lack of a tradition, "by all the power of law and custom," by not being heard (24, 50, 54). She sought to rectify this inequity by urging women to forge their own educational, professional,and literary traditions. There is a subtle connection between participating in a dialogue, forging a tradition, and gaining self - esteem:

" . . . if we face the fact . . . that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality [i.e., "the universal human, beyond gender"] and not only to the word of men and women [the world of "sexual difference"], then . . . the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born" (118).

Woolf describes a place for the female body in our culture and gives that body a voice in the text. When women participate in this discourse, they can formulate the images that escape the bemused and frustrated student in A Room of One's Own; they can envision with confidence their place in the academy, gaining entry to the library and putting pen to paper; they can live at ease within their bodies; they can articulate the truth of their own experience.

Also,
check out these beautiful illustrations
. . . and more!
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, May 28th

Between now and then,
read related posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
Throwback Letter to Editor
Too Beautiful to Go on a Diet
Weighing In
The Student Body in the Text
The Fire Was Hot Within Her

And on
KITTI'S LIST
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 1
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 2
A Girl and Her Book

I Changed My Mind

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV, Scene 3
by Thomas Stothard, 1755 - 1834

"Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths"

from Love's Labour's Lost
by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

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Couriers

“They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other - since there are no kings - messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.”

from On Parables
by Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
I changed my mind ~ apparently easier done than said. At the very beginning of their careers, Kafka's couriers have the free will to make a choice, and the choice they make out of this free will is to be couriers instead of kings. Now they are locked into that choice, no matter what. Kafka reveals the meaninglessness of the messages they relay and he blames their meaningless lives on the fact that they adhere to a truth in the spoken word which, in fact, does not reside there.

The couriers initially made this choice as children would, referring perhaps to the excitement that seems inherent in travelling to and for with messages, the action and movement, and the nature of the responsibility such a position entails -- the satisfaction of a mission accomplished rather than that of executive decision making. Unfortunately, everyone has chosen the role of delivering the truth rather than the office of determining what the truth is or just what truth it is that needs to be pronounced. Now they experience the discouragement of carrying messages with no content and to no purpose.

They are like Stephen Crane's "ship of the world" which slipped away at a fateful moment before God adjusted the rudder:

"So that, forever rudderless, it went upon the seas
Going ridiculous voyages,
Making quaint progress
Turning as with serious purpose
Before stupid winds."

But the couriers do not have even the saving delusion of naive or wrongful belief that their purpose is serious. Not only does the reader know that their progress is quaint and ridiculous and stupid -- they know it as well; yet they persist in shouting their messages to the "stupid winds."

The couriers, unfortunately, have no auditor. They suffer from a disjunction of form and content in their profession. Surely, in their cases, silence is preferable to their hopeless and meaningless shouting. Yet they feel compelled to continue their "work." The last sentence of the parable suggests that the compulsion derives from a seriouis misunderstanding of the power of language. The couriers mistakenly believe that words are real, more real even than actions. Their miserabale lives belie the truth of their oaths of service but they hold fast, somehow convinced of the authenticity of the oath. They honor a commitment to the spoken word, even though they have been more or less betrayed by the profession they feel committed to. Keeping an oath is undoubtedly honorable, but the fact that the couriers lead a miserable existence suggests that greater truth and greater honor, as well as greater happiness, might be found in breaking or modifying or redefining the oath if the couriers had the strength of mind to do so.

They need to learn the lesson of Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's play about "the sweet smoke of rhetoric." The four main characters have taken an oath "Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep" (I, i, 48). They swear to lead this ascetic life of contemplation for three years' time in order that they might become "heirs of all eternity" (I, i, 7). It seems a small price for such a reward, and the final bond of the oath is "That his own hand may strike his honor down / That violates the smallest branch herein" (I, i, 20 - 21). But contrary to finding that a violation of the oath is a violation of honor, they learn just the opposite. By the end of the play, Longaville questions, " . . . what fool is not so wise / To lose an oath to win a paradise" (IV, iii, 270 - 71) and Berowne proclaims: "Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves / Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths" (IV, iii, 359 - 60).

They are calling into question, as Kafka's couriers should have the sense to do, the power and value of the word, written and spoken. Is breaking an oath to gain what at least appears to be a paradise a wise choice? Of course, the decision must always be relative to the weight of the oath and possibility of paradise. The line between "losing our oaths to find ourselves" and "losing ourselves to keep our oaths" is not always as clear as it is for the lords in Love's Labour's Lost, whose oaths were perhaps not very weighty ones in the fist place.

However, since the couriers in the parable have been reduced to living meaningless, frustrating lives, it is time, Kafka suggests, that they examine the validity of their oaths of service. Initially weighty though it may have been, it should be reconsidered in light of prevailing situations and conditions. Instead of taking this initiative, though, the couriers continue acting against their better judgment because they said they would. Clearly they are losing their lives to keep their oaths. Language has failed them, leaving them unable to discern when it may be right action, right behavior, to throw over a commitment they have made, a commitment not to another person so much as to the words they heard themselves say.

John the Baptist Reproving Herod, 1848
by John Rogers Herbert, 1810–1890
I draw a similar conclusion whenever I hear the story of the beheading of John the Baptist. As you may recall, Herod offers his daughter "whatever you wish . . . Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom," as a reward for her performance of a pleasing dance for the the guests at a banquet. The girl confers with her mother and requests John's head on a platter. Although Herod is "deeply grieved" (is he really?) at this morbid request, he proceeds to grant it. Why? "Out of regard for his oaths and for the guests" (Mark 6: 22 - 26). What? This story never sounds right to me. Herod has all the power in the situation, including the power to renege on his oath and the power to save a man's life, should he so choose. He has the power to change his mind.

We've heard it all our lives: you must be as good as your word. Perhaps the real challenge is to be better than our word.

Three Conspirators Swear an Oath, 1779
Henry Fuseli, 1741 - 1825

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MORE ON KAFKA

1. Parables on Parables:

"They were offered the choice between
CHOICE and NO - CHOICE."

2. Previous Blog Posts:
Little Door
Take Up Your Cross
Sancho Panza
Celtic Blessing
Imperial Messenger
Suffering
Go Over

3. Fascinating Artwork:
Illustrations for Kafka's Parables by Aimee Pong

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, 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
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.

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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)

Celebrating Charlotte

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Little Brick JJQ Duplex ~ Fall 1982
University of Tulsa ~ 8th Street
I'm posting this Fortnightly a day late, in commemoration of my friend Charlotte Stewart, who died a year ago today. Earlier this month, I had the privilege of attending and speaking at a memorial service, organized by Charlotte's dearest Tulsa friends to honor the anniversary of her death and to include those far - flung acquaintances who may have missed her funeral services last year:

Celebrating Charlotte: The Life and Legacies
of Charlotte Cathey Stewart, 1938 - 2014
Sunday, March 8, 2015 ~ Tulsa, Oklahoma
What a joy it was to reminisce of Charlotte, touch base with new friends, reconnect with old, and meet family members for the first time:

Kitti, Marguerite, Ethelyn

At the risk of some small repetition, I'll begin with a re - post from last April, "That Other World I Touch" then move on to "Celebrating Charlotte." and conclude with another of Charlotte's poems, "Gallipoli," which, like "Lost Continent" is about the puzzle of our transition from this world to the next.

In Memoriam
Charlotte Cathey Stewart
~ friend & litterateur ~
25 November 1938 ~ 29 March 2014







A poem for Charlotte . . . by Charlotte . . .

Lost Continent
Loss laps the shore of this awful
sunlit day, bathes the bare roots
of a single shoreline tree. I feel

this continent's afloat, conceals another
deeper down. I think that we could
find it, if we knew the way.
What's buried?
Some dark jubilance we've never known.
Or only I. That other world I touch.
That expectation you arouse in me:

maps in our hands, if they were joined,
deep spells that blind, and spells
that make us see. So be it.
Now begins
the evening's bright lament. Voices blaze
like sunset's spreading tent: I want
to know you. Naked thought:
as if to know could set us free.

written by Charlotte Stewart in 1983
from her book of poems: A Home Against One's Self

Re - reading this beautiful poem for the first time in many years, I had to wonder, did Charlotte compose it in honor of someone else's death? Perhaps she told me at the time and I've forgotten, yet another loss.

She writes of a deeper, lost continent concealed beneath our visible world but, more importantly, of a deeper, richer self - awareness, lost -- or as yet unfound -- that lives below the surface that we currently apprehend as our existence. Is Charlotte there now? Has she found it -- the dark jubilance -- now that she has touched the other life?

When I met Charlotte, she was managing editor of the James Joyce Quarterly, and I was lucky enough to be one of her student assistants for a semester. I've never forgotten Charlotte telling me that when she was little, she thought that the last line of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" was "life is butter beans" (rather than "life is but a dream"). Sometime after that, she drew me a little card with those words and a smiling butter bean. A happy memory.

On the back, it says "From Charlotte ~ October 11, 1982"

Other fun memories include the day that we sat in the office reading out all the the questions on the MMPI and making jokes of all our answers. Or the time when Charlotte bought me my first ever Cadbury Creme Egg at one of her favorite little shops near Utica Square. This confection was totally unknown to me until that day when Charlotte told me that I had to try one and we admired the candy yolk inside the white creme. Of course, best of all were the many friends and the way that Charlotte pulled us all together.

End of Fall Semester Party at Charlotte's house, 1982.
Look how much fun she was having!

Clockwise from noon: Kay, Charlotte, Susan, Jes, Jan, Donna
Charlotte's friend Marguerite shared this drawing and wrote to say that "Charlotte loved to doodle. When she learned that my totem was the rabbit (as I was born in the Chinese year of the hare), she started drawing rabbit images on her notes to me."

So fitting for this sad yet, to quote Charlotte,
"darkly jubilant" occasion.
And to you too, dear Charlotte:
"See you anon!"

For more doodles & photographs, see my facebook album:
Tulsa 1982 & Beyond

****************
Here I am, three weeks ago, sharing a few
words on behalf of Charlotte's grad students:

"In August of 1982, I came to Tulsa, drawn by the opportunity to work under Charlotte's direction on the James Joyce Quarterly, along with two other graduate students, Curtis and Peter. The three of us adored working for Charlotte in the little house devoted to the JJQ, which was across the street from the house devoted to the Tulsa in Studies Women's Literature. Sheri, from TSWL remembers the joy and positive energy that flew between the two locales, with Charlotte as the common thread.

"That fall, I also enrolled in Germaine Greer's Monday night Seminar on 17th C Women Writers, which Charlotte attended every week. This is where I met Alice, Donna, Jan, Jes, Lisa, Sharon, Sheri, and Susie. When thinking back, we all agree that it was a time of magic.

"Jan writes, "There are so many things I do not remember about that semester. But what I do remember is a sense of Charlotte's leadership and generosity, her wonderful parties, her playfulness, her compassion, her love of literature, and her love for the band of women we were so many years ago during that magical semester in Tulsa."

"And Jes recalls that "No one could have been kinder. . . . She made us laugh, gave us good advice, invited us to parties, helped us out out of scrapes, read us her poems . . . Charlotte and Germaine were a dynamic duo; it was a gift just to be around them, hoping that some of their magic dust would rub off."

"The lasting comraderie that began for our group during that semester revolved around Charlotte and the way she took us all in and taught us to enjoy literature, each other, and every little pleasure in the world around us, right down to the season's first Cadbury Cream Egg. It's true. I never had a Cadbury Egg until Charlotte took me to the store and bought me one and said, "Look inside!"

"Doesn't that just capture the way she was always adding so much joy to the lives of everyone around her, in the most surprising little unexpected and unforgettable ways?!

"If I had to pick one memory, it would be our Joycean discussion of misheard song lyrics -- we all have them! -- in which Charlotte described her childhood misunderstanding of the last line of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat": "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is butter beans." That was Charlotte, always offering a wry smile and a new perspective. Life is but a dream, yes -- but it's also butter beans.

"Charlotte was our mentor and we all become friends -- lifelong, as it turns out. You can't ask for more than that."

Charlotte Stewart, Germaine Greer, Alice Price, Susan Hastings
~ eating cake and reading manuscripts ~
at the Tulsa Center for Women's Studies, 1982

The service was filled with smiles, tears, slides, musical interludes, and poems of all kinds, including "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop; "Journey" and "Uses of Sorrow" by Mary Oliver; and several others authored by Charlotte.

Not on the program, but running relentlessly through my mind -- "This book is a box, this box is a boat . . . This book is a box" -- was Charlotte's poem "Gallipoli, written thirty - three years ago, in response to the movie of the same name, which I had seen with Charlotte and a few others, one night on the TU campus in the Fall of 1982. We were lucky that TU had a film series of fairly recent art-house movies because, of course, in those days if you missed something at the movie theater you couldn't just rent it on netflix! None of us had seen Gallipoli until that night, and we continued to speak of it in the weeks to come, during which time Charlotte was crafting her poem, linking history to current events and to the unknowable future, near and distant:

Gallipoli

This book is a box
this box is a boat
the man who runs fast
and furthest is imprinted
on its leaves.

The soldiers
come at night in boats
across blue water. They wear
deep mantles of fog. This book
is where they sleep.

Play on the beaches
it is all the world there is.
Make tin can bombs, explode them
to help you pass the hours.

This book is a box
this box floats in deep water.
This world will be extinguished
in a festival of fire.

~ Charlotte Stewart

~~ Rest in Peace Charlotte ~~

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, April 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
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

814 ~ Where It Was Almost Always Christmas

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

You've seen this house before ~ where we lived in West Philadelphia for eight amazing years! This time last year, I featured it in honor of my dear house sister, Vicky Duffy McL. And of course it was given a spot of honor on our 2014 Calendar: Homes That We Love. In fact, it was the calendar project that inspired my boys to say, "Mom, we want to see the inside of our old house! We're forgetting our childhood! Remind us!" So I looked through all our pre - digitals, scanned the following, and created a calendar for "Christmas time and all the whole year through":

January

Entryway ~ Welcome to Our Victorian Home!

February

Living Room ~ Silver Lights and Ionic Columns!

March

Dining Room ~ Twelfth Night Party!

April

Kitchen Corner ~ Looking onto Beaumont Street!

May

Family Room ~ Lego Building!

June

Study ~ Ben at the Computer!

July

2nd Floor Bathroom ~ Classic Window Reflection

August

3rd Floor Bathroom ~ Advent Calendar and Josef!

September

Front Bedroom ~ A Booklover's Window Seat!

October

Sam's Room ~ Everything from Pikachu to Batman!

November

Ben's Caribbean Blue Sleeping Porch ~ Winter Sky!

December

4th Floor Art Stuido ~ Whole Famliy!
[click for further explanation]
And to conclude, a few lines from one of my favorites, the kind of Christmas song that you can still sing in March if you want to:

May your life be filled with sunshine
May your every wish come true
May you find the sweet fulfillment in everything you do
May your days be blessed with the very very best
Both now and the whole year through
It says so in my Christmas card to
You and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
At Christmas time and all the whole year through

from "My Christmas Card to You"
sung by The Partridge Family
words and music by Tony Romeo
P.S.Just one quick question about the two songs you see copied below: are they in fact two songs? Or are they really both the same song? I love them both, but I'm confused. Whenever I hear one, the other comes to mind.

For example:

The Partridge Family:
I'm looking out my window
at the softly falling snow
that dances in the early morning light . . .

The Seekers:
Looking from my window
On the freshly fallen snow,
It sparkles as it tumbles
Upon the street below . . .

************
Here are the songs in full;
you can click on the titles to listen:

My Christmas Card to You
To you and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
at Christmas time and all the whole year through

I'm looking out my window at the softly falling snow
that dances in the early morning light
I got my guitar right before me, strummin' a beautiful sound
watching it a-comin' down, all around
on the fields and the farms and the road to town

And I'm thinkin' up a letter that I'm writin' in my head
a Christmas card to all the folks I love
Instead of lettin' the postman bring it, I decided I'd rather sing it
especially for you, for you

To you and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
at Christmas time and all the whole year through

May your life be filled with sunshine
May your every wish come true
May you find the sweet fulfillment in everything you do
May your days be blessed with the very very best
both now and the whole year through
it says so in my Christmas card to

You and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
at Christmas time and all the whole year through
at Christmas time and all the whole year through

Sung by The Partridge Family
Lyrics and music by Tony Romeo, 1971

************
I Wish You Could Be Here
Looking from my window
On the freshly fallen snow,
It sparkles as it tumbles
Upon the street below,
The crackle of the fire
Is laughing in my ear,
The room is warm and sleepy
And I wish you could be here.
Somedays in this town
There's not a lot for me to do,
I've been listening to some records
And my thoughts return to you,
I tried to read the paper
But the words aren't very clear,
Oh I know there's something missing
And I wish you could be here.

I keep listening for your footsteps
Or your key turned in the door,
I sure could use your company
But we've been through that before,
I think the winter's going to last
A long time this year,
I've got empty time to fill
And I wish you could be here.

Sung by The Seekers
Lyrics and music by Bruce Woodley & Paul Simon, 1966

To You and All Your Family . . . . I Wish You Could Be Here!
Sam ~ Our Neighbor Graham ~ Ben
January 2000

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, March 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