Hiatus!

That's what happens when you graduate college. You forget about your scholarly pursuits and get a job that sucks the free time and creativity out of you. Luckily for me, my workplace has yet to block blogger! I haven't quit reading- not by a long shot. The most sustancial book I have read recently is "Their Eyes were Watching God." Ben Herrick recommended that I read this and I can't beleive that I had lived 27 years without it! Amazing story telling. Great action and beatifully written. I love a story told in a woman's perspective. I haven't been so moved by a woman's story since I read "A Color Purple" while I was in middle school. In that novel Celie learns to love and in this novel Janie learns what love is, what it isn't and how to survive without it. I was torn to pieces reading about Janie and Teacake's love and the disaster that disrupted it. I may have a new favorite.

I would say more but it has been awhile since I finished and I don't want to try and analyze what isn't fresh in my mind.

Other books I read on Hiatus from Blogging:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 1860
Can't Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flag 2006
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins 2008-2010
Under the Dome by Stephen King 2009
Gerald's Game by Stephen King 1992
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King 1992
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2007

Obviously I did a little pleasure reading since graduation and I have no regrets about that. Most of these do not fit into my 1900 - 2000 timeline nor do they count as strictly "literature." Rediscovering my blog I think has re-lit the Lit fire so to speak but no promises I won't just read Harry Potter two or three more times.

Socialism in the Jungle

Jurgis has gone a little off of the deep end. He found out that Ona had been being molested by a man at her work. Naturally, he lost his temper and pounded the guys face in. For this he had to spend some time in jail. By the time he got out and walked home Ona was in the midst of a terrible and painful premature labor. She dies before the end of the night. He is able to find a new job before long and works through his grief. They lost the house while he was in jail and now the 10 of them lived in a garret of another poor woman. Jurgis comes home one day and finds that his toddler has died. His baby was the reason he spent his days toiling. He simply walked off and never returned. After a couple hundred pages of tragedy Jurgis, in his total loss, is free. He moves from place to place tramping. He works and blows his money and his life is good. He is finally able to live in fresh air and clean himself in cool natural water. He spends any money he makes so he is still broke. Out in the country, being broke doesn’t matter. It is only when he returns to the city does money count again. He gets a great job back in Chicago digging for the new subway system that is being placed underground only to get his arm broken due to the dangerous nature of the work. After his stay in the hospital he cannot work and has no place to go. He becomes a beggar.
I don’t normally like to spend this much time summarizing but a lot has happened to Jurgis only for him to be right back where he started. This is a recurring theme throughout the novel. No matter how much good luck comes his way, the entire system he lives in keeps him from coming up on top. His life was the happiest and easiest when he was living as a tramp, outside of the system. Only by abandoning society was he able to live like a man. The flaw is the system, not the man who suffers trying to work within it. It is obvious that ‘The Jungle’ is a commentary on the failure of the system. To be more specific, the failures of a society that thrives on competition.
The rest of the novel is a detailed explanation of why socialism is the answer to all the problems presented in the story thus far. Jurgis’s luck turns around after crashing a socialist meeting which instills in him an insatiable thirst for knowledge about how America really works and how it can be changed to work for proletariats like himself instead of against them. He then gets a job working at a hotel for a member of the socialist movement which provides him with the money needed to get by and support his old family. He meets socialist thinkers who through their speeches and conversations with others share the ideals of socialism with the reader. For anyone curious about the tenants of socialism, this is a rich resource.
Upton Sinclair wrote this book to share the plight of the working families and offer socialism as a solution to the injustice being suffered by so many in America. The latter section of the novel may lose a readers attention given the preachy nature and therefore it is no surprise that when this book came out people were a lot more interested in the exposure of the disgusting conditions that their food was being produced in than the deplorable conditions the workers were dealing with. The Jungle led to better food inspection but couldn’t get a socialist leader elected into any powerful offices.

Havelock Ellis and Margaret Sanger

For the past couple weeks I have been trying to discover the nature of the relationship between Havelock Ellis and Margaret Sanger. Most of what is published on the web will mention that they had an “affair.” I’m not sure this is the appropriate term for the intimate friendship that they shared.
In her autobiography there is a chapter titled with his name. Here she describes how they met and then goes on to gush about how wonderful he is. She describes him as almost god like in his perfection. It is rumored that they had a sexual affair, which certainly seems plausible given her immense affection for him. To dig deeper I found Ellis’s autobiography at the library and dug through it to get his point of view on the matter. This is where things started to get a little less obvious and a little more sketchy.
Ellis’s autobiography, at least the majority of it, is more of a dedication of love to his late wife Edith than it is a story about the man himself. Edith and Havelock seemed to have a bit of a complicated marriage when it is viewed from the outside. They did not live together (save brief periods of time), and they were not exclusive lovers. It would seem that often they were not lovers at all as Edith preferred relationships with other women. Any simple Google search on Havelock mentions his life long struggle with impotence that supposedly wasn’t cured until he was in his 60’s and found that he was aroused by watching a woman urinate. Despite these obstacles their relationship was actually rather simple. The two were wonderfully loving and devoted to one another. Ellis writes chapter after chapter detailing his love for her in his book. Edith went on speaking tours lecturing about his research and publications. She addresses him as “my darling boy” and signs her letters “wifey.” It is obvious to the reader that these two were bonded tightly despite their unconventional relationship. The following passage describing life as Edith works across the Atlantic in America is a typical one:

“I lived alone in my flat with my chief thoughts eagerly fixed on the days when the American mail arrived, and my chief consoling distraction lay in the occasional little excursions, usually to a concert, with my new friend. To me a deep love which had grown stronger through a quarter century of trials and proofs was something far too solid ever to be shaken. My love was sure, and I knew it was sure, just as I knew hers to be sure.” (pg 522-523).

The mail he is waiting for is letters from Edith, the new friend he mentions is Margaret Sanger. At the time Ellis and Sanger met Edith was away in America and Sanger was on the lamb from American law. She had been studying at the British Museum to try and build her case before returning to face the courts at home. After Sanger and Ellis’s initial meeting it is clear that the two hit it off right away. Ellis then helped her by directing her reading and providing companionship which was greatly appreciated by Sanger who was alone in a foreign country and missing her family. To be more accurate, she was missing her children. Very shortly before meeting Ellis she had written to Bill Sanger ending their union deciding that they were no longer propelling each other forward in their lives.
Edith at this time is very ill with heart problems and dies less then two years after Ellis and Sanger meet. Ellis is very open with his wife and mentions Sanger often in his letters. Edith becomes obsessed with the idea that Ellis will replace her with Sanger. She is already depressed and bitter from her illness and the news of Sanger and her husband spending time together only makes it worse.
Ellis’s autobiography contains many, many letters to and from his wife. Here is one from this period in their lives:

“The thing I have dreaded ever since you wrote of M. has come. I have never been well since you told me, but thank heaven you did. … but thank goodness I casually mentioned M’s friendship with you when he was here, (Name not given) having also heard about it among the Socialists in Buffalo. [The enclosed was an innocent—but meaningless—little newspaper cutting incidentally mentioning that M. was working with Havelock Ellis in London]…I dragged myself out of bed, dressed, and burnt all your letters, as M’s name has been in all lately; and I thought it better in case I die—for I’ve has about enough to kill tow of one sort or another—to destroy all letters I had here, not because of anything that mattered, but because of newspaper gossip which will overpower me, I know. I still feel that you do not realize that the adoration of these women must be taken in a different way to what we are used to, but it is all too late and you have probably been hurt at what you think is my jealousy. It is not that—it is soul and heart and body weariness of perpetual everlasting crucifixion…(pg. 535).

Her despair is obvious in the letter. It is also notable that throughout Ellis’s book Sanger’s name is never mentioned. She is simply “M.” in letters or referred to as Ellis’s American friend. According to the website for the Margaret Sanger Paper’s Project (New York University), when Sanger read Ellis’s book (which was released after his death) she was so hurt by his downplay of their relationship that she never mentioned him publically again.
“…the transcript does convey Sanger's affection and respect for Ellis and a good summation of her many tributes to him. It also marks the final time she deified him in public as a kind of Saint Francis of Assisi as sex psychologist. Following the posthumous release of Ellis's autobiography, My Life, in 1939, in which he revised the history of his marriage (already troubled when Ellis met Sanger and made worse by Edith's jealousy of her), by reducing his relationship with Sanger to an unremarkable and mildly intimate friendship, a wounded Sanger refrained from further hero-worship.”
(http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/king_and_i.html)

So what then was the nature of their relationship? Ellis, was in love with his wife but in an open marriage and Sanger was in the midst of hero worship. Whose recollection of their relationship can we believe? From reading various correspondences (most from: The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 edited by Esther Katz. 2003. University of Illinois Press, Chicago) between the two it is clear that they both carried great affection for one another. Perhaps guilt over the death of his wife led Ellis to downplay his relationship in his autobiography. Perhaps the excitement going on her life and her loneliness led Sanger to play up the importance of the relationship in her book.
Margaret Sanger characterized their relationship as such: “I have never felt about any other person as I do about Havelock Ellis. To know him has been a bounteous privilege; to claim him friend my greatest honor.” What I have decided is that the specific details of the relationship don’t really matter and whether or not their relationship was sexual seems irrelevant. What is important is that their friendship was an intimate and life long one. Ellis was a great encourager of Sanger’s goal to make birth control legal and available. He was a mentor figure and someone that she could laugh with. I think that they both needed one another at the time in their lives that circumstance brought them together.

The Jungle 1906: Toils on

At every ebb and flow of the narrative circumstances just get worse and worse for our friends in Packingtown. The Jungle brutally details the hardships to the point where it is almost as difficult to go on reading as it is for poor Jurgis to carry his ailing wife and child through the snow before dawn in order to make sure they both get to work on time without dying first. Well, maybe not that difficult. I fear for poor Ona; she has been getting sicker and sicker as the family has become more desperate. After giving birth it has been hinted that she will never be healthy again and it is no wonder given that the food sold to them has no nutrition and her daily conditions are strenuous and ill-temperatured. This book describes why poor people look, act, feel, and even smell the way that they do. Bad things are happening to these people. These bad things are the direct result of American businessmen. These men made their income by cheating immigrants, the most vulnerable population, into working themselves to death.

It is easy to blame a man for his own state of wealth. If he is rich, he earned it. If he is poor he didn’t work hard enough. This is especially easy to decide if the man is uneducated, sickly, or mean. He may look dirty and his smell may make one wince as they walk by. The off-putting state of this man must be his own fault, the result of the many choices he has made throughout his life which has brought him to where he is today. Right? This is what has been labeled the “Fundamental Attribution Error,” which consequently, had to be renamed because research showed that this was not actually a universal phenomenon. It is in fact limited to western, individualistic cultures (i.e. America). It is basically placing blame on a person rather than a circumstance. Interestingly enough, the attribution effect (one of its other new labels is the correspondence bias) shows its face when a person tries to explain another person’s behavior. It is not present when we explain our own behavior. We understand our own misfortunates but blame others for theirs. These early to middle chapters of the Jungle lay out for the reader how poverty IS the fault of the circumstance, NOT the fault of the man. The reader understands the pain of poverty as they are forced to live it with the family. It is agonizing to go through it and impossible not to become empathetic. The worst part is the feeling of how unfair it all is, which, I believe is exactly what Sinclair wanted to evoke in his reader, a sense of injustice. It is obvious how reading this would encourage support for social justice because in order to support social justice you first must know that is injustice exists.

Sinclair provides us with vivid evidence of injustice as he compares the labor system to slavery. “Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between the master and slave.” (pg. 150).

Injustice (just as much today as it was over 100 years ago when the novel was written) thrives in places where is it hidden, where the majority doesn’t know that it is happening. This is why literature is so important. Newspapers can be ignored, media serves its own interests (which rarely, if ever, include the interests of any marginalized population) but great fiction has an uncanny way of speaking the truth. A popular book will spread like a virus infecting the reader with passion. And passion is difficult to ignore. Those vagabonds on the street start to have faces, and names and stories. Opening the eyes of the public by inciting their emotions is perhaps the best way to illicit social change. I am again reminded of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. President Lincoln greeted her at the White House by asking, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" Sinclair did not start civil war with his book but situations did improve for laborers and American’s in general. Children no longer work, conditions must now be safe and healthy and there are laws to protect people from being cheated out of their money. But this country still has a long way to go. People still get sick and die because they cannot afford healthcare, people lose their homes because they cannot pay their bills, and people still live from pay check to pay check.

Jurgis, was bed-ridden for a few months due to an ankle injury and Sinclair compared his feeling of helplessness to an ancient Greek myth, “It was for all the world the old story of Prometheus bound.” (pg. 162). Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to man. Just as fire means heat and life to man, Jurgis’ wages provided life to his family. There is a further comparison as well. Prometheus was punished by Zeus by being bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. This story parallels the life of a worker. You toil all day (the liver is eaten) and then, when you have no more strength left (the bird has taken the last bite of the liver) you must return and do the same the next day and the next with no hope of the cycle ending (the liver returns just to be eaten again). I don’t think that the bird in the myth being an eagle went unnoticed by our author either. It is the great strong eagle, America’s favorite representation of itself that is doing the eating. This is America eating itself to survive. But America doesn’t feast on powerful gods like Prometheus; it feeds on those that go unnoticed.

(Painting up top is Pieter Paul Rubens, 1611-12. Prometheus Bound)

NY Times article linking literature and psychology: I love overlap

This article highlights something that I find fascinating. Looking at the world through someone else's eyes isn't an easy thing to do. Look how many people simply cannot understand each other. Great writing makes it easy. This article mixes psychology and literature, two passions of mine so I thought I would share with you.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

"They don't know that we know they know we know."

This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking — of mind reading — is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are equipped with this capacity and what particular brain functions enable them to do it are questions that have occupied primarily cognitive psychologists.

Now English professors and graduate students are asking them too. They say they're convinced science not only offers unexpected insights into individual texts, but that it may help to answer fundamental questions about literature's very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we care so passionately about nonexistent characters? What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?"

Here is the article in its entirety:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/books/01lit.html?_r=1

This topic also reminds me of a widely accepted developmental psychology theory called "theory of mind" which describes children being able to distinguish that other people have their own thoughts and they are not the same as their own thoughts. Imagine what changed when you came to realize that your mind is all yours and everyone else's mind is exclusively theirs. It is a big idea to wrap your head around, it's no wonder children usually cannot understand theory of mind until age 3.

Margaret Sanger’s Autobiography 1936: Who is she?

I am reading about Margaret Sanger as part of a loosely structured project for a graduate level history seminar that I am taking at UH Manoa. She was a crusader for bringing birth control to women. You could argue, as some historians do, that the availability of birth control is the single biggest catalyst for social change in modern society. That may seem like a bold statement but if you think about what a woman's place in society was before the pill and what it is now you couldn't argue that the change is monumental. The pill gave women the sexual freedom that had previously been reserved only for men. This is a very simple explanation of the importance of the pill, if you would like to learn a little more there is a documentary by PBS's American Experience series titled "The Pill." Here is the website is you are interested www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/. Also, the doc can be seen on youtube.

Getting back to Margaret Sanger, she dedicated her life to making a simple birth control pill available for all women. She was arrested and criticized by the government, the church and much of society in general. Despite all this opposition she was obstinate in doing whatever it took to achieve her goal. These are all things that I knew before I started reading her autobiography. What I am learning now are the details of what she thought and why she did the things she did. I am also interested in how her dedication to her cause affected her personal relationships. Her story telling is energetic and entertaining but she never lets you forget her intent. Each lesson learned in early life seems to have been a step towards her ultimate purpose, the pill.

Where I am currently reading in the autobiography Sanger is living in New York City and rubbing elbows with famed socialists of the pre-WWI era. Her emotion laden descriptions of the hard ships of laborers led me to want to learn more about life at that time. This is why I began reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. In 1912 Sanger guided over 100 children of laborers on strike in Lawrence, MA on a trek to NY to live with foster families in order to ease some of the burden off of the "Bread and Roses" strikers. Disgusted with the conditions that these children were living in she saw only more evidence for the need of birth control.

"I always came back to the idea which was beginning to obsess me—that something more was needed to assuage the condition of the very poor. It was both absurd and futile to struggle over pennies when fast coming babies required dollars to feed them." (p. 85).

I am about 1/5 of the way through Margaret Sanger's book and I look forward to learning more about her struggles and successes. Because I am reading this book for a project I am taking a lot of notes and reading rather slow. I imagine I will continue reading slowly and will bring her up continually throughout this blog. I plan on reading more books that will help me learn more about her. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 1906: I am definitely feeling better about my own life

I'm reading this novel on my boyfriend's Ipad* and am about 1/4 of the way through. The opening scene of the novel is a long description of a Lithuanian immigrant wedding celebration. I was intrigued by the imagery of these obviously poor and over worked people and their complete joy of celebrating as they would have in the old country. Without knowing much about these people I felt a bit like an intruder witnessing the personal emotions of these strangers. This lack of knowledge about our characters creates the feeling that what I was witnessing was a common, universal experience amongst immigrants in the early 20^th century. I think that was Sinclair's reasoning for beginning his story this way. He wanted to show that the tale he was about to tell wasn't unique. It was just the way life was for those that found themselves looking for work in the Packing Industry in Chicago. The book continues on by going back before the wedding to tell how our new Lithuanian friends came to the United States. Jurgis, one of the main characters is my kind of guy. He is large, strong, confident and determined to make a better life for his sweetheart Ona.

There is a way too long and waaaaaay too graphic scene describing the disgusting and disturbing journey that pigs travel in order to become breakfast meat (among other things). Knowing that the reader's stomach is churning, Sinclair follows this up with the same story, but with cows. Nothing was left to the imagination of the reader. Not blood, entrails, hooks, knives nor bacteria are excluded from this lengthy encounter with the dark and dirty early 1900's meat packing industry. Peta should (if they haven't already) borrow a few passages to tout their propaganda. The hardships continue, the hope filled dreams of the young sweethearts remain dangling on the edge of tragedy and there are still nearly 300 pages left. It doesn't look good for our friends.

The reason I chose to read this book was because of an allusion to it in another book I am reading, Margaret Sanger's autobiography. She had mentioned that light was beginning to be shed on the wretchedness that defined the lives of laborers because of publications such as The Jungle. I wanted to get to know that time period a little better in order to better understand Sanger and her and her early Socialist views. I have noticed several passages that promote Margaret Sanger's main cause, which is birth control for the betterment of women and families:

"These bare places were grown up with dingy, yellow weeds, hiding innumerable tomato cans; innumerable children played upon them, chasing one another here and there, screaming and fighting. The most uncanny thing about this neighborhood was the number of children; you thought there must be a school just out, and it was only after long acquaintance that you were able to realize that there was no school, but that these were the children of the neighborhood—that there were so many children to the block in Packingtown that nowhere on its street could a horse and buggy move faster than a walk!" (p. 38-39).

"The German family had been a good sort. To be sure there was a great many of them, which was a common failing in Packingtown… Then there had been the Irish, and there had been lots of them, too; the husband drank and beat the children—the neighbors could hear them shrieking any night." (p. 93).

"the children would sleep all crowded into one bed, and yet even so they could not keep warm. The outside ones would be shivering and sobbing, crawling over the others and trying to get down into the center, and causing a fight." (p. 114).

One of Sanger's main ideas was that reducing the size of the family reduces the burden on the family. The language used promotes this idea that more children cause more poverty and more hard ship on families. Being able to choose when and if you want to have another baby was a luxury not available to women at that time. They could expect to be pregnant over and over as long as they were married with no way to stop the growth of their family. And with every new baby came the expense of another mouth to feed.

The Jungle reminds me a bit of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Both novels use vivid imagery to shed light on institutions that needed to be questioned by society. Using fiction is a very powerful way to expose those parts of reality that only effect a marginalized group. By telling these stories readers become educated in the issues of their day; slavery in the case of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the mistreatment of laborers in The Jungle. These novels leave a strong taste of injustice in the mouth of the reader which helped lead to real social change.

*Page numbers are accurate when the Ipad is held vertically.