Orlando Furioso as influence in the hero and setting of the Harry Potter series

Orlando Furioso by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto is an epic poem that is considered to have influenced many writers of fantasy literature. The poem is filled with magical items, wizards, legendary creatures, transfiguration, magical spells, and a prophecy that must be fulfilled, which are also present in the Harry Potter series. The appearance of the hippogriff in Rowling’s work leads to the belief that she has knowledge of Ariosto’s poem, since he was the creator of this creature. However, the similarities between the texts go further than these superficial elements that could be merely coincidental.  Harry Potter and Orlando Furioso have heroes that are flawed and find out that there is a magical world in existence along with our non-magical world. These imperfect, human heroes, and the mixed magical and non-magical world in which they live gives the readers a heightened sense of connection to these characters. The Harry Potter series can be said to have been influenced by Orlando Furioso because it uses similar constructions of hero and setting to obtain akin effects on the reader.

One of the important magical creatures that appear in the Harry Potter series is the hippogriff, which was created by Ariosto in his epic poem (Borges, 79). The Italian poet describes it as “No empty fiction wrought by magic lore, / But natural was the steed the wizard pressed; / For him a filly to griffin bore; Hight hippogryph” (IV, 18); the poet also talks about the hippogriff’s pride: “But what to do with the hippogryph? This is / a question few of us worry about. To ride / is risky. The beast might not take any of his / suggestions and could go off on its own from pride” (VI, 57). In the Prisoner of Azkaban Hagrid teaches Harry and his friends about this creature emphasizing that “they’re proud … easily offended” (114), which is proven true when Buckbeak hurts Draco Malfoy after being offended by him.

Although it seems likely that Rowling’s source of the hippogriff is Aristo’s poem, there is a distinction in the symbolism of the creature in both titles. In Orlando Furioso, the hippogriff symbolizes the impossible love made real of Ruggiero and Bradamante who are knights at opposite sides of a war, as suggested by Joe Nigg in The Book of Gryphons (32). In the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry and Hermione ride the hippogriff together (413), but they do not have a romantic relationship as the couple in the poem does. According to Dendle, in Harry Potter the hippogriff represents “[T]he emotional need to express domination symbolically” (171), exemplified by the death sentence given to Buckbeak as means of vengeance by Draco and his father (Dendle, 172). It could be argued though that the impossible relationship that the hippogriff represents in Harry Potter is that of the hero with his godfather, Sirius Black, who could only be saved from losing his soul by flying off with the Buckbeak. This connection between the two texts, leads the readers to notice other similar elements that might have otherwise been overlooked.

Even though the name of the poem is Orlando Furioso the central hero is not Orlando, but Ruggiero, who is the subject of a prophecy that says he will become the forebearer of the future powerful d’Este dynasty in Italy. Harry and Ruggiero are very similar heroes; they are both of humble origins and become orphans when they are very young, growing up to find out that there has been a prophecy made about them, and their future is already decided. Both characters are flawed, not like the tragic heroes that have one fatal flaw, but many little flaws that bring them close to failing to achieve their expected destines. For example, Ruggiero is alerted by Astolfo about Alcina’s manipulations of men that she wants for lovers, nonetheless he lets himself be fooled by her soon after and is captured in her enchantments. He needs to be saved by Melissa, the sorcerer who guides him and Bradamente to the fulfillment of their prophecy. Likewise, Harry is easily played upon by the Death Eaters that successfully lead him to the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix, needing to be saved by his guide, Dumbledore. The response these mistakes draw from the readers is one of sympathy with these characters, because they have probably lived a similar situation in their lives, even if the consequences would not have been so grand, letting them understand the impossibility of these heroes always making the right choice.

The two heroes are also connected in that both have inside knowledge of what represents the evil side in both stories. Orlando Furioso tells a tale of Christianity versus Paganism, the latter being the evil side. Ruggiero is originally a pagan that in the end converts to Christianity, and being the hero of the story, shows to the readers that the side he chose is the right one. In Harry Potter the hero is aligned with the good side from beginning, however, he has been marked as an equal by the villain, and therefore has knowledge and abilities that are not among what are considered good qualities, like the ability to speak Parseltongue and to hear Voldemort’s thoughts. As pointed out by Dumbledore in Chamber of Secrets, it is Harry’s choice that shows his true values (333) and points to the readers which is supposed to be the good side. The heroes’ morality in something that was very important at the time Orlando Furioso was written, because the society was extremely influenced by Christianity, therefore Ruggiero had to represent these values. Even though Harry Potter was not written in the same context, it still needs takes into consideration the influence the hero will have on the readers, especially the young children who formed the majority of its public. The fact that the hero is representing what is considered morally correct in both stories is significant, because that is usually the character that the readers look up to in order to understand that world and what is right or wrong.

Besides the similitudes between the heroes of both texts, the world in which both stories happen is one where we, normal non-magical people live, but that is inhabited by magical creatures, wizards, and sorcerers that have the power to influence our world while living in their own magical existence. This blending of the two worlds is very entrancing because it allows the readers to immerse themselves in the story very deeply, making it possible to almost believe in the existence of this magical universe around us, unlike other fantasy worlds that are totally different or separated from the real place we know and do not allow such a profound connection. The appearance in Harry Potter of a famous place like Kings Cross with commoners like us in it makes a real link to the readers’ world and allows their imagination to firmly believe in the existence of the wizardry community. This connection between real and fantastic world is explored in Orlando Furioso with the same tactics. While flying on the back of the hippogriff, Ruggiero notices that “they’ve passed the Hercules’ Gates” (VI, 17), which is a landscape mark belonging to the non-magical world. For the readers of Orlando Furioso, the magical world viewed by the hero is almost within reach. This feeling is fomented in these works by the recognizable places of the readers’ world in them.

The Harry Potter series is a work that has certainly been influenced by many books and authors. Nonetheless, it is possible to see the influence of Orlando Furioso in the way that Rowling brings back this hero with whom her readers feel connected to by his normal, humble origins and human flaws; and by giving life again to this world that is a fusion between the world as we know it, and the one where the readers would like to inhabit, making it seems like the magical world is right here, almost within our reach. The Harry Potter series recall the hero figure of Orlando Furioso adapting it to contemporary culture and the target audience, but what is clear is that the effect both heroes have in the reader are the same; Ruggiero and Harry excite a feeling of affinity in the readers that guide them into the story and allows their imagination to be enchanted by their world, so much that they always want to go back there.

Bibliography

Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Trans. David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. Ebook.

Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Imaginary Beings. Trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni. London: Penguin Books, 1974. Ebook.

Dendle, Peter. “Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter.” Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter. Ed. Elizabeth E. Heilman. New York: Routledge, 2008. 163-176. Ebook.

Nigg, Joe. The Book of Gryphons. Apple-wood Books, 1982. Ebook.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic Press, 2000. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic Press, 2003. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. New York: Scholastic Press, 2006. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic Press, 2009. EBook.

[Final Paper] Narrative strategies reflecting the characters’ inner turmoil in Margaret Drabble’s The Middle Ground

The Middle Ground is considered by many critics to belong to a second phase of Margaret Drabble’s writings which has a social focus, differing from her five novels from the 1960s that have a subjective focus. The form is also a notable difference between the two groups of novels (Stovel, 56).

According to Rubenstein (139), the intrusive narrator who calls attention to the fictional aspect of the narrative is one of the signs of the tension between the mimetic plot and the narrative strategy of these novels, especially The Middle Ground. As pointed out by Bromberg, the novel was criticized by its “clumsy style and lack of evident form, as well as the proliferation of points of view and corresponding lack of character development” (464). Bromberg argues that it is necessary to question why Drabble chose this narrative strategy before condemning it, she believes that it makes the reader stop and take note while expressing the novel’s “profound uncertainty about conventional narrative strategy” (467). Another point that should be highlighted is that the narrative form resembles the internal turmoil of its characters, as Greene calls attention to, "Drabble suggests parallels between Kate's crisis and problems of narrative construction." (294)

In this paper I discuss how the narrative structure strategy used by Drabble in The Middle Ground resembles the inner turmoil faced by the characters, especially Kate, in their mid-life crises. As Rose argues, the way the characters deal with the “discovery that life is fragmented and inherently without pattern translate into alternative narrative strategies.” (80) This topic is relevant for the understanding of the complexity of the novel’s narrative when, at first glance, the readers could tend to side with the critics that point out its lack of form without considering that the form could be intentionally like this, fragments that replace conventional expectations for the “likelihoods of reality”. (Bromberg, 466)

The Middle Ground begins with a discussion between Kate Armstrong and her friend Hugo Mainwaring about what he termed her “mid-life crisis”. The narrator then interferes and speaks directly to the reader: “Here is an account of Kate’s past history, some, if not all, of which must have led her to wherever she now is” (17). Here the narrator indicates the idea that torments Kate during the present time in her life: that where her life is now should be explained by her past and predict her future, but she has difficult visualizing these links. As Greene remarks, Kate loses the connection between past and present (294): “the past no longer seems to make sense, for if it did, how would it have left her here, in this peculiarly draughty space?” (16) The narrative follows the same path and does not hold to a linear passage of time. Starting in the present moment of Kate’s life the narrator goes back and offers the reader a brief account of her life and then it returns to the point it had left and the novel begins: “And that is Kate’s history, up to date” (79); “ […] two new elements have entered Kate’s life. One is a new job. […] The other new element is the Iraqi.” (81-2) As discussed by Rose, these two new elements will have an important part in solving Kate’s mid-life crisis (71). According to Bromberg, the intrusion of the authorial voice destroys the illusion of an objective or dramatic point of view and it makes Kate seem more “real” to the reader in that she seems independent of the authorial voice (466-7).

From this moment on, the novel has a multiplication of perspectives, the narrator changes abruptly from Kate to other characters. According to Pickering, it is not only the points of view that change, "but other ways of representing reality" are introduced (481). These switches show how Kate is perceived differently by herself and each person in her life, including the narrator. The multiplicity is part of her past and her present, as Bromberg points out, and to know her we would have to know all these different perceptions (471-2). Another interesting aspect of the multiple perspectives is that, as stated by Bromberg, they “challenge the romantic individualism of the nineteenth century Bildungsroman, as well as subverting its narrative structures.” (8)

The narrator leaves Kate sitting on a bank near her old home and gives an account of Evelyn’s daily routine as a social worker. As Kate, her friend also reflects on her life and how she ended up where she is and she finds it “hard to know what kept her at it in this way.” (135) Both characters are trying to understand the ways of life and the meaning of everything they have been through and might yet face, they are trying to figure out the patterns of life and how they apply to themselves. These thoughts of Kate and Evelyn are reflected in the narrative strategy that asks if “any of the patterns of art can accurately reflect life” (8), as Bromberg asserts.

Another change of focalized by the narrator occurs and we are presented with Hugo’s own ruminations on his life and that of his friend Kate. Hugo is trying to write a book about the Middle East, but is having trouble and decides to write something else. He tries to write about himself, but his account of his own life does not have much of reality, as the narrator tells the reader “he has failed to convey much useful information about his own past history” (171). Hugo’s reflections on writing demonstrate a metafictional aspect of the novel. He gives up on his attempts of writing a novel because “life is too bizarre for fiction, these days” (171) and “the more I try to tell the truth, the worse I write” (161). Rose defends that his reasons show his limited conception of a novelist, that “life is too bizarre a subject for fiction if we demand that novels be well-written – that is, formally coherent” (77), which is the idea that the narrative structure of The Middle Ground challenges by its supposed lack of form.

The narrator then gives an amplified account of Hugo’s history, but, as pointed out by Rose, even this involved an attempt to find a pattern in life, but “if life is not clearly patterned, how is the novelist to tell the truth about it […]?” (78). According to Bromberg, in this section of the novel, Drabble “makes explicit that the organizing subject in The Middle Ground is the problem of finding patterns for art that do not distort or oversimplify reality” (471), as the narrator of the novel acknowledges writing is “the art of selection. The art of omission.” (180)

Hugo concludes that writing is such a difficult exercise because “everything has too much history” and a pattern in life is slow to emerge because the past is too dense and the future has not yet thinned out, there are too many cross-references and hidden connections (182); He sees now that “modern life is in some mysterious way too fragmented” (182). The narrative is also fragmented in the constant changes of perspective and the frequent intrusions of the narrator speaking directly to the reader and giving her/his opinion about the characters. As Bromberg argues, Drabble “presents the reader with a scenario of the novelist in search of truth, no longer certain what to include and what to leave out, baffled by endlessly multiplying perspectives" and that "no single perspective [...] can encompass an ever changing, multiplying truth." (473)

The two new elements that enter Kate’s life when the novel begins are linked to each other and her perception of herself and the patterns that she has been seeking to visualize in her life’s history. When Mujid appears in her life, Kate tells herself and her friends that he “is the next stage in my education” (87) because she believes that everything in her life has to be connected somehow. As Rose points out, “Kate, who sees her life as moving through a sequence of ‘phases’, charts her development through a progression of mentors” (71) that are represented by Hunt, her ex-husband Stuart and his family, her lover Ted, and Mujid who she believes to be her last opportunity to “some interesting discovery about human nature.” (87) According to Rose, Kate’s view of Mujid changes to a more realistic one because of the realizations she encounters through the other new element in her life, her new job. (73)

Kate’s new job of producing a television program leads her to re-visit her past where she is surprised to find “no revelations […] just memories” (116). She interviews many women that are connected to her past in Romley and as she discusses with her producer, Gabriel Denham, about the editing of these interviews she points out to him that they “fell into no recognizable patter, and that it was unfair to try to force them into a general statement about Woman Today” (213). Her perception of the interviews’ lack of pattern and the tragedy that happens to Evelyn finally teaches her that life has no predetermined patterns and she is able to release herself from “the grip of the representative. Henceforth she would represent nothing but herself.” (224-5) Kate concludes that “she’d spent enough time looking for patterns and trends” (225) and that she has had enough because it would get her nowhere, she feels reconciled with the idea of a “shapeless diversity” (225) now. Bromberg notes that when "she and the reader least expect it, her [Kate's] crisis dissipates as she accepts and embraces plurality and uncertainty." (475) Pickering concludes that this “shapeless diversity” is a comment on the narrative strategy in that the narrator uses various representational methods, be it description or direct quotation, in her/his effort to “establish the facts of the case, to seek out the story”. (482)

The planned party at the end of the novel will unite an immense variety of personalities that represents Kate’s own diverse identity that she finally accepts. As pointed out by Greene, nothing has really changed from the beginning of the novel to the end, only Kate’s perspective is different (314). Kate looks around her family and friends assembled in her small house and she feels “a sense of immense calm, strength, centrality, as though she were indeed the centre of a circle […] a moving circle” (268).

The narrative strategy of The Middle Ground is a fragmented collection of facts, points of views, memories and discoveries that are aligned to the characters’ doubts in their mid-life crises and subsequent understanding of the “shapelessness” of life and the impossibility of defining it in expected patterns. The novel ends without a final conclusion, Kate is sitting in her bed pondering what to wear to the party and what will happen from now on. She has only the certainty that “anything is possible, it is all undecided” and “unplanned” (270). The narrative strategy itself represents this idea of multiple possibilities by refusing to give a closing end to the story. As the characters conclude that no patterns are to be found in life and no future can be predicted, the narrative leaves the reader with a cliffhanger that stands for all the possible endings for the novel.

Bibliography

Bromberg, Pamela S. "Margaret Drabble's ‘The Radiant Way’: Feminist Metafiction". NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 24.1 (1990): 5-25. Web. 06 Dec. 2012.

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Narrative in Drabble's ‘The Middle Ground’: Relativity versus Teleology”. Contemporary Literature 24.4 (1983): 463-479. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

Drabble, Margaret. The Middle Ground. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth. 1981. Print.

Greene, Gayle. "Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory". Signs 16.2 (1991): 290-321. Web. 22 Nov. 2012.

Pickering, Jean. "Margaret Drabble's Sense of the Middle Problem". Twentieth Century Literature 30.4 (1984): 475-483. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

Rose, Ellen Cronan. "Drabble's The Middle Ground: 'Mid-Life' Narrative Strategies". Critique 23.3 (1982): 69-82. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

Rubenstein, Roberta. "Fragmented Bodies/Selves/Narratives: Margaret Drabble's Postmodern Turn" Contemporary Literature 35.1 (1994): 136-155. Web. 06 Dec. 2012.

Stovel, Bruce. "Subjective to Objective: A Career Pattern in Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Contemporary Women Novelists". Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 18.1 (1987): 53-61. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

[Proposal Essay] Narrative strategies reflecting the characters’ inner turmoil in Margaret Drabble’s The Middle Ground

The Middle Ground is considered by many critics to belong to a second phase of Margaret Drabble’s writings which has a social focus, differing from her five novels from the 1960s that have a subjective focus. The form is also a notable difference between the two groups of novels (Stovel, 56).

According to Rubenstein (139), the intrusive narrator who calls attention to the fictional aspect of the narrative is one of the signs of the tension between the mimetic plot and the narrative strategy of these novels, especially The Middle Ground. As pointed out by Bromberg, the novel was criticized by its “clumsy style and lack of evident form, as well as the proliferation of points of view and corresponding lack of character development” (464). Bromberg argues that it is necessary to question why Drabble chose this narrative strategy before condemning it, she believes that it makes the reader stop and take note while expressing the novel’s “profound uncertainty about conventional narrative strategy” (467). Another point that should be highlighted is that the narrative form resembles the internal turmoil of its characters, as Greene calls attention to, "Drabble suggests parallels between Kate's crisis and problems of narrative construction." (294)

In this paper I intend to discuss how the narrative structure strategy used by Drabble in The Middle Ground resembles the inner turmoil faced by the characters, especially Kate, in their mid-life crises. As Rose argues, the way the characters deal with the “discovery that life is fragmented and inherently without pattern translate into alternative narrative strategies.” (80) This topic is relevant for the understanding of the complexity of the novel’s narrative when, at first glance, the reader could tend to side with the critics that point out its lack of form without considering that the form could be intentionally like this, fragments that replace conventional expectations for the “likelihoods of reality”. (Bromberg, 466)

The Middle Ground begins with a discussion between Kate Armstrong and her friend Hugo Mainwaring about what he termed her “mid-life crisis”. The narrator then interferes and speaks directly to the reader: “Here is an account of Kate’s past history, some, if not all, of which must have led her to wherever she now is” (17) Here the narrator indicates the idea that torments Kate during the present time in her life: that where her life is now should be explained by her past and predict her future, but she has difficult visualizing these links. As Greene remarks, Kate loses the connection between past and present (294): “the past no longer seems to make sense, for if it did, how would it have left her here, in this peculiarly draughty space?” (16) The narrative follows the same path and does not hold to a linear passage of time. Starting in the present moment of Kate’s life the narrator goes back and offers the reader a brief account of her life and then it returns to the point it had left and the novel begins: “And that is Kate’s history, up to date” (79); “ […] two new elements have entered Kate’s life. One is a new job. […] The other new element is the Iraqi.” (81-2) As discussed by Rose, these two new elements will have an important part in solving Kate’s mid-life crisis (71).

From this moment on, the novel has a multiplication of perspectives, the narrator changes abruptly from Kate to other characters. According to Pickering it is not only the points of view that change, "but other ways of representing reality" are introduced (481). These switches show how Kate is perceived differently by herself and each person in her life, including the narrator. The multiplicity is part of her past and her present, as Bromberg points out, and to know her we would have to know all these different perceptions (471-2).

These two elements are linked to each other and Kate’s perception of herself and the lack of patterns that she has been seeking to visualize in her life’s history.

Bibliography

Bromberg, Pamela S. "Margaret Drabble's ‘The Radiant Way’: Feminist Metafiction". NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 24.1 (1990): 5-25. Web. 06 Dec. 2012.

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Narrative in Drabble's ‘The Middle Ground’: Relativity versus Teleology”. Contemporary Literature 24.4 (1983): 463-479. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

Drabble, Margaret. The Middle Ground. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth. 1981. Print.

Greene, Gayle. "Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory". Signs 16.2 (1991): 290-321. Web. 22 Nov. 2012.

Isak Dinesen: “The Blank Page”

Isak Dinesen short story “The Blank Page” has many stories within it. We have the old story-teller woman and her story of how she came to learn her art from her grandmother. There is the story of the convent and the Carmelite sisters with their work and the production of the finest linen of Portugal. We also hear the story of the flax they use, which goes back to the Bible and the Crusades. But the most intriguing story is the last one, of the sheets produced by the sisters of the convent for the royal family of Portugal and that were given back to them with the stain that proved that a princess had been a virgin on her wedding night. The convent collects the pieces of the sheets in a gallery with the name of each princess, but in the midst of the row of stained white linen sheets there is one which is completely blank and without the name of the princess that owned it. The story teller does not clarify if the princess was not a virgin or if she did not marry at all. The old woman tells only that it was this framed piece of sheet that most held the attention of those old princesses of Portugal that visited the gallery as well as the nuns and we are left to wonder at the meaning behind it. Were them wondering at the disobedience of one of their ancestors? Were they wishing they were as bold as that one princess? The story finishes in a way that gives the reader leave to drawn their own conclusions and see this story as it may better fit them.

Virginia Woolf: “Women and Fiction” and “Professions for Women”

Virginia Woolf’s essay “Women and Fiction” discuss how fiction written by women is influenced by their circumstances in life. This text helps to understand better how the structure of society and the position held by women in it has a large influence in the literature written by them.

The ideas discussed by Woolf bring to mind the few women writers that we know about that were writing before the 18^th century. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, for example, were only allowed to write because they were involved with the church and writing religious texts. The position of women in the society of the fourteenth century did not give them access to education through any other means but the church. This has limited the possibilities of women’s writings and their themes.

The essay points out how the limitations imposed to women of the eighteenth century narrowed their breadth of subjects and the form of their writing that was restricted to novels (Woolf 46-47). The novels written by women then show how little of the world they were able to see and it reflected directly in their writing. Woolf argues that the changes that have occurred into women’s writing were a result of a change of their attitude (48). From what we know from history and from our experience in today’s society it is possible to relate this alteration of attitude to the transformation of the world and the way it is organized.

“Women and Fiction” is, in my impression, an essay that points plainly to how women’s writings were shaped by the society of the times in which each woman lived and how the past still influences women’s writing even though they are changing their attitudes and starting to overcome the limits imposed to them throughout the years.

“Desiree’s Baby” Comment and Query

            The short story “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin is one that keeps the reader in constant expectation for explanations that never come. At the end of the short story, the reader anticipates a final resolution and is presented instead with a new opening that gives rise to a handful of new questions that remain unanswered. The ending is surprising and unexpected because the obvious conclusion that the reader imagines will come is the complete opposite of what really happens. The reader feels the need to go back to the beginning of the short story to try to understand how she/he could have been so wrong.

            The beginning of the story is reminiscent of a fairy tale because it presents the reader with a foundling girl that is adopted by rich parents that could not have children of their own and grows up to be “beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere”, and inspires the love of a handsome man. It is understandable that the reader should expect the happily ever after ending of fairy tales after such a beginning, but the realistic conclusion of the story shatters this illusion and leaves the reader curious to know what happens next with the characters. Once the reader gets to the end of the story she/he can finally see the clues that were giving throughout the text that had gone unnoticed before. The warning of Desiree’s adoptive father to Armand about the uncertain origins of the girl is one of the clues that lead the reader to the wrong conclusion of believing Desiree to be the one with black ancestry. However, the description of L’Abri as a dark, gloomy place that could not be the scenario of a happy ending and the account of Armand’s face as being “dark, handsome” would be clues leading to the real ending of the story. It is clear that appearances are not reliable sources to make judgments. The reader is deceived into the wrong conclusions by the appearance of the characters and their situations; it is difficult to imagine a reader that would see past Armand’s position in society and the pride of his family name to believe him to be the origin of the black features of the baby.

            In addition to the clues that are not noticed, “Desiree’s Baby” also gives out hints that the reader can identify on the first reading, but cannot conclude what they mean. The most obvious of these hints in my opinion is the scene when Desiree’s adoptive mother visits her and the baby. When Madame Valmonde sees the baby her immediate reaction is to exclaim “This is not the baby!” Here the reader knows that something is wrong with the baby, but she/he cannot imagine what it could be. Chopin certainly manages to create suspense and build tension in the short story with moments like this because, although the reader knows something is amiss, the author does not give enough information to make the situation clear.

            The unexpected ending is very ironic and finally makes the reader see the irony in other aspects of the story. For example, Desiree’s name, which means “desired” is ironic because in the end, she is rejected by her husband that goes as far as burning every reminder of her existence; she is no longer desired. It is also ironic that Armand who has “one of the oldest and proudest [name] in Louisiana” turns out to be the one whose mother “belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery”. Even though we cannot be sure that Desiree does not have black antecedents, the feeling that we have at the ending of the story is that she is a blameless victim of her circumstance.

            One of the intriguing questions that the ending of the short story brings up is whether or not Armand has known the truth all along. The narrator does not tell the reader what are Armand’s feelings and thoughts upon reading the old letter that contains the truth. However, the reader could question Armand’s eagerness to marry Desiree despite her obscure origin. Considering that he was the heir to an old and proud name, it seems a bit weird that he would disregard the possible consequences of this marriage so easily. It is also strange that he should think God unjust and take revenge by hurting his wife. Could these two facts be hidden hints meaning that Armand knew the truth and chose Desiree exactly because he could blame her in case his children were born with black features and keep the pride of his family intact?

Thalita Carvalho

The Middle Ground by Margaret Drabble

Lately, I have not had the chance to read many books simply because I wanted to read them. The reason for that is simple: I have too many books to read for my classes at college. That does not mean that I do not want to read the required books for my classes, actually, they are usually books that are on my list of books to read. One of these books that I read last semester was The Middle Ground by Margaret Drabble.

Margaret Drabble was born June 5, 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, to John F. Drabble and Kathleen Marie. Her older sister is the author A.S. Byatt. Drabble was educated at the Mount School, York, and Newnham College, Cambridge. She is known mostly as a novelist, but she is also a critic and biographer. Her novel The Millstone won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1966.Jerusalem the Golden won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) in 1967 and The Needle’s Eye won the Yorkshire Post Book Award (Finest Fiction) in 1972. The author has also received the E. M. Forster Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973.

The Middle Ground is a novel that could make you give up the reading in the beginning, but if you give it a chance you will probably enjoy it. The narrative structure employed by Drabble is nothing you would expect and seems a bit pointless and boring until you get really involved in it. The main character, Kate Armstrong, is going through what her friend, Hugo Mainwaring, termed her “mid-life crisis” and we follow her in her quest to find herself again and understand how her life has got to the way it is right now.

The narrator of The Middle Ground is intrusive and often talks directly to the reader and expresses his/her opinion on the characters and their lives. The narrative is fragmented, just like real life, and that is what makes this novel very interesting. For my final paper about the novel I wrote about how the narrative strategy used by Drabble reflects the inner turmoil of its characters. The narrative that disturbs the reader in the beginning turns out to be a reflection of the novel’s content, of the feelings faced by the main characters as they try to understand the hows and whys of life.

We get to known Kate at a point when she does not know herself very well anymore. What Kate wants is to find some sense in life, to understand how her past brought about her present and how it will create her future. Through the fragmented narration of her life and the lives of those around her we learn along with Kate that life has no predictable patterns, everything has multiple perspectives and anything is possible. The novel does not have a closing ending; the narrator leaves us with a cliffhanger that allows to any possible ending, just like life has many possibilities, many directions it could go at any moment.

I know I failed to write a proper blurb for this novel, but that is because nothing really happens in The Middle Ground, at least, not in the way we are used to read in novels. The truth is that the transformation that occurs during the story is more of perspective than any big change in plot.

The only way to truly understand this novel is to read it. If you keep in mind that the narrative strategy is more than it seems, that it is a reflection of what is going on with the characters, I am sure that you will enjoy it immensely.

For further information about Margaret Drabble visit:

United Agents

Fantastic Fiction

Red Mood

British Council Literature

For more information about The Middle Ground I recommend the following articles:

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Margaret Drabble’s ‘The Radiant Way’: Feminist Metafiction”. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 24.1 (1990): 5-25.

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Narrative in Drabble’s ‘The Middle Ground’: Relativity versus Teleology”. Contemporary Literature 24.4 (1983): 463-479.

Greene, Gayle. “Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory”. Signs 16.2 (1991): 290-321.

Pickering, Jean. “Margaret Drabble’s Sense of the Middle Problem”. Twentieth Century Literature 30.4 (1984): 475-483.

Rose, Ellen Cronan. “Drabble’s The Middle Ground: ‘Mid-Life’ Narrative Strategies”. Critique 23.3 (1982): 69-82.

Rubenstein, Roberta. “Fragmented Bodies/Selves/Narratives: Margaret Drabble’s Postmodern Turn” Contemporary Literature 35.1 (1994): 136-155.

Stovel, Bruce. “Subjective to Objective: A Career Pattern in Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Contemporary Women Novelists”. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 18.1 (1987): 53-61.

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

Separation and memory. These are the two things that, for me, define the lives of Edwidge Danticat’s characters in Krik? Krak!. The nine interconnected stories present us with the struggles of different women that have to deal with the political tension and the poverty in their country, Haiti, and how they affect their lives. Each story tells us about the pain and suffering that are the common trait of characters that have different backgrounds and varying expectations of life.

The opening short story, “Children of the Sea”, grabs the reader’s attention in such a way that it is impossible to put the book down. Two narrators, a young man and woman who love each other are writing letters that they will never exchange. Through their letters you learn of their haste and forced separation and the promise to write daily to one another so when they meet again they can read the letters and know what each of them went through. But the separation will not be temporary, as they hoped, and only the memory of that love will remain in the unread letters.

In these stories memory is the way that women find to stay alive forever. They keep in mind what the generations past lived, and they want to make sure to let their stories for posterity. Some of them are away from home, like Grace’s mother in “Caroline’s Wedding”, and try desperately to keep their culture alive by passing everything on to their daughters who live in a different world and cannot truly understand the traditions of their Haitian antecedents.

Danticat’s language is compelling; it urges us to feel the pain of those characters and to understand their nature and sympathise with them. All those characters have lost something or someone due to the political and economical instability of Haiti. By the end of the book you feel like you can really understand the narrator of the epilogue when she says:

“You have never been able to escape the pounding of a thousand other hearts that have outlived yours by thousands of years. And over the years when you have needed us, you have always cried ‘Krik?’ and we have answered ‘Krak!’ and it has shown us that you have not forgotten us.” (224)

This is the weigh of the memory of women’s lives. In this case it is that of Haitian women, but what it brought to my mind was the memory of all the women in the world that have suffered so much and fought for a better life for us. And it reminded me that we still have a long way to go.

The edition I read was:

Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak!. Vintage Contemporaries: New York. 1996. Print.

Jane Austen

My Jane Austen books collection

Jane Austen has become increasingly popular after the 1995 Pride & Prejudice BBC adaptation with Colin Firth as Fitzwilliam Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet. The six-episode adaptation started a fever of productions based in Austen’s books, from TV series that follow the plot of the books to adaptations of the stories to modern days, like the now popular The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and twists like the TV series Lost in Austen. Jane Austen probably (we could even say for sure) never imagined that her works would become so popular and that her name would be known and admired all over the world.Born on December 16th, 1775, in the Steventon parsonage, Hampshire, England, Jane Austen was the seventh child of eight children. The Austen family was not rich, but they lived comfortably enough on the clergyman’s salary of Reverend George Austen and the supplementary earnings with the farm and a boys’ school run by Austen’s father and mother.

Jane Austen had six brothers and just one sister, Cassandra, who would be her best friend throughout her life. The two sisters went to boarding school together to receive what was, at the time, the education deemed appropriate for girls (music, languages, drawing, painting, etc.) After returning from school Austen began writing and was supported in this by her family who enjoyed listening to her stories.

After her father’s death in 1805, Jane Austen found herself in precarious financial situation with her mother and sister, both named Cassandra. They were forced to move many times until they finally settle in a cottage in Chawton that was owned by her brother Edward. At this time, Austen began working on her writings again and 1811 Sense and Sensibility was published with the authorship identified only as By a Lady.

The book was very successful and was followed by Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, Emma in 1815 and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion that were published posthumously in 1818.

Jane Austen never married. She received a marriage proposal which she accepted, but changed her mind on the next day and refuse the young man. This is something for which we should be grateful, as a married woman Austen would probably not have published so many books and we would be missing out in these great works of the English literature.

The author died on July 17th, 1817, supposedly from Addison’s disease, leaving behind an unfinished novel, Sandition, with only eleven chapters.

Although her works are seen as merely romantic novels by many people, it is indisputable that her books are full of irony and witty criticism of the 19th century English society. The world of marriage and the rules involved in the process are explored and criticized in her novels. The mistaken assumptions of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice show that social standings are not enough to make a person less susceptible to character faults. In Northanger Abbey, Austen wittily criticizes the reaction of the public to the popular gothic novels of the time. These are just two examples of the words between the lines of her works, we can find much more if we look closely enough.

This year we celebrate the the bicentenary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice. The novel was first published in 28 January 1813. I will write more about the novel soon.

I’ll eventually write a bit more about each of her novels. This was just a brief biography so that we can know a little more about such an important name on the English literature canon.




Based on my readings of:

Hannon, Patrice. 101 Things You Didn’t Know about Jane Austen. Adams Media: Avon. 2007. Print.

Dickson, Rebecca. Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury. Metro Books: New York. 2008.