Poem on page 153 – “On Beauty”
Sins are what we shouldn’t do. Who is the “we?” They definitely equals the beautiful, the we is probably the ugly people. Beautiful is ideal, what people want to be. By not being beautiful, “we” are committing all sorts of sins.
The beautiful don’t lack the wound, which makes them beautiful?
They are the damned.
They are the damned.
Why the emphasis change? Confirms or claims, they ARE the damned. The we become distanced from them, the beautiful way over there, THEY are the damned.
Why does it matter if the beautiful know they are damned? Does it change our notion of beautifulness.
Is is being suggested that we can’t just draw a line between beautiful and not beautiful people? Who is they? Who is we and you and our? Read the first stanza from the opposite way (no we, as the beautiful, could not itemize the list, of the sins they, the ugly, can’t forgive us.)
The author is the Claire character. Now, Claire doesn’t even have an interest in that ebauty that she wrote about. She writes about nature now. The novel itself is constantly reevaluating, the poem is commenting on itself.
P.g 206-7
The notion of living for someone, vs the notion of living with someone (the latter being Kiki).
Then, Kiki says to Howard in the fight that she staked her life on him, she built her life on him. After the conversation with Carlene and the affair, she realizes Carlene is right.
In the fight, she compares her physical appearance to Claire. There are huge differences, considering what is ideal and not ideal. This is a novel where there is constant role reversal, contradictions in personalities and actions.
We discover the characters in this novel actually stand for something else than we thought they stood for as it progresses.
Looking at Howard’s End – by E Forster. Set in Victorian England, characterized by propriety. Dressing and acting according to codes, doing the right thing etc. Notion of anything abnormal is xed out of society.
Two competing families, one is led by a family with an overruling patriarch. In that book, the mother lives for the husband, obeys the family codes, and dies? Like Carlene Kipps.
The other family is two sisters who live a lone in a mansion in London. They like to challenge the status quo. Compared to Howard’s family.
On Beauty just moves this old story to urban, contemporary England, and it adds the race counterpart.
The ending of Howard’s End is strange. The Kiki parallel, we’ll call her Helen. The widowed man, aka Mr. Kipps, marries the younger sister of Helen. HUGE age difference. She marries him so that he can tell her what to do. She thinking that she can both obey him and challenge him as an independent thinker. (Fail!!)
Carl character is also there, meets the sisters at an opera. Calling him Sloppy, for some unknown random reason. Lot’s of random weird deaths and marriages and fights. They all end up happy in the end, all defying Victorian notions.
When we get to the end of On Beauty, how do the families end up? Are they happy, do they live communally, and most importantly, are the defying expectations of their family?
Interracial marriages – Harold doesn’t approve. He suggests that Kiki found a black man, as it is in her nature. whoa…
The Kippses are a counterpart to Howards father as social conservatives, don’t follow the progressions of society.
VOICE. Claire invites Carl to her class because she thinks he has a really talented voice, yet doesn’t believe he has a voice at all and sends Zora to plead on his behalf. How do we define what a person is? How is one a subject, who can think and act and react for themselves? How can one have power or even resist power, especially that of the university?
What is it saying about subjectivity? Kiki and Carlene seem to be saying they don’t want to be a subject completely on themselves, they want their husbands to give them substance. and how does this work through the novel? How is it that Carl doesn’t have a voice, or that Claire is wrong and that Carl really does have a voice? Doesn’t the Bus Stop show indicate that he does really have a voice?
