Sub Rosa

This meant to be at the planning stage, so it is indeed still messy. However, I am finding that I want to fill the gaps, whereas I need to find pithy quotes and build arguments out of that.  Every quote needs to mean something more profound and as a general rule, your response is meant to be far in excess of the original quote. I am also consciously aware that I have to not just write in the third person, guessing what the author wanted.  Keep to genre/character etc.

This is going to be a long weekend, but I need to get at least 2/3rds of it done, with a planner evidently in place.  We are not meant to submit traditional rough drafts anymore - the Mothership wants the lecturers to have the synopsis only, not a well-as-can-be-expected finished product.

17:25
I have nearly done a third of the essay, but I have been stuck rearranging the same 400 words - how can that be? Sometimes it is about compounding and meshing sentences, as I have been guilty of repeating myself. It is almost like my observations are singing together, except they are not harmonising; they are in tune but not in time with each other.  Deeply frustrating.  I want to get this emailed to HP on Monday morning, so she can see which track I am heading down.

21:23
My entire essay is only just over 900 words, which means I have only written 300 since yesterday - what is WRONG with me??? I really can't concentrate at the moment.  Other than LJ, I have largely stayed off of social media.  I haven't even broken the 1,000 word/33.3 percent barrier. Arrrggggghhhhh!  Back to work!!!!

22:40
Well, I got as far as 1,021 which is marginally better than a couple of hours back. I am not sure quite where I am going with this. Turned Classic FM back on, because I became too distractable and started to play games on my phone instead.

Glory be - I have been emailed by my other lecturer, who has said I can leave out North and South and really go to town on Hard Times.  Woohoo, no more laborious annotating and silently screaming into a pillow. I have suddenly found my will to live and will invest in ploughing through Dickens and nitpicking it to my heart's content.

*happy dance*

Well, I did it - nailed myself to the seat and finished the last 120 pages of Hard Times. Alas, I have paid the price and my neck and back feel like a croquet hoop. Tomorrow, I will quickly skim through the Utilitarianism paper, then move on to North and South over the next couple of days. I am dead - spent 19 hours over this book all told and I have no choice but to move onward. Saying that, Hard Times was an interesting book - shows the folly of heavy-handed age-of-reason guidance does to a child. Made a hollow shell of Louisa and an absolute automaton of Bitzer.

'Compare and contrast the treatment of social issues and ideas in the time of Dickens' novel Hard Times and another Victorian novel of your choice' (mine is North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell).

I have been busy doing other things today, but have settled down this evening rereading Hard Times and note-taking at the same time.  I am consciously reading this with a Marxist theorist head, very apt for Victorians and the Industrial Revolution, nes pa?

I spent 3 hours reading 40 pages and scribbling furiously at the same time.  The stern, but not unkind Gradgrind, the overblown Bounderby, the up-and-coming bully Bitzer and the poor unfortunate Jupe, whose father has left her.  Oh and the social snobbery of the middle classes over the circus people who are on the periphery of the town.  Great stuff - 40 pages down, over 200 to go.  I won't be on here either - will be stashed in a corner somewhere, mentally wandering around Coketown and getting lost down its faceless, grimy avenues.

Well, I started so well with my summer reading (Fahrenheit 451/Wide Sargasso Sea/All of Me), then I lost all interest in reading ANYTHING for the past six weeks.  However, I started to get anxiety dreams about either missing lessons/trains or turning up to lectures totally clueless.  So I guess the psyche is doing a number on me - my dreams are guilt-tripping me into getting back on track.  So I had a peak at the stuff lined up for September and the coursework needed.  Hence starting to chip away at the Dickens selection, starting with Hard Times.

Not doing so badly - Dickens brings the spotlight down on the airs and presumptions of Victorian Britain during the Industrial Revolution.  Looming large is the 'Age of Reason' parent Mr Gradgrind, his overblown associate Mr Bounderby (gotta love these names) and the totally preposterously-named Mr McChoakumchild *, the sadistic child-hating teacher. I am on chapter seven, where the well-connected, but hard-up Mrs Sparsit the housekeeper provides social observation on the new set up in Gradgrind's house.  Not as dreary as one might imagine - I could imagine doing Marxist literary criticism piece on this to start with.

* I ask you - Dickens might as well have called him Mr Throttlebrat.