Skip to main content

Caleb Williams

I completed Villette the day before last. I was intrigued and immersed, but I left off with a dissatisfied feeling. I concluded that mid-century novels are not to my taste right now. They are too much about a suffering creature, her tormentors, and her triumph through perfect virtue. 

Spaniels were popular dogs at the time. There was one in Villette, actually, that was positioned like a female rival, and I know women's hairstyles popular during that time mimicked the spaniel's ears. 

Caleb Williams, written by William Godwin, father of Mary Shelley, is more interesting to me, written in the voice of the early century, preoccupied with ideas like those of other early Romantic writings. The story is about a fame-seeker and popular curiosity. It relates interestingly to modern media.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Studying with Dolls

In the afternoons, I usually take my laptop or a book to the bed and study, and a doll for company. Gertrude is sitting on my bed desk. I got her in 2015 from the Korean doll company Dollmore. She's a "Flocke" sculpt. Willow is sitting with my headphones. She's made by the Chinese company Angel of Dream. I got her in 2013. She's a "Qing" sculpt.
more &

Love oneself

I have found a new barometer by which to judge my actions, or rather, it is an involuntary barometer that is improving me perhaps without my say. For every weak thing I do or begin to do, I ask myself if I would admire myself for it. I have felt so critical of myself lately, so ugly, so awful, and out of it has sprung this quest to improve myself. I don't want to become a slave to style magazines; rather, I could not admire myself for doing that. At the same time, I want to look right and decent and keep from embarrassing myself. I feel like my hygeine is always falling short, just like the housework. Every time I turn around, there's hair where hair shouldn't be, there's stuff under my toenails, my tee shirts are shrinking up and showing my stomach; to say nothing of my wildly oxidizing jewelry, scuffed shoes, &c. I don't understand why I don't see anyone else with these problems! Do they spend all their time at home cleaning their jewelry and ironing their
more &

Then, they let Margot out.

Work is going to be really tough for the next month and a half. There is really no margin for error in the goal I have set. I will have to make and run at least one sample, sometimes two, every day. I am going to have to work overtime in the beginning just to leave myself a little room. Long ago I read this story about people who colonized Venus. The storms cleared, the sun shone, and plants grew only one day every hundred years. On the day the sun was to come out some children locked the nerd (I'm sure that would be me) in the closet, and after the day was over, they let her out. That is how I felt yesterday. I could only get a table far in Starbucks, so I didn't know what the weather was doing. I had planned to shop for my spring wardrobe and I did that very well. It took two hours, which is really a lot less than it would take in person, and the things I got were very much to my taste, but I stepped out into warmth, sunshine, and balmy air, and there was only an hour left in
more &