This past week I went to visit the new Rei Kawakubo / Commes de Garçons exhibit titled “Art of the Between” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (I now know that we had to analyze a piece from MOMA.) The piece I particularly enjoyed at the exhibit was titled War /Peace. It was a collection of beautifully designed outfits on 5 of the same mannequins. The piece focused on the dynamic symbolism of the color red. The mannequins to the far right had rose shaped appliqués to symbolize love. The mannequins on the far right had blood splatter prints on their dresses to symbolize destruction and war. With this, Commes de Garçons creates the idea of duality and perception. Red is a strong color, one that represents the two most powerful emotions of humanity: love and hate. By creating this display, the artist (and designer) illuminates the blurred line between love and war. We often fight for what we love, a country, a person, ourselves and sometimes this love can create a war filled with hatred, destruction, and blood. This entire exhibit blurs the line between black and white, creating connections between polar ideas.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, we see Bertha, from Jane Eyre, in a new light. We meet her as Antoinette, a creole woman, who like Jane herself is trying to find her place in the world. Jean Rhys sets the novel in a post-colonial society, unlike Jane’s Victorian era. However, the parallels between Jane and Antoinette become more and more illuminated through the Wide Sargasso Sea. I think Rhys does this to show the struggle for identity, especially for a woman who is trapped in her own society, withstands the test of time. This struggle transcends age, class, and time period.

The essay, “The Other Side”, illuminates some interesting points about the two characters as well as the two books. It’s interesting that Michael Thorpe questions whether is adequate to read the Wide Sargasso Sea without reading Jane Eyre. He states that Mr. Rochester is a shady character in the Wide Saragasso, one that we meet more profoundly in Jane Eyre. To me, I think reading the two together creates a holistic perspective for both the story of Jane and Antoinette. It creates a profound, layered and twisted story plot that allows us, the readers, to be critical of yet compassionate towards every single character in the book.

A loud relentless beep awoke Michelle from her sleep. She heard the rain drops outside. What a sober day it would be. She rolled out of bed and started her morning routine. Before she knew it, she was outside getting soaked in the rain. She could not remember where she put her umbrella and did not have time to find it. She walked out of her house and turned right. When was the rain going to end? She walked 5 blocks. Did she have time to get coffee? She looked at her phone. 8:50, she was cutting it close. Finally, she got to the train station. Now where was that metro card? For the life of her, she could never remember which pocket she threw it in last. She scoured through her bag, then her wallet. There it was! She walked up the stairs. She heard the train coming. She ran. It was the Q. Almost robotically, Michelle got on. She passed 2 stations. The train was local. She hoped to catch the B train, but there was no sign of it. She was happy to have gotten on the Q. Maybe the got on the B train wasn’t running today? No, that didn’t make sense. It was Monday, right? She passed Kings Highway. She kept looking at the stops. Ave J. The train was moving so slow. She had her headphones in, she got lost in her music. Somewhere amidst the lyrics she heard St. Tropez. And there she was on a beach, in the French Rivera. She was tan, she was warm, she was sipping on the finest French Cabernet. And then she heard the train operator “This is Newkirk Plaza.Transfer is available to the B train.” She turned around. The B was across the platform. She ran , grabbed an open seat in the last cart of the B. She dropped her umbrella on her lap, spraying the lady next to her. Shit, she thought. Penelope Pushy was dressed in a leopard print coat. She was staring out the window of the train but when she felt the drops she quickly turned her head. Of all the places in the train, Michelle had to sit next to her? Lady Pushy tried to move closer to the window and looked out of it. Should she tell this girl to move her wet umbrella? Lady Pushy sat quietly, slowly moving herself away from the umbrella. They were already at Prospect Park. Michelle raised her head from her phone screen and realized the umbrella was bothering Lady Pushy. She moved it away. The train went underground. They reached 7th avenue. The train was stopped once again. Since when was there phone service underground? This was new. The train left the station, moved about 300 feet and then it stopped. “We are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us.” Not this again. She looked at her phone..9:20. The lady sitting next to her was was which my train stopped moving for about 20 minutes. Michelle remembered waking up on Dekalb. Lady Pushy needed to get off the train. Brooklyn Bridge. She stared out of the window and looked at South Street Seaport. It was beautiful even in the rain. New York was the city of cities. Next stop: Grand Street and finally Broadway Lafayette. Michelle got off the last cart of B train and took the escalator upstairs to the uptown 6. She hoped the train would be there by the time she got up. It was serendipity because there it was. She leaned by the door. The train was packed. They passed Astor Place, Union square. More people. How many people could it on this train. Michelle pushed closer to the door. “Finally.. 23rd street, she thought” She walked out of the train from the 22nd street exit and walked one block straight up to Lexington Avenue and there was Baruch!

Even though I am a psych major, and Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, I always thought he was a little out there with his ideas. However, I really enjoyed this piece. In this essay he writes, “The liberation of an individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development.” I can resonate with this on a personal level. From a young age, I have always believed that my parents were the smartest people on the planet. They’re my parents. They’ve taught me almost everything I know. They have been there through the time I took the back wheels off of my bike until as recent as this semester when I was studying for my physics exam. But, the problem (or the blessing I should say) with getting older, is realizing that you have been seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. This realization is pertinent to self-understanding. When you start to explore the world through your eyes, you become what the world calls a “functioning adult”.

I think the untranslatable self refers to the idea of not being able to put a person’s identity into words, into categories. We are who we are. We are not just a gender, or a social class, or a race. We are human beings. We can use words to communicate. We can use words to disagree or praise someone.

We can translate something from Spanish to English, from French to German, but sometimes there are things so unique to a language that they are untranslatable quite literally. So, to me it seems that Whitman finds people to have that same uniqueness that is untranslatable. We can’t put a soul into words.

The poem I chose is “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” by Emily Dickinson. Jane Eyre’s journey through life in this book is parallel to this poem. Dickinson believes the “Soul” has the power to make its own decision, to approve and disapprove of whom or what it pleases. The soul is the most important and superior part of a human being. Society, from my understanding, is the term Dickinson uses to refer to people we choose to keep around or possibly the morals or values we choose to hold close. Jane’s soul selects her “society” at Thornfield, where she falls in love with Mr. Rochestor. Later she learns of his wife, Bertha, and is forced to repress her feeling of love for him so that they are “present no more” (Dickinson). In the second stanza Dickinson writes, “Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling / Upon her Mat” This relates to Jane because she refuses to marry someone for status. St. John wanted to make her his wife so that they can go to India and be missionaries. Jane refuses because they do not love each other.  Finally, once the soul chooses it’s companion, as Jane chose Mr. Rochester, she closes the “valves of her attention/ like stone” to the majority. Jane remains loyal to Mr. Rochester despite his injuries after the fire.

In “The Transformation of Silence into Action”, Lorde writes, “But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live.” (42) I think this paradox remains Jane Eyre’s internal struggle throughout the novel. She considers herself plain, undeserving of attention and love, seen by her depiction of how she would paint herself in contrast to how she would paint Miss Ingram. She refers to her portrait as “disconnected, poor, and plain” (Bronte, 238) and refers to herself as “indigent an insignificant plebeian” (239) When Mr. Rochestor compliments Jane earlier in this chapter [16], she convinces herself that it is shameful to consider anything of such remarks. At the same time, Jane was not “satisfied with tranquility,” she craved action. She believes “it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that [women] ought to confine themselves to making pudding and knitting stocking… it is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them if they seek to do more, or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” (Bronte, 161) Throughout her stay at Thornfield, Jane has these rebellious feelings spurring inside of her, but she represses them to please Mr. Rochestor. Lorde writes, “For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” (44) Jane’s society as well as Jane’s less than fortunate environment has socialized women, especially herself to respect fear, to repress her need to speak out. She wants to tell Mr. Rochestor her true feelings for him, but she knows that wouldn’t be “lady-like,” she feels ashamed and uses her own insecurities about her looks to lower her feeling of self-worth in comparison to women she has not yet met.

This past summer, I spent a month traveling around Italy. The first place we went to was Cala Gonone, a small beach town in Sardinia. The city contains a stretch of some of the most beautiful beaches in Italy, which can only be reached by boat or by hiking for about 4-6 hours. When we got a chance to see the crystal clear water, the white pebble sand beaches, the cliffs, the trees, the caves, all  virtually untouched by globalization, I felt sublime. From a small rubber boat in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, I realized how vast the world is. How many places are still “pure”? How many mountain tops are still untouched by human hands? Remembering that nature is bigger and stronger than you keeps you humbled. But nature also creates a connection between human beings. As I watched the Italian cliff divers jump off the 40 ft cliffs, the tourists settle on the sand, the hikers climb up the rocks, I realized that we all share this planet and that’s what makes it so wonderful.

This piece begins by underscoring a paradox in our society. We tend to believe that progress is desirable and imminent, yet we long for things to be as they once were. We are excited to move forward but are anxious that we have lost something of our past. During the time of the Enlightenment “ancient” thinkers believed that the modern idea of individualism would induce a lack of moral responsibility and social alienation. During the time of the Enlightenment modern thinkers had reasonably concluded that “kings and queens were ordinary mortals”, an idea which (to me) seems like the beginning of a civil rights movement. The idea that human beings were just that: human beings, despite social status and ranking. People could rely on their own sense of reason to decide how to act, while understanding the omnipresence of emotion. One quote that really stood out to me was on page 8: “…writers call attention to the deceptiveness and possible misused of social norms as well as to their necessity…if people examined not only examined their standards of behavior, but also their tendency to hide behind them.” This quote made me think of an essay by Peggy McIntosh “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Society creates certain structures which segregate people based on social status, race, or culture emotionally and/or physically. People who benefit from certain social norms tend to hide behind them. (Usually unconsciously) I think one of the major revelations of the Enlightenment was the idea of introspection. We must look within ourselves to understand how to change the world. For instance, privileged people need to examine their privilege and be willing to give it up in order for the world to be a better, more enlightened place.