Assignment #1

Susan Brownmiller’s essay on “Femininity” interests me because the overview suggests it discusses stereotypes and the societal limits placed on females of all ages.  I just became the grandmother of Abby, and while I was shopping for books for her the stereotypical themes and images (even in those little infant cardboard books) struck me as glaring.  Train books and car books, for example, have male characters… like Tommy the Tank Engine.  It is amazing to me how early we are pushed into the roles we’re meant to go in.  I remember my Homeroom Mother experiences when my kids were in grade school.  At the Christmas parties, all the little girls were given stickers and little notebooks, while the boys all got clacker balls and slingshots.  Who in their right mind would rather have stickers than a slingshot????  I have a lot of personal experience that I could draw upon for this subject.  The overview also promises Brownmiller’s explanation of the source of feminine power.  This raises my curiosity.  Do I even want to know?  I mean… if the source of female power is physical beauty… does this mean I’m societally powerless? (126). (related essays “The Wound in the Face” (141) and “About Men” (251)..

 Annie Dillard’s essay, “Living Like Weasels,” interests me for several reasons.  One, Dillard has been recommended to me over and over by friends who have suggested I read her different works.  Also… someone this summer actually compared my writing to Dillard’s.  I think this must be because I also write about nature.  The overview of her essay says she makes comparisons between humans and nature and suggests that she might favor our animal instincts and the mysterious nature of things over rational thought.  This interests me because I think too much.  One of the things I think is that you can never really get to the end of logic which is a kind of questioning that always seems to lead to more questions.  Also, I think we learn much from our emotions.  How could we logically decide that a situation was unjust, if we hadn't experienced the pain of injustice in our own lives?  I am interested too, in what Dillard says about choice… This seems to be what separates us from the animals…

 Loren Eisely’s  “The Flow of the River” looks good too.  I love water (creeks, rivers, oceans, ponds, puddles, fountains)… and I like the idea of water having “magical properties” (overview).   Eisely’s biographical sketch says he was an anthropologist and that he wrote a book on evolution.  What would his take on that subject be, I wonder?  I don’t usually associate magic with science… so that would be an interesting exploration.  I’m just remembering something that happened when my daughter and I were walking in Spring Hill Cemetery this summer.  It was growing dark when we noticed a misty, veil-like thing floating above the garden on the hill above the Jewish section of burial sites.  For a minute… well, it did occur to us that it might be a ghost.  It didn’t look like anything else.  We stared and stared till my daughter finally figured out it wasn’t the Lady in White… but a man watering the garden… the spray coming from the end of the hose arched up and flowed down like a ghost body.  Anyway… we were kind of wondering what it would be like if it really had been a ghost and were a little tiny disappointed that our lives were normal, as always, with a rational explanation behind everything.  But Eisely finds magic and marvel in “common substances”… so maybe his essay would offer a good perspective. (256).

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