Life Goals

Since I'm meant to be revising and don't really have the time to write a post that's actually well thought out or intelligent, I decided to post a list of my life goals just to fill up some of the dead space on here. I wrote this very late at night and they all seem to be silly and/ or pretentious. Maybe I'm different late at night, but I fear that I'm actually just this silly and pretentious all the time. So enjoy it. Or throw up at it. Whatever takes your fancy.

 Learn how to cartwheel

Own a typewriter

Do a firewalk

This appears to be some sort of burning conga line.

Stage a performance of Doctor Faustus set in an asylum

(more on this at a later date)

Start and run a zine

Have a go on a trapeze

Only I would NEVER look this graceful.

Spend more time in museums because they're free and interesting and I love them

Ditto for the British Library

Wear flowers in my hair

Oh Tavi - perfect as always.

Have lilac hair
(I'm a wimp and my hair hates bleach, so I might end up waiting until I'm old and grey and then being the coolest granny on the block)

Speak better French

Attend a fancy dress party in a Clara Bow costume

Clara definitely wins the prize for 'Best Seduction Face'.

Learn (or attempt to learn) to tap dance

Read all twelve books in the A Dance to the Music of Time cycle

(I'll probably post a list of all the books I want to read this summer at some point, just to give me some incentive to read them, so look out for that)

Go to Hampton Court on a date

A good backdrop for hand-holding if ever I saw one.

Throw at least one really good impromptu party

Wear more tweed

Own and wear a range of outlandish hats

This is definitely the look I'm going for.

Attend a Last Tuesday Society event

(I've got my eye on Wyndstock)

Own a DVD of The Scarlet Woman - a black and white film scripted by Evelyn Waugh, who also acted in it with his Oxford friends

(I have been told by people in the know that I need to contact a man in Texas...)

 Visit Shakespeare and Company

I can feel my purse magically opening from across the channel.

Be considered a specialist in a field

Be happy

There! Finished!

Some of them are very idiotic, some of them are not. They are all things I want to do.

(Although my friends will be very alarmed by how many of these things require some form of co-ordination - DYSPRAXIA ALERT!)

Just to add to the pretentions being thrown around here, I thought I'd end with a quote from Henry Miller:

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."

  He says it better than I ever could.

Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights

The full title for this post is actually:

WUTHERING, WUTHERING, WUTHERING HEIGHTS

OR

WHY I THINK THAT CATHY AND HEATHCLIFF SHARE A FATHER, MAKING THEM HALF SIBLINGS INSTEAD OF JUST ADOPTIVE ONES

but that wouldn't fit, so I had to do some editing to make it a bit snappier.

Are you meant to be revising? That's ok, me too. Want to listen to Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights, otherwise known as The Best Song Ever Written? I'm sure it can be arranged.

HEATHCLIFF, IT'S ME, CATHY, COME H-O-O-ME! Ahem. Sorry. Back to business.

Now that we've covered the Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights part of the title, we should probably get into the whole Why I think that Cathy and Heathcliff share a father, making them half siblings instead of just adoptive ones thing.

When I first read Wuthering Heights, I thought it was a given that Cathy and Heathcliff were half siblings; it never even occurred to me that it wasn't something that everyone else inferred too. I mean, Emily Brontë doesn't exactly shy away from taboos, does she? And what better way to add to the weirdness that's already there in the Cathy/ Heathcliff relationship than with some crazy incestuous goings on?

But what's that you cry? 'Evidence, evidence'? Well, being a lady of order and logic (she lied unconvincingly), I happen to have some on hand to batter you cynics into submission:

POINT 1: Why would Cathy's father bring home some random homeless kid? Apparently the story he told was that 'his money and time, being both limited, he thought it better to take it home with him'. Yeah right. Worst excuse ever, and I am the Queen of bad excuses. Wouldn't it make so much more sense if Mr Earnshaw had a gipsy mistress up in Liverpool who inconveniently fell pregnant and then even more inconveniently died? In that situation, it's not hard to imagine the guy feeling massively guilty and bringing the poor bastard child back with him.  

POINT 2: Mrs Earnshaw FREAKS OUT when her husband brings Heathcliff home. If your husband returned from a trip with a strange child there would be two sensible ways to react:

• decide that since you've got some extra room and servants, you'll be a good person and take in the homeless boy, raising him as your own
• make arrangements to take the boy to an orphanage a.s.a.p. while quietly worrying about the sanity of your husband.

Mrs Earnshaw does neither of these. Nelly says that her mistress 'was ready to fling it [Heathcliff] out of doors', surely something of an overreaction in the circumstances; it's not as if her husband has presented her with the gift of a decomposing goat or something and expected her to be thrilled. On the other hand, if she suspected him of sneaking off to Liverpool to sleep with someone else, her reaction suddenly seems to make a lot more sense. Why else would she seemingly turn her life into a vendetta against Heathcliff's existence?

POINT 3: Speaking of Nelly, she has some interesting things to say on the subject of Heathcliff and his origins. She says that Mr Earnshaw 'took to Heathcliff strangely' - the implication being that he showed affection beyond that which would be normal for a child who was not his own . The most telling words come in the same passage; 'the poor fatherless child, as he called him'. Does Nelly know some juicy piece of gossip that she's not allowed to tell (but revels in hinting at all the same)?

Wouldn't it make so much sense? It would add another layer of complication to the Heathcliff/ Earnshaw/ Linton family trees as well as explaining why Cathy and Heathcliff's 'romance' was so unbelievably doomed right from the beginning. Maybe they're so 'on the same wavelength' because they're genetically connected; it's not so unbelievable - I know from experience that half siblings can be scarily similar. 

The phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction, usually used to describe when siblings are raised apart and fall in love upon meeting as adults, could surely apply to Cathy and Heathcliff too - if they did share a father but were raised as adoptive siblings they would obviously not have developed what is known as the Westermarck effect but at the same time could be attracted by the similarities they unknowingly share.

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT! *

Here are some links if you want them:

Eric Solomon wrote a piece on The Incest Theme in Wuthering Heights which is good and goes over some points I haven't put in.

AND FINALLY... as a reward for ploughing through to the end, here is a clip of Noel Fielding performing his take on the US version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights video. It's quite something.

P. S. If you completely disagree with of this, feel free to blame all the incest talk on too much Game of Thrones viewing.

*Truly marvellous ending courtesy of a lovely lad called Alex Grenyer.

What Makes You Beautiful?

If you're a young-ish human who listens to the radio and/ or has friends, you will almost definitely know about One Direction. Teenage boys with good hair and nice voices equals hoards of screaming fangirls and the sweet smell of success. It's a well worn formula.

Just look at that hair.

What Makes You Beautiful was their debut single, released in September 2011, and it was a massive success. Going to an all girls school, I hear it played on a VERY regular basis, and while its catchy chorus had drummed its way into my brain, I'd never really stopped to listen to the lyrics.

Wait, what?

First of all, any song that begins with the words 'You're insecure' is going to start the alarm bells in my head a'ringing. And does anyone ever stop to think that maybe the poor girl keeps looking down at the floor (a classic sign of being uncomfortable in a situation) because guys won't stop ogling her wherever she goes?

The last lines of the chorus - 'You don't know you're beautiful/ That's what makes you beautiful' - are essentially perpetuating the myth that girls who know they look good are arrogant.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of this 'is insecurity attractive?' quagmire, I decided to delve into the brains of a couple of teenage boys. We shall call them Guy 1 and Guy 2: they are both straight 17 year olds. 

DEERSTALKERS AT THE READY!

Guy 1 says he prefers confident girls because they're 'not like too shy to do anything or wimpy or crying at a movie when a cat dies'.

Fair enough. It would seem that he likes strong women who can hold their own in a relationship.

Guy 2 says 'I prefer insecurity because then I feel on the same level' but also says that he would like more confident girls if he himself was more confident because 'confidence and attraction to confidence is proportional'.

He obviously seeks out girls who are non-threatening and to whom he can relate, but only because of his own low levels of self esteem.

So it would seem that, in general, confidence is an attractive trait to guys.

This is in no way a dig at the One Direction lads, who didn't even write the song, or their fans. I mean, there's an entire 'Feminist Harry Styles' tumblr! Nevertheless, I still don't like the fact that teenage girls are being taught that the way to seem 'attractive' is to look good but to never admit that you think you look good. Surely the only opinion that matters when it comes to how you look and act is your own - not the opinions of your friends or family or boyfriend/girlfriend or the media or a talent show manufactured boy band.

Ne-Yo has a song called Miss Independent which pretty much says everything I want to say:

I deliberately haven't posted the official video, because I think it ruins the song a bit, so you'll just have to deal with that.

See how little he says about her looks? That's because they don't really matter. He loves her for her independence and maturity, for not being afraid to know what she wants, for paying her bills on time (how awesome is that?!).

Girls shouldn't feel like they have to turn on the whole 'damsel in distress' act every time they want someone to like them. If you love football or physics or... farming, or anything that society considers to be 'unfeminine' (i.e. not pink and with the possibility of mess) don't hide it, because at the end of the day you'll only be projecting an untruthful image of yourself.

To quote the marvellous article on this very subject written over at Feministing with the title One Direction to girls everywhere: your low self-esteem is hot,

'If he can’t handle it when you flip your hair, what is he going to do when you express an opinion?'

 Feel free to start a comments debate; I like hearing other opinions, and definitely won't hunt you down or anything.

Paradise Lost = Paradise LONG

Today in English we had to write speedy synopsises (synopses?) of all the major speeches in Paradise Lost as our teacher read them aloud. I figured there was no point in writing something short but boring, so I tried my best to make them at least a little bit funny. I probably didn't succeed, but I kind of enjoyed myself regardless so I don't really care...

SPEECH ONE: SATAN TO BEELZEBUB (lines 84 - 124) 

Beginning: 'If thou beest he: but oh how fallen!'

SYNOPSIS:

'Woah Beelzebub, you look awful! I guess God was more powerful than we thought. Still, we'd better not give up. Now that we know what we're up against, we've got a better chance of success.'

SPEECH TWO: BEELZEBUB TO SATAN (lines 128 - 155)

Beginning: 'O prince, O chief of many thronèd powers'

SYNOPSIS:

'You're a great leader, but everything kind of sucks down here in Hell compared to how things were in heaven. What if God has deliberately left us our strength and minds but stuck us down here so that he can get his revenge?'

SPEECH THREE: SATAN TO BEELZEBUB (lines 157 - 191)

Beginning: 'Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable'

SYNOPSIS:

 'Stop being a pansy Beelzebub. From now on we need to delight in doing evil. Look! God has called off his heavy men and special effects. Now that he's stopped pelting us with lightning bolts, we can rally our troops down here. Chin up!'

SPEECH FOUR: SATAN TO BEELZEBUB (lines 242 - 270)

Beginning: 'Is this the region, this the soil, the clime'

SYNOPSIS:

Well, it seems like this is what we're stuck with. It may look pretty grim but at least we're as far away from God as we can be and we still have our mental faculties. Let's make this our kingdom. The others look pretty shocked over there on the burning lake - let's go and get them and tell them our plans.'

SPEECH FIVE: BEELZEBUB TO SATAN (lines 272 - 282)

Beginning: 'Leader of those armies bright'

SYNOPSIS:

That sounds good: a few words from you will buck them up again. No wonder they don't look too good - we have fallen a REALLY long way!

SPEECH SIX: SATAN TO ALL THE FALLEN ANGELS (lines 315 - 330)

Beginning: 'Princes, potentates'

SYNOPSIS:

[sarcastically] So... Is this where you've chosen to chill out after the battle? Or are you all lying down there to worship God, eh? He's watching us, so get up off your arses! It's now or never - let's show him what we're made of!

SPEECH SEVEN: SATAN TO ALL THE FALLEN ANGELS (lines 622 - 662)

Beginning: 'O myriads of immortal spirits'

SYNOPSIS:

'You did well guys. No one is more powerful than us, except God. He was too damn sneaky by concealing his true power, so it's really all his own fault that we rebelled. I know he beat us, but come on - look at us! Is anyone really going to believe that we can't overthrow him? I heard he has a plan to make a new favoured race so let's properly mess it up to show him that we can be sneaky too. He can't keep us down here forever! THIS IS WAR!'