Lecture 15 - Penelope, Penelope
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The document discusses themes from Frederic Jameson's work on history and its impact on society. It also examines gender roles and emotional experiences in 'The Time Traveler's Wife', highlighting characters Clare and Henry, alongside their struggles with time and relationships. Additionally, it reflects on the significance of colors and sensory experiences tied to memory and identity.
![Water and time in The Time
Traveler’s Wife
Clare: “It’s hard being left behind. […] Long
ago, men went to sea, and women waited for
them, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship.
Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly,
without warning. I wait for him.” (vii)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/lecture15-penelopepenelope-120906194408-phpapp02/85/Lecture-15-Penelope-Penelope-4-320.jpg)
![A few notes on gender roles
Clare [at 20]: “In some ways you were very
parental.” (9)
Henry: “Clare picks up her purse and I shake
my head at her. I pay.” (13)
Clare [at 16]: “I offered to go Dutch but he
[Jason Everleigh] said no, he never did that.”
(94)
Clare: “I feel a tiny pang of regret, as though
I’ve lost a secret, and then a rush of exaltation:
now everything begins.” (21)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/lecture15-penelopepenelope-120906194408-phpapp02/85/Lecture-15-Penelope-Penelope-5-320.jpg)
![Clare [at 6]: “Mr. Bear asks her about how it is
being a movie star and she says she really
wants to be a veterinarian but she is so
incredibly pretty she has to be a movie star and
Mr. Bear says maybe she could be a
veterinarian when she’s old.” (43)
Clare [at 11]: “we crowd into Mary Christina’s
room that is decorated totally in pink, even the
wall-to-wall carpet. You get the feeling Mary
Christina’s parents were really glad to finally
have a girl after all those brothers.” (61)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/lecture15-penelopepenelope-120906194408-phpapp02/85/Lecture-15-Penelope-Penelope-6-320.jpg)
![Grandma Meagram: “in fairy tales it’s always the
children who have the fine adventures. The
mothers have to stay at home and wait for the
children to fly in the window.” (127)
Henry [at 24, to Henry at 5]: “I’m an extremely
unusual grown-up. My job is to have adventures.”
(29)
“Do you ever miss him?” she [Grandma
Meagram] asks me.
“Every day. Every minute.”
“Every minute,” she says. “Yes. It’s that way,
isn’t it?” (128)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/lecture15-penelopepenelope-120906194408-phpapp02/85/Lecture-15-Penelope-Penelope-7-320.jpg)
Lecture 15 - Penelope, Penelope
- 1. Lecture 15: Penelope, Penelope English 140 UC Santa Barbara Summer 2012 29 August 2012 “History is what hurts, it is what refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis, which its ‘ruses’ turn into grisly and ironic reversals of their overt intention. But this History can be apprehended only through its effects, and never directly as some reified force. This is indeed the ultimate sense in which History as ground and untranscendable horizon needs no particular theoretical justification.” —Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
- 2. A few more words about “The Dry Salvages” The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses Its hints of earlier and other creation – p. 130; lines 15-18 The salt is on the briar rose, The fog is in the fir trees. – p. 131; lines 26-27
- 3. The tolling bell Measures time not our time Ground swell, a time Older than the time of chronometers, older Than time counted by anxious worried women Lying awake, calculating the future, Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel And piece together the past and the future, Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception, The future featureless, before the morning watch When time stops and time is never ending; And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning, Clangs The bell. – p. 131; end of section 1; lines 35-48
- 4. Water and time in The Time Traveler’s Wife Clare: “It’s hard being left behind. […] Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him.” (vii)
- 5. A few notes on gender roles Clare [at 20]: “In some ways you were very parental.” (9) Henry: “Clare picks up her purse and I shake my head at her. I pay.” (13) Clare [at 16]: “I offered to go Dutch but he [Jason Everleigh] said no, he never did that.” (94) Clare: “I feel a tiny pang of regret, as though I’ve lost a secret, and then a rush of exaltation: now everything begins.” (21)
- 6. Clare [at 6]: “Mr. Bear asks her about how it is being a movie star and she says she really wants to be a veterinarian but she is so incredibly pretty she has to be a movie star and Mr. Bear says maybe she could be a veterinarian when she’s old.” (43) Clare [at 11]: “we crowd into Mary Christina’s room that is decorated totally in pink, even the wall-to-wall carpet. You get the feeling Mary Christina’s parents were really glad to finally have a girl after all those brothers.” (61)
- 7. Grandma Meagram: “in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.” (127) Henry [at 24, to Henry at 5]: “I’m an extremely unusual grown-up. My job is to have adventures.” (29) “Do you ever miss him?” she [Grandma Meagram] asks me. “Every day. Every minute.” “Every minute,” she says. “Yes. It’s that way, isn’t it?” (128)
- 8. The color blue Henry: “I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn’t see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word.” (22) “I sat on the back porch in my pajamas with Mom and Dad and Mrs. and Mr. Kim, drinking lemonade and watching the blueness of the evening sky.” (25) “The streetlights tint the sky orange above me; it’s a deep cerulean blue over the lake.” (117)