Extra Credit Blog

I would like to compare Sissy to Little Lord Fauntleroy. I would especially like to draw on the relationships between the boys and their mothers. They are both rather "girly" boys. Both Sissy and Ceddie are very different from the typical rough and tumble boys such as Tom Sawyer and Raggid Dick. They are proper and polite and they do not need to manipulated to get what they want. They are very much "Momma's boys" and strive to please. Although Sissy seems to be much more of a "girly boy" he like Ceddie are both able to be boys when needed. Kellogg says, "Willie was all boy or all girl, as the occasion required." (563) This also applies to Cedric especially in the scene where he is playing amongst the other boys.

The boys are very different in the fact that Cedric has money and is a Lord as opposed to Willie who has very little money and has to ultimately go to work to support his mother, and his new sister, Margie. Cedric also is trained and is proper. While Willie is a country boy and is just well mannered. He also has more of the domestic skills as opposed to Cedric who is just more of a Momma's boy and pleaser.

I would also like to comment on how Sissy ends. It leads up to a very predictable ending and then right at the end takes a twist. I totally would have thought that Sissy and Margie would have ended up together. Although that would have been a little weird since he said Margie would be his sister. I like the little twist at the end. It makes the story such a good and keeps the audience captive up to the very end.

Three Men and A Baby

I would like to draw more on the transformation of the men in The Luck of Roaring Camp.

A baby changes everything. This was no exception for the men in the camp. They were given a new human life and had no choice but to take care of it. I'm not so sure that it was their decision to change because of the baby, but it was the baby that changed them. They had to completely rearrange their lives all because of this child that they really had no responsibility for. It reminds me in a way of the Shakespeare quote, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them." Raising a child is a great task... not everyone aspires to be a parent and not everyone can do it. These men had the responsibility of raising a child thrust upon them.

They wanted to do everything to be good parents to this child. They do things that they would not normally do to be good parents to this child. For instance the christening. "Tommy was christened as seriously as he would have been under a Christian roof, and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fashion." They took on completely different personalities. I find it interesting because they have almost found maternal instinct even though they are clearly not female. Something changes within a man when he becomes a father. Things that we was too "manly" to do before he suddenly does all the time. He becomes mushy in a way.

Short Stories

I find that short stories are often hard to just skim over. All the details come at you quick and dirty. There is not the fluff and crying that we have seen in earlier novels. The author simply doesn't have the time to elaborate on the situation and other events. In the Wide, Wide, World we spend pages and pages and pages hearing about all of Ellen's sorrows. We spend seven pages picking out a Bible. Desiree's Baby is only 5 pages long. There is simply no time for crying. We don't see the drama. There is clearly drama seeing as Desiree's husband says that she is not fully 100 percent white, when we find out that. Ellen was often hard to follow because she was all over the place. I found myself wanted to stop reading the novels about ten to fifteen pages into the novels, but the short story is easier to finish.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

I would like to draw attention to the differences between Cedric, Ragged Dick, and Tom Sawyer. While there may be other contributing factors Cedric differs greatly from Dick and Tom. Dick and Tom are more of the typical "boy." They're dirty and manipulative. They don't hang around their mothers and they despise rules and authority. Cedric is quite opposite. He is, quite frankly, a mama's boy. He is clean, adores his mother and doesn't participate in the same type of activities that most stereotypical boys do. Boys are all about play and things like that while girls hung around their mothers and did domestic things. Could it be that we are seeing the way the author views children? Women are more likely to elaborate on the children in the way that they want their children to relate to them. They want a snuggly mama's boy. Men are more likely to kind of take the "boys will be boys" attitude.

Knowing the gender of the author gives a different perspective. If a man had written about Cedric in this fashion I might be inclined to think that he was making fun of him, or that it was satirical. I can understand why men would write under woman's names, or vise versa for that very reason. At this time, women spent more time with children and knew more about them. Men only saw them for a limited amount of time so it would make sense that they would have more of the stereotypical view.

Getting Paid to NOT do Your Chores?

"'Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.'

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

'No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know--but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.'

'No--is that so? OH come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd let you, if you was me, Tom.'

'Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tack this fence and anything was to happen to it--'

'Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give you the core of my apple.'

'Well, here-- No, Ben, now don't I'm afeard--'

'I'l give you all of it!'

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents." (Twain 413-414)

This scene just cracks me up. Here we see Tom turn into a little con-artist. He makes his job seem SO important to Ben. Ben is practically begging Tom to let him do his chores and ends up giving his apple up so Tom will "let" him whitewash. Once Ben is toiling in the sun, Tom takes a nice breather in the shade and starts thinking of who else he can pawn his chores off on.

I feel as if Twain is sending a message about American society. Some people work and work and get very little in return, while others don't hardly do anything and get a great reward. Kind of like slavery in the south. Sort of. Not completely. But who does all the work for no reward? They may not be begging to do the work, or offering up apples to do it, but there is definitely someone sitting in the shade reaping the benefits of their labor in the sun.

Sarcasm

I would like to draw attention to how much sarcasm is in this novel. Dick is always making some crack or sarcastic remark. If young Ellen Montgomery had done this it would have been seen as rude and inappropriate, but when Dick does it, its funny. In this time period there were many things that it was okay for men to do that it was definitely not ok for the females to do. Especially not ladies.

When I picture Dick in my mind I see the Huck Finn that Disney portrays in their movie. He's cunning, he's smart, and he is just flat out funny. I have always found sarcasm quite amusing. Obviously Horatio Alger does as well. My favorite scene is when Dick runs into Johnny after getting his new attire.

"'Where'd you get all them clothes?' asked Johnny. 'Have you been stealin'?'

'Say that again, and I'll like you. No, I've lent my clothes to a young feller as was goin' to a party, and didn't have non fit to wear, and so I put on my second-beset for a change.'"

I found this so amusing. Perhaps author's wrote about girls to teach, and boys to entertain. It was okay for men to dork around and be funny. It was offensive when women did such things. We are drawn to the characters that break the rules and live life on the edge, however, this is not how people want their sons and daughters to grow up. Another reason why I strongly feel that the boy was more for entertainment than for teaching purposes like in domestic fiction.

Insane by who's definition?

I found myself very torn to believe that Sybil is indeed insane. People were put in insane asylum's for multiple reasons. They were not always insane. Annie Sullivan from The Miracle Worker was put in an asylum for being blind and having no parents. Somehow I don't think that makes her insane. Helen Keller's parents also wanted to place her in an asylum because she couldn't hear or see. The only mark of insanity against Helen was that she was horribly misunderstood. Could this perhaps be the case with Sybil? Often times when we don't understand someone or something we quickly say that the person or the thing is "insane."

I found myself fighting for Sybil and her sanity right to the very end. She is a teenage girl presented with some very interesting problems. Maybe she didn't handle them with grace and dignity, but this certainly doesn't count her as insane. I found myself feeling that her placement in the asylum could have made her insane. The letter she found backs this idea up, "If you are not already mad, you will be; I suspect you were sent here to be made so; for the air is poison, the solitude is fatal, and Karnac remorseless in his mania for prying into the mysteries of human minds. What devil sent you I may never know, but I long to warn you." (Pg. 238)

On the flip side, Sybil very well may have been insane. Her relationship with her uncle and going back and forth about Guy doesn't quite make her exactly all there. I am very torn on whether or not to think she is insane. I hope someone choses to do her for their Facebook profile, i think it would be very interesting and intriguing to look at!

Uncle Tom's Cabin

"It was impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate and forlorn than Eliza when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Tom's cabin. Her husband's suffering and dangers, and the danger of her child, all blended in her mind, with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she was running, in leaving the only home she had ever known..." (pg. 243) This is not children's literature. This is not something any child should be reading. This does not give hope or provide a light at the end of the tunnel. This is sad, this is scary, this is reality. Things like this really happened. A child's innocence should not be corrupted with such things. This differs greatly from the themes of the other selections we've read. Gerty, Ellen, and even Capitola are fighting to be good little girls with pretty dresses that make good toast. Eliza is fighting for the life of her child, for the freedom of her child. There is nothing adolescent about this. It is a very adult concept. Slavery is not something that is happy reading. It is not something that is going to have a good prevail. It is putting human beings, like you and I into bondage and treating them like livestock. This selection varies so greatly from anything else, it is almost hard to compare. We think, "Oh poor Ellen... dead mom." Or "Poor Gerty, she's ugly." These people were reduced to nothing more than cattle, and beaten and sold like property. Humans were owning humans. I don't think this was written for children at all... this was written to expose slavery for the evil thing it really was. Society was in for a rude awakening.

Is it for the children, or about the children?

In our class discussions we have frequently touched upon the subject of the selections we are reading either being "literature FOR children" or "children IN literature." The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter were clearly in the FOR category rather than the IN. We see a pleasant story develop, nothing too frightening for a child to read. There is a good moral and the good wins. Nothing too awful happens and there is always a lesson. It sets an example of how children should behave and live. There is not too much emphasis placed on the setting or descriptions of things. Much of this is left up to the imagination of the reader. I think this is for the purpose of focusing on the plot line and the moral of the story.

Moving on to The Hidden Hand. This story pays very close attention to detail. Especially describing the setting. Multiple times throughout the story the setting is described in great detail. For example, on page 189... "You enter by the little wooden gate, pass up the moldering paved walk, between the old, leafless lilac bushes, and pass through the front door right into a large, clean but poor-looking sitting-room and kitchen." This is much more descriptive than what we have read in the past. This is leads me to believe that The Hidden Hand was more of the children IN literature. This story is way to descriptive for a young child. I even have trouble comprehending it at times. This definitely does not fall into the category of literature FOR children. At least not by my standards.

Balance?

The little girl in the video seems to have achieved more balance than I think I do in my own life. Balance is such an issue. The little girl seems to have it figured out pretty well. Gerty, Ellen, and I, well not so much. Ellen and Gerty both struggle with pleasing their parental figures and get greatly upset when they mess up or do wrong. I find myself in the same position often.

In the scene where Gerty and Miss Emily are chatting in the church, Gerty shows us how unbalanced she really is. She calls herself ugly and "not good." She struggles with the idea that she can even become good. She tries so hard to be good, but it often back fires. She is very hard on herself, also like Ellen. No child should ever have to wonder if they are loved. Gerty does. This is not balance. There should be a balance between love and discipline in a child's life. Gerty can't seem to find this. She struggles with doing good, and not having hatred in her heart.

I think that if Gerty appeared on the talk show we would see that she is very much so not balanced. As I stated above she has a huge inner struggle. I think Gerty would be most unpleasant on the show. She doesn't respect authority well, and doesn't handle things that she doesn't understand well at all. I'm anxious to learn how Gerty develops as her heart is starting to soften as her relationship with Miss Emily grows. She is starting to see that there is a lot more good in life than she thinks.

It Takes A Village...

It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. The view in the text of The Wide, Wide World is no different. In today's society we count on many different people to shape and raise our children on many different levels, shapes, and forms. We expect teachers to shape children in a way that parents can't. We send our kids to things like Sunday School and Vacation Bible School to get the Spiritual upbringing they need. (Although I feel like parents should play a role in this as well, but this is not often the case today.) We send our kids to other people's houses to embark on "play dates." This also helps to shape the type of young adult a child grows into. In this story Mrs. Montgomery sends her daughter on an errand that no eight year old would be expected to handle in today's world. This proves to be a daunting task for young Ellen. Yet, someone steps up to help her. This same gentleman continues to shower Ellen with the things she needs. If the only people we ever received opinions or advice from were our parents we'd all be running around as carbon copies of our parents. I do not think any parent wants that for their child. It takes a village...

I think parents are viewed as providers and figure heads to a certain extent in the context of this text. I get the feeling that Ellen's relationship with her mother is an exception to the rule, not the way that most daughter's and mother's feel about each other. Mr. Montgomery seems to have no problem just shipping Ellen off. She was a responsibility of his. He handed the responsibility off to someone else when he could no longer manage it.

Continuing on my previous statement, the text really puts the relationship on the mother. She is the one who is teaching the life lessons, and preparing Ellen to enter the wide, wide world. Mr. Montgomery is absent, but he is still feeling the burden of having a child. He provides food, shelter, clothing and a roof over her head, until he of course ships her off to his sister.

Ellen views her mother as her everything. She is the person she serves from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed. Some might say that Ellen's mother is her God. She adores her, she worships her, she hangs on her every word. Ellen wants nothing more than to please her mother and to give her everything she needs. Ellen seems to fear her father. She waits until he has left before she will show her face. She dare not have him see her cry. I don't see Ellen viewing her father as her "daddy" in the respect that she sees her mother as her "mama." The relationships are completely different. Her father is well simply just her biological father. He simply just takes her of her well being.

Ellen is going to be raise by the village, not by her own parents. Her mother is soon going to, well, die and her father will presumably continue to be absent. I see those around her rising up to help her along and continue on her journey to become a young lady.

Constructions of Childhood

After doing the old "I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write!" for a solid five minutes, well I still don't know what to write. So hang in there with me, this might be a bumpy ride.

"The focus of the stories was extremely narrow. They were written to teach, and specifically morality. " -MacLeoud

There always seems to be a lesson in children's literature, according to MacLeoud. The stories were about children and were even written in a simple way for children, but they were geared at adults. There is often humor and other things found in selections that only an adult would understand.

The tone about children was optimistic. MacLeoud says that the children in the stories were "most part good." This represents how society's view of children is changing. Before it was often thought that children were evil creatures. The literature that emerged in the 1800s changed this opinion.

Sanchez-Eppler suggests that adults have "increasingly sought" immanence and innocence in children. Children are innocent. Literature somewhat gives them the benefit of the doubt. Although most may be innocent, many children characters found in literature are quite opposite although the adults in the story still seem to consider them innocent.

MacLeoud also elaborates on the predictability of children's literature. The good usually wins out. The plot lines are often the same plot lines found in other stories, but the names and settings were changed to fit America.

According to MacLeoud most of the American children's literature was separate from British literature. It was given American settings, names, and was also written by Americans. There was a great split between the American and Bristish culture. America was starting to figure out who she was. She was a new country and she was separate from her previous ruler of Britain.

I hope this post wasn't too hard to follow. Happy reading!

Introductions

Hello readers!

My name is Katelyn O'Quin. I am from Enid, OK. It is a small town in northwest Oklahoma. About two hours straight West of Tulsa. I am a freshman at TCU and am majoring in Early Childhood Education. This is my blog that will feature my responses to my Major American Writers class at TCU.

I came to TCU to tour in February of my senior year in high school, not really knowing where I was going to attend college. During my tour I fell in love with TCU. Everything about it just felt so right. I new before I was even out of Texas that TCU was the place I would be calling home for the next four or five years.

If I was the chancellor of TCU there is probably not a whole lot that I would do differently. I really love this university and the way it is run. There are not a whole lot of things that bother me or that I wish were done differently. One thing that I might add would be some type of grocery store that students could shop at with Campus Cash or Frog Bucks. There are some things at the Union Grounds, but things like cases of Coke or paper towels are not found there.

A good teacher is someone that makes his or her students absolutely fall in love with learning. He or she is so passionate about his/her subject that his/her students simply fall in love with it as well. He/she communicates in a way that is more than just barking out facts. He/she is simply sharing knowledge with the students and is excited about it. A good student is also excited about learning. They want to get as much knowledge as possible from a teacher and do not give up until their thirst for knowledge is satisfied. The brain is always able to learn something new. Students should embrace this.

Three people I would like to have dinner with are Mary (from the Bible), Sarah Palin, and my best friend Erin that moved to Japan during our freshmen year of high school. I would love to have dinner with Mary because she was such a woman of courage and faith. She trusted God with something that I would have totally said, "Uhm, no thanks God, can you find someone else for that?" I would also like to meet Sarah Palin. I know she kind of went a little crazy after she and Senator McCain lost the election. But I still think she is an amazing woman. She has so much on her plate and handles it with style and grace. Finally I would like to just meet up with Erin to catch up. I have not seen her since 2006. That is a very long time for best friends to be apart.

Some things you should know about me... I am so in love with my God. I believe that the Bible is living and active and that the Word of God will never come back void. My church is a huge part of my life and without Christ I would be totally and hopelessly lost. I absolutely love children. I love watching them play, learn, and grow, hence my major. Children have the ability to just melt my heart. Having a small child fall asleep on me is perhaps one of the most precious and amazing things in the world. I love to just sit and watch them sleep. One last thing about me: I am addicted to Sonic's 'Happy Hour.' I absolutely love getting a Route 44 Diet Coke with easy ice from Sonic!

Things I would like to know about you all... What are your interests and hobbies? What are some fun things around Ft. Worth that you like to do? And where is everyone from?

I chose to take this course because my major requires me to have six hours of Literature. I chose this specific one because I do not particularly like British Literature. I had a horrible experience with American Lit in high school, and I wanted to take another shot at it. I am really excited about this course. Ms. Irvin seems like a phenomenal person and teacher and I am really pumped to study with her!

In high school I took Honors American Literature and Honors World Literature. I took Composition I & II concurrently my senior year. This is about all the academic experience I have with writing. I do however keep my own personal blog (katelynoquin.blogspot.com). I enjoy ranting on it every now and then. I also am a big journal-er. I find writing so freeing. Paper will never judge you, so you can say whatever and know it is safe. I think email is a great form of communication as well as texting. I do quite a bit of both of these. I really enjoy writing and it comes naturally to me. I also enjoy helping others improve their writing.

I chose the polka dot them for my blog because I thought it was cute. I like to make things, well cute. I think I introduced myself well and that this blog will be a big reflection of me as a person. I am really excited about this part of the course. I think it is a neat and innovative assignment and a great use of the vast resources available on the Internet.

Until next time,

Katelyn

I have read, understand, and agree to the syllabus for ENGL 20503.