English Literature Essays Orient Opium Drug

English Literature Essays Orient Opium Drug Orient Opium Drug Why do you think any two or more of De Quincey, Coleridge and Doyle were so interested in the Orient in their drug writing? Throughout the nineteenth century, persisting through much of the twentieth and even so far as today, the use of intoxicating substances, namely opium, is inextricably linked with visions of the Orient. Although there has been no significant proof of a universal chemical change in its users, opium undeniably evokes an obsession with the ‘other’. If one cannot attribute this to biological factors, then it is crucial to ascertain the historical, cultural or psychological implications that relate to its conception. Much of the association between opium and the Orient in nineteenth-century Britain was a consequence of British imperialism and the colonisation of the East. In expanding the Empire, Britain dominated the Eastern world, coming with the promise of providing a benevolent civilisation. Instead, they exploited states for many of their most valuable commodities, including opium, and destroyed an already established pride of individuality and national-identity whilst asserting their own sense of a hegemonic British nationality upon inhabitants. The works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge make a substantial contribution in our understanding of the relationship between opium use and Orientalism. Coleridge followed the German Higher Criticism that viewed the Bible as an extension of Oriental mythology, supplying what he believed as evidence of single God in the Eastern world. Coleridge’s writing at the turn of the nineteenth-century encapsulates not only the anxieties of Oriental differentiation, but more poignantly, the conspicuous differences from its impressions on the English opium user. His literary works aside, Coleridge presented perhaps his most vehement condemnation of British involvement in the Orient during a public lecture in 1795. He contrived that such ‘commercial intercourse’ was resulting in the death of millions of East Indians, saddling Britain with an inevitable sense of overwhelming guilt. Furthermore, he details the potentially catastrophic long term effects on Britons, that being, a dilution of national identity through the pollution of imports from the Eastern world. Through his damning of British colonisation, Coleridge provides a macrocosm of himself; his own opium intake was destabilising not only to his own body, but the world around him. He believed the mind state brought about through the ingestion of opium masked many of the distinctions to be made between not only English and Oriental, but between male and female, and even self and other. Much of the singularity of Coleridge’s work, in particular the visionary ‘Kubla Khan’, emanates from his ability to encompass polar opposite sensations towards opium in a single moment, often oscillating between both attraction and repulsion, or pleasure and pain. The phantasmagoric quality of ‘Kubla Khan’ was composed out of what Coleridge attributed to a ‘sleep of the eternal senses’. When describing his opium reveries, Coleridge explained: ‘Laudanum gave me repose, not sleep: but you, I believe, know how divine that repose is – what a spot of inchantment, a green spot of fountains, and flowers and trees, in the very heart of a waste sands’. It comes as no surprise then that Coleridge had the potential to produce such a work as ‘Kubla Khan’ whilst submerged in the alternative realm of consciousness that opium gave him. In the opening stanza of the poem there radiates an awe of harmony within paradise. The Oriental landscape, with ‘caverns measureless to man’ and ‘forests ancient as the hills’, suggest an unworldly, ineffable quality. Although the components of Xanadu may potentially appear threatening, they are harboured within the confines of ‘walls and towers†¦ girdled round’. Thus, Xanadu is rendered passive and benevolent, under the control of the poet. Throughout the next stanza, the Oriental landscape of Xanadu is feminised, with particular reference made to the ‘deep romantic chasm which slanted / Down a green hill athwart a cedarn cover’, a subtle indication of the presence of female genitalia. The ensuing description is one that is far removed from the serenity of an English landscape, detailing ‘A savage place†¦ a waning moon was haunted / By woman wailing for her demon-lover’. The wailing woman suggests a deep pain, perhaps even insanity. This ascends into a threatening, sexually explicit orgasmic crescendo: ‘From this chasm†¦ As if the earth in fast thick pants were breathing, / A mighty fountain momently was forced: / Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst / Huge fragments†¦ beneath the thresher’s flail.’ The ‘swift, half-intermitted burst’ mentioned evokes notions of seminal emission. The nature of this portrayal belies the expected Romantic interpretations of lakes and seas which poets leisurely sip from for inspiration, instead presenting ‘a mighty fountain’, potentially a phallic symbol, which threatens to engulf all. The overriding image is one of the Oriental landscape breaking through the boundaries attempting to suppress it; occurring metaphorically through the phallic fountain, the fluids from the chasm, and the entrance into the caverns. However, what may initially seem as a jubilant liberation of sexual energy from the constraints of rigid gender roles eventually conspires to be anything but, paving way for a state of almost ‘Armageddon’ proportions; ‘And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean†¦ Ancestral voices prophesying war!’ Thus, provided is an ironic sense of warning against those who dare try and tame these powerful forces. The overall effect is that where the danger of the second stanza undercuts the perceived harmony of the first, suggesting an ambiguity within Xanadu; indicating perhaps the presence of a dark side to the heavenly paradise foretold. One of Coleridge’s primary concerns with regards to Orientalism lay in its power to usurp the author’s authority of and consciousness of writing, a threat to his own artistic control. When referring back to Coleridge’s own comments on British ‘commercial intercourse’ in the East, a definite causal link can be inferred between the Orient infiltrating Britain, by means of opium intake, and introducing a ‘conscious-usurping Orient into the British body and mind to convert them from British to Oriental’. Despite this, through the ingestion of opium, he actively seeks the empowerment this ‘other’ provides him. Analysis of the conclusion of ‘Kubla Khan’ perhaps gives some indication of a shift towards a positive outlook on the conjuring of the Orient; hoping that through the ‘milk of Paradise’ the speaker may be able to transcend to a state in which he may ‘build that dome in the air’. However, his ascension to God-like status, he believes, may make others treat him as unholy, perhaps with ‘holy dread’: ‘And all should cry, Beware! Beware! / His flashing eyes, his floating hair! / Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread’. The use of the oxymoronic phrase ‘holy dread’ reiterates Coleridge’s own pleasure against pain contradiction with opium ingestion and Orientalism. Furthermore, it perhaps subtly indicates the approach he believes the imperialistic order of Britain should adopt when attempting to contain those with ‘flashing eyes’. The ‘plot’ that unravels throughout ‘Kubla Khan’ is one where a powerful Eastern, feminine force penetrates and destroys the flimsy Western, male barriers that enclose it. The implication presented by Coleridge is that these same forces can not only impose themselves on a nation, but on an individual. D. A. Miller identifies the male terror at the prospect of being occupied by the female, arguing that it resembles and inverts a classic rape scenario. Thus, it strikes a common chord in Coleridge’s own Oriental possession, which is often feminised, invading his body but exerting its own control over it, by nature evoking paradoxical destruction and pleasure within him. Moreover, this ‘inverted rape scenario’ is itself a partial reversal of what Coleridge deemed Britain’s exploitation of the East, and an ironic act of retribution. It was Coleridge’s foremost concern that this invasion and alteration process went some way into eroding sense of national identity and British culture, a process that he deduced would ultimately blur any distinctions to be made between Britain and the Eastern world, until they eventually merged into one. Thomas De Quincey’s analyses of the relationship between opium and Orientalism yield conflicting opinions to those formulated by Coleridge. It was De Quincey’s underlying theory that opium acted as a means of excavating the Orient within the British self. He concludes, contrary to Coleridge, that divisions between the East and West never actually existed; the Oriental ‘other’ never facilitated a hostile invasion of body and nation, but was present at conception, and is indeed the origin of all things ‘British’. In a similar vein to Coleridge, De Quincey condemns the exposure of the ‘other’ within the self, but still paradoxically seeks it by means of opium intake. John Barrell comments that De Quincey identifies the internal manifestation of the Orient within as an infection, and adopts measures to protect him against this. One such method follows the process of inoculation, whereby in taking a piece of the Orient into himself, namely opium, De Quincey hopes to dismiss that which he does not attribute to himself, conceptualising an internal West against East division in terms of what is familiar and what is alien. However, as Barrell suggests, this measure is destined for failure because the subject reinforces the infection by the same means he hope will crush it. Integral to De Quincey’s musings on Orientalism is the visit of the Malay in ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’. The Malay is depicted in a demonic fashion, with ‘fiery eyes’ that ‘took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the Opera House’. The ‘otherness’ of the Malay is overtly referred to in its comparison to the domesticity of the young servant; mention is made of an ‘impassable gulf’ that exists between their methods of communication. In addition, the figure with a ‘turban and loose trowsers of dingy white’ is harshly juxtaposed with the ‘native spirit of mountain intrepidity’ displayed by the young servant: ‘And a more striking picture there could not be imagined, than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness†¦ contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany†¦ his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations.’ The impression given is one of a man, or, as his title may imply, a collective, who are dehumanised, depicted in terms of a polished piece of furniture; his only relief is that his ‘trowsers of dingy white’ are excused by the ‘dark panelling’ of the kitchen. Furthermore, De Quincey emulates Coleridge’s sense of ‘holy dread’ within ‘Kubla Khan’ in the manner in which he expresses the young servant’s reaction to the appearance of the Malay: ‘he had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish; though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her.’ Provided here is not only a comment on the approach taken by the familiar West to the alien East, one that, although threatening, still proves intriguing, but perhaps further indicates De Quincey’s own personal struggle with his opium intake. Moreover, significance lies in De Quincey’s attempts to converse with the Malay in Classical Greek, in that it exemplifies Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism; De Quincey’s construction of a material conjoined East, in which differences between India and China, for instance, are ignored is why he believes speaking to the Malay in any ‘Oriental’ tongue will suffice. De Quincey’s oriental dreams in the later stages of ‘Confessions†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ provide a supplementary outlook on the Orientalism construct. He reveals that ‘the causes of my horror lie deep’, continuing: ‘As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it†¦ The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, c. is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed.’ De Quincey is of the opinion that the sheer age and permanence of the Orient implies that it provides the origin for everything attributed to British culture and identity. This notion is enhanced by his further consolation that ‘the barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse’; De Quincey ironically accepts that there is in fact, no barrier at all, and that what may indeed lie on the other side manifests itself within him during his opium reveries. Thus, De Quincey inverts his own previously conjured distinctions between West and East, self and other, through his opium ingestion. Paradoxically, that which reveals itself as most ‘other’ to him is still ironically the origin of his own self. De Quincey’s conceptualised Orient is thus rendered useless as he accepts that the West always was the East to begin with, and that any argument to the contrary is a futile one. Bibliography Allen, N. B., A Note on Coleridge’s â€Å"Kubla Khan†. Modern Language Notes, 57, 1942, pp. 108-113 Berridge, V., Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century England, 2nd edition (London: Free Association, 1999). Cooke, M. G., De Quincey, Coleridge, and the Formal Uses of Intoxication. Yale French Studies, 50, 1974, pp. 26-40 Hayter, A., Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London: Faber, 1968). Jay, M., Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century (Sawtry: Dedalus, 2000). Leask, N., British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge: University Press, 1992) Said, E. W., Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003) Schneider, E., The â€Å"Dream† of Kubla Khan. PMLA, 60, 1945, pp. 784-801

The Importance of Point of View in Kate Chopin’s Fiction Essay

The Importance of Point of View in Kate Chopin’s Fiction The impact of Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, on society resulted in her ruin, both literary and social. Reviewers called it vulgar, improper, unhealthy, and sickening. One critic said that he wished she had never written it, and another wrote that to truly describe the novel would entail language not fit for publication (Stipe 16). The overwhelming condemnation of the entire book rather than just Edna’s suicide seems surprising in light of her successful short story career. The themes that Chopin explores in her novel are present in both Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, her short story collections published before The Awakening, and the other short stories she published separately. The only reasonable explanation is that people misinterpreted Chopin’s short stories about male/female relationships as sentimental and witty stories rather than serious condemnations of the social order that left women so little choice while giving men little restr iction. This misinterpretation even occurs today. In classes I have taken that cover Chopin, many students and instructors read her short stories as romance, as celebrations of motherhood, and as empowerment of the matriarchy, yet they read The Awakening and recognize Chopin’s criticism of society without seeing any serious contradiction in their earlier readings of her short stories. However, the overwhelming pattern in Chopin’s fiction seems to either satirize or undermine the worlds of her characters. One way in which she does this is through point of view. A look at this technique reveals the genesis of The Awakening in even the earliest of her published fiction dealing with male/female sexual relationsh... ...man Writer in the South: 1859-1936. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1981. Le Marquand, Jane. â€Å"Kate Chopin as Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric Influence.† Deep South 2 (1996). 26 July 2002 . Stipe, Stormy. â€Å"The Book That Ruined Kate Chopin's Career.† Biblio 4.1 (1999): 16-17. Notes [1] Patricia Evans notes in a discussion of Chopin’s place in the literary canon that â€Å"in the first modern historical survey of southern literature, The South in American Literature, Jay B. Hubbell identifies one hundred male writers, but only five women. He justifies this omission by stating, ‘their writing was generally sentimental and inferior’ (4).† [2] In The Awakening, Robert LeBrun turns way from Edna when she proposes they live openly together. He cannot violate the codes of his world so blatantly.

Gender Project

Today more than ever, toys are incredibly gendered, and send highly gendered messages to the children who play with them about what an ideal male or female looks like, acts like, and how he or she lives their life. This project aims to look at the ways in which toys are so gendered (based on one trip to a Toys R us store in Greensboro, North Carolina) and to describe the gendering of toys through three sociological perspectives.Section One- Observations In this particular Toys R us, Items were displayed In segregated zones; meaning that there were very clear areas that were for girls' toys and separate, very clear areas that were for boys toys. From far away, these sections could be easily distinguished from one another by the headings above each of the aisles that held the toys. On the left side of the store, the signs hanging above the aisles read- Star Wars, Action Figures, and Sports, respectively. On the right side of the store the aisles were marked- Dolls, Dolls, and Pretend P lay.Clearly the toys on the right side of the store were meant for girls, and the left side toys were meant for boys. The segregated zones were also easily distinguishable at a glance by the packaging and presentation f the toys on their shelves. Boys toys were packaged In more stereotypical â€Å"masculine† colors- red, blue, grey, and black. Further, all the boxes containing boys' toys portrayed some sort of motion or action on the boxes. The action portrayed was almost always violent In one way or another; a tank moving, a fist or bullet flying through the air, etc.Girls' toys, by contrast, were packaged completely differently. The boxes for girls' toys were pink. Purple, covered in glitter and sparkles, and almost all had light, feminine language on them- words like â€Å"magical†, â€Å"sparkly', and â€Å"princess†, o name a few. Toys R us' selection of Nerd- brand toys are an excellent example of how using different packaging and presentation for essenti ally the same item can be heavily gendered. Being a toy whose concept is rooted in violence, Nerd toys are typically for boys. However, Nerd recently released a line of toy weapons for girls called Rebelled.All the Rebelled toys are pink or purple with flowers and glitter on them to make them appear more feminine', and they also have very girl names, such as ‘Heartbreak Bow', ‘Diamonds', ‘Dart Diva', ‘Femme Fire', ‘Angel Aim', ‘Pink Crush', etc. Even If two Nerd guns of the same make and model were presented side-by side, no shopper would have any trouble knowing which one was being marketed to girls and which to boys. This loaded difference in packaging and presentation was also present everything in the store, whether it could carry a perceived gender role or not, was gendered.Instruments, pens and pencils, notebooks, walked-talkies, playing balls, and several other kinds of toys were packaged in ways in which two items that were essentially the same would be obviously be marketed to one gender or another. Toys hat recreate stereotypical home life are essentially having children play out their societal predetermined future roles. This is seen specifically in the ‘pretend play genre of toys. These are model replicas of the realms that children ‘should' grow up to occupy.What this means for girls is child-size kitchens and child-size cleaning toys, and baby-dolls. Girls grow up learning through these toys that their place in society is in house and home, cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. The boy versions of these toys are child-size model grills, toolkits, and car-building toys. The brands Home Depot and John Deere both have lines of toys for boys, depicting specifically male things for them to do. Many girl toys also demonstrate that a girl should be heavily focused on keeping herself beautiful.There are a huge amount of toys dedicated to teaching girls how to do the hair, nails, and makeup on their do lls, and most of the dolls marketed to girls all are sold with makeup painted onto their faces. Going even further, the toys also include makeup for the girl to use on herself, teaching girls at an early age that wearing makeup is preferable for women in this society, and generally necessary for them to be considered beautiful. Additionally, dolls marketed to girls all wear makeup and have the societal accepted standard of ‘beauty.Their bodies are skinny, tall, big-breasted, and completely disconnected with what any real human woman's actual body might look like. They give girls an image to look up to that they will never attain. Boys also face unrealistic representations of the human physique in their toys. Action figures marketed to them all have huge muscles, square Jaws, and other features that conform to the societal idea of the deal male body. Toy companies go even further than giving girls unrealistic body expectations in terms of not working to connect their toys to re ality.They girls' toys section had absolutely no toys that were designed to be replicas of real people from the real world. Girls had no role models foam reality represented in toys. Boys' toys, on the other hand, had several role models represented in their action figures. These men were almost entirely athletes; baseball or basketball players, wrestlers or MASCARA drivers (another male-dominated field). These toys teach boys to idealize throng, wealthy, masculine, sometimes violent men, without giving them any more realistic images to aspire to.Section Two- Perspectives Looking at the issue of highly gendered toys through various sociological lenses can provide us with several insights on why the toys children play with carry such thinly veiled and heavily stereotyped messages. Through a Symbolic Internationalist lens, toys themselves are symbols used to convey meaning. This paradigm focuses on the role of symbols in colonization and social interaction, and argues that society is formed when groups of people all give the same meaning to the same symbols and Greer on how these symbols play into their colonization.Using this paradigm, toys can be regarded as symbols in that in many cases they are child versions of adult things, meaning the toy replicas of kitchens, babies, tools, cars, grills, etc. They symbolize the appropriate material symbols in the life that the child will grow in to. Stages of their development, is directing them to live and act in a certain way that society considers ideal. Structural Functionalism dictates that society is a functionally integrated, problem- solving entity.Through this lens, the subject of gendered colonization through toys loud be seen as a developed response to a certain problem. Hypothetically, using toys to teach children how they ought to behave could be a carefully constructed response on behalf of toy manufacturers to the problem of children not being socialized ‘properly. If children were not being socializ ed to behave in their predetermined manners, this ‘deviance' could pose a threat to traditional gender roles in the United States and to keeping things functioning the way they ‘should'.The function of the gendered toys could be to keep society working ‘properly in whatever way they could. One last way of looking at the gendering of toys is through a Social Conflict perspective. This perspective conceives the emergence and persistence of social institutions and practices as the consequence of the exercise of power and explains their transformation as the result of conflict between different groups contending for power. In terms of toys and their messages, the two groups contending for power are less groups than they are ideas.One idea would be that people and the gender roles they should occupy should remain the same as they've been for generations, with omen occupying domestic spheres of society and men occupying public ones. The idea that battles this one would b e a more modern idea that men and women can and should hold the same positions in society. The fact that toys are generally more in line with the former idea shows that that is the side of the battle that is currently Winning, making it the societal norm, at least in the realm of children's toys.Toys are a constant in the development of children and thus play a large role in their colonization. While some toys teach children positive messages about caring for ACH other, sharing, and other healthy traits, the majority of the child-play market is saturated with heavily gendered and extremely antiquated messages about children's bodies and looks, traits, roles, behavior, and almost all aspects of their lives.The result of this is generation after generation of children who subconsciously take in false information about what it means to be a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. Social behavior is learned at a young age, and to teach children these outdated gender roles is to freeze our soci ety in an era gone by when we should be advancing toward a more equal world instead.

Pierre Curie - Biography and Achievements

Pierre Curie was a French physicist, physical chemist, and Nobel laureate. Most people are familiar with his wifes accomplishments (Marie Curie), yet dont realize the importance of Pierres work. He pioneered scientific research in the fields of magnetism, radioactivity, piezoelectricity, and crystallography. Heres a brief biography of this famous scientist and a list of his most notable achievements. Birth: May 15, 1859 in Paris, France, son of Eugene Curie and Sophie-Claire Depouilly Curie Death: April 19, 1906 in Paris, France in a street accident. Pierre was crossing a street in the rain, slipped, and fell under a horse-drawn cart. He died instantly from a skull fracture when a wheel ran over his head. It is said Pierre tended to be absent-minded and unaware of his surroundings when he was thinking. Claim to Fame: Pierre Curie and his wife  Marie  shared half the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel for their research into radiation.Pierre also received the Davy Medal in 1903. He was awarded the Matteucci Medal in 1904 and the Elliot Cresson Medal in 1909 (posthumously).Pierre and Marie also discovered the elements  radium  and  polonium.He also co-discovered the piezoelectric effect with his brother Jacques. The piezoelectric effect is where compressed crystals give off an electric field. In addition, Pierre and Jacques found crystals could deform when subjected to an electrical field. They invented the Piezoelectric Quartz Electrometer to aid in their investigations.Pierre developed a scientific instrument called the Curie Scale so that he might take accurate data.For his doctoral research, Pierre examined magnetism. He formulated a description of the relationship between temperature and magnetism that became known as Curies law, which uses a constant known as the Curie constant. He found there was a critical temperature above which ferromagnetic materials lose their behavior. That transition temperature is known as the Curie point. Pierres magnetism research is considered among his greatest contributions to science.Pierre Curie was a brilliant physicist. He is considered one of the founders of the field of modern physics.Pierre proposed the Curie Dissymmetry Principle, which states that a physical effect cannot have dissymmetry separate from its cause.The element curium, atomic number 96, is named in honor of Pierre and Marie Curie.Pierre and his student were the first to discover nuclear energy from heat emitted by radium. He observed radioactive particles might carry a positive, negative, or neutral charge. More Facts About Pierre Curie Pierres father, a doctor, provided his early education. Pierre earned a math degree at age 16 and had completed the requirements for a higher degree by age 18. He could not immediately afford to pursue his doctorate, so he worked as a lab instructor.Pierres friend, physicist Jozef Wierusz-Kowalski, introduced him to Marie Sklodowska. Marie became Pierres lab assistant and student. The first time Pierre proposed to Marie, she refused him, eventually agreeing to marry him on July 26, 1895.Pierre and Marie were the first to use the word radioactivity. A unit used to measure radioactivity, the Curie, is named in honor of either Marie or Pierre or both of them (a point of argument among historians).Pierre was interested in the paranormal, as he believed it might help him understand physics better and especially magnetism. He read books on spiritualism and attended seances, viewing them as scientific experiments. He took careful notes and measurements, concluding some phenomena he witnesse d did not appear to be faked and could not be explained.Pierre and Maries daughter Irene and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie were physicists who studied radioactivity and also received Nobel prizes. The other daughter, Eve, was the only member of the family who was not a physicist. Eve wrote a biography about her mother, Marie. Pierre and Maries granddaughter Helene is a nuclear physics professor and grandson Pierre is a biochemist. Their parents were Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie.  Pierre Joliot is named for Pierre Curie.