Today: 6 hours of class. 2 hrs, 15 minutes of typing for Stuart. 1 hr of beers and poetry discussion with the folks from Wayne's class. Also read part of Nigel's assignment.
Tomorrow, ideally: Warburtorn for Stuart. Books for Leonard. Read something for Leonard. Make a little progress on Lovelace.
Actually, I'll probably do less than that. Oh, and I probably don't have a spare shirt. Oh well.
It was really somewhat delightful reading Milton. I'm impressed by the difference that modernized spelling makes, but also he really is somewhat fundamental in how we write, I think.
I want to do more thinking about Aphra Behn and the position of women. What is up with that text? There are three roughly articulated female subjectivities: Angellica (the whore, who is in love with a man she knows doesn't deserve her, but can't quite formulate it in that way, because of her own ignominy); Hellena (the rich Woman of Quality, who is in fact something of a libertine and pursues the captain and finds herself both frustrated and attracted by his unfaithfulness); and Florinda (the stereotypical rich virginal maid who is constantly under duress).
Likewise, I suppose, there are really three male figures that we get full psychological insight into: Blunt (in love with and therefore robbed by a whore); Willmore (the profligate Captain); and Belvile (the counterpart to Florinda, who is constantly saving her and fighting duels and things).
Putting it this way makes me willing to advance a conjecture about the end. Willmore ends up with Hellena and Blunt with Angellica. Perhaps I'm wrong, though--there's lots of other characters, and Antonio may need a woman. They just play similar roles in the sexual economy of the thing, which I hadn't quite realized.
I wonder if we can imagine Florinda as complicit in her own oppression. Certainly the other women aren't treated in the same way. I mean, Callis is locked in a trunk, but the recurring sexual menace seems to be addressed primarily at Florinda. Then again, that menace is overdetermined, because at least in the scene I just read, the male characters think it's acceptable because they think she's a whore.
I have to think that Behn found that detestable even when you imagine a whore in that position. But part of the effect is that this Lady is treated like something less than a lady.
In a sense, too, Willmore is the opposite of Blunt--he's cozened a whore, sexually, while a whore has cozened the latter, financially.
I wonder, too, how much the names matter. Willmore is obvious. Blunt may be an impotence joke. I'm not sure about Belvile or Hellena, unless the second "l" in the latter's name is a reference to her desire to be a bad name. Angellica might be a pun--the angel is a coin and she is angelic in beauty but not behavior. I want to Google "Florinda" and see what results.
Very little. I wonder if we should imagine her connected to Florimel? Or Florida?
There's an argument here, but I don't know what it is. Still, I need to think about complicity whenever I think about oppression, I think. Is the treatment of Florinda a backdrop to the other treatment of women in the play--does it describe an atmosphere of generalized sexual menace--or is it an alternative? And if it's an alternative, what's it an alternative to? Hellena's life seems better, but she's gotten rather unhappy in the last few pages. Angellica too.
Maybe the ending will help this, but there aren't very many man-less possibilities for women that are particularly available...
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