Beaty and the Beast

This week's reading gave us an interesting insight to the nature of marriage, I think.  Beaumont's version of "Beauty and the Beast" is one that is most familiar to us.  It is the one that the Disney film is based off of.  I've never really sat down to read any of the fairy tales, but I know the general stories. Some of the details were a bit surprising upon close reading. 
It was briefly mentioned that Beauty being so perfect and beautiful was a bit ironic.  The story no doubt deals with excepting people for who they really are on the inside, despite outward appearances.  Beauty, however is both beautiful inside and outside.  I think if she was not beautiful in appearance, then it would be much more difficult.  The Beast and Beauty would both have to learn to accept inner beauty.  The arrangement of the story makes only Beauty learn this lesson.  One could argue, though, that Beast already knows this with his state of being and he would have fell in love with Beauty regardless.  There is another problem with Beauty being so perfect.  She then would embody everything a man would want in a woman: looks, kindness, and virtue.  She is still an ideal woman, which is not easy to find in any time period.  It is virtually impossible to as perfect as Beauty.  It perpetuates the idea that only perfect, kind and beautiful woman have happy endings.  This is little hope and comfort for woman who are forced to marry a "beastly" man.
A different problem is presented in "The Pig King."  The third daughter of the peasant lady, Meldina still wants to marry the Pig prince, even after he has killed her two sisters.  She sees marrying the prince as a great opportunity.  Regardless if the pig skin was symbolic or metaphorical.  The prince killed her sisters.  He's a murderer and the people around enabled him.  The girl was beautiful and she was desperate enough that she would overlook the murder of her two sisters.  This is quite violent and crude.  It's a messy, complicated portrait of marriage.  The bedroom scene could allude to the piggish nature of men who want sex.  In that case, the murder could also be representative of something like hurting someone else before you yourself is hurt.  It's the physical manifestation of that thought.  Meldina, then could be the "right one"  who accepts her husbands piggish nature and sees passed his brute behavior.  In a literal sense, the story is a bit too violent, but it is effective in delivering a message.
 The "Swan Maiden," I found was humorous.  My interpretation is that the swan is a beautiful creature inside and out, but if she's tricked into marrying someone, she will still fly away. 
"The Frog Prince" was a bit strange since the disenchantment happened after the beautiful but ungrateful princess threw the frog on the wall.  This story deviates quite a distance from "Beauty and the Beast."  The princess isn't that virtuous of a person, and she only does let the frog in to obey her father.  This story teaches more obedience then inner beauty I think.  The throwing the frog against the wall and the disenchantment is not as magical as the typical kiss, but a real relationship doesn't always start so magically nor does it have to to be successful.

This week's "The Theory Toolbox" and Culler present us with Saussure's theories about linguistics.  He makes the argument that words aren't natural things and that they only signify or represent things or the signifier.  His example using the chair reminded me of the way psychology classifies things.  One way is a classical model in which everything has to be true for it to be considered a chair or a bird.  Birds must fly,have wings, and be warm blooded.  In this model, penguins would not be a bird technically.  In the prototype model, it can have most of the characteristics, it can be considered a bird or a chair. Saussure points out that we could have called a chair anything and it still would serve the same function.
Saussure also states that language influences or even determines the thoughts of people.  It seemed a bit like circular reasoning almost.  Of course, we're going to think in the language we know.  But, looking at the different languages, it seems very true.  I heard that in Greek, there are five different words for love.  In Vietnamese, there's a distinction between grandmother and grandfather on the mother's side or the father's side as well as aunts and uncles.  They all have different names.  In Japanese, everyone uses honorifics and polite speech, which is a large part of the culture.  The speech only becomes informal when a person knows the other very well or it's considered rude.  Some words don't exist from one language to the other.  It's always hard to translate poems from one language to another.  They loose their meaning and even structure sometimes as with haikus.  Structure is important in that instance.
There was an explanation of the difference between metonymy and metaphor.  I enjoyed the Beavis and Butthead allusion.  It help in understanding.  Metonymy only replaces the word, but metaphor replaces it with more meaning.  I think this is crucial in writing to be able to use both.  Metaphor alone sometimes is too abstract for people to grasp, but metonymy alone is very dry and the meaning is spelled out, which is boring.  Cliches become too much like a metonymy if they're overused I think.  "I'll give you my heart, " is one example.  Everyone could easily identify that "heart" is a replacement for "love."  The Toolbox did say that metaphor had to start with metonymy but in this case, I think it stays stuck there.            

        

Cultural Studies and Deconstruction

Culler presents interesting ideas about cultural studies and literature.  He states that they almost oppose or conflict with each other.  I have always believed that literature and culture went hand in hand, and literature was the result of culture.  Culler presents the problem of "literary excellence" and the problems it presents.  We are only exposed to a minute, minuscule amount of works from certain time periods in our lives.  It is not logistically feasible to read every "great" work of every period, so the few that we do read represent a certain culture, for the most part.  The canon of literature is always changing, but I believe that our world has a complex, embedded pattern to it, reoccurring themes that will never die, no matter how much time changes things. From history, we can see that things repeat and human nature has relatively been untouched, not to say that context doesn't change things.  We are so rooted in archetypes that even culture has to draw from it.  Literature is a window into culture.  It isn't necessarily traditional or conventional , so I don't see how it could conflict with culture.
  Barry introduces the idea of a "decentralized universe." At first I thought he meant that there was no center to anything, but what I think he actually meant was that it is impossible to find because centers change, so there can't be a center.  Relativity is the only way to know where we are  I guess.  I think it's not as uncontrolled as he makes it out to be.  There is not center but there has to be an origin.  It's not like both relative points were generated on their own. I think ideas and notions are linked to more than just their paradox, so it's a really complicated idea to grasp...
Nietzsche's quote "there are no facts, only interpretation," actually made me question the validity of the statement.  Barry explains the anxiety of language and how it can be misinterpreted and how close reading attempts to erase that. "Facts"  are also and interpretation, I understand.  However, we call them facts because they are grounded.  They are predictable.  I think there are such things as facts because it has grown from being just an interpretation.  Facts are higher forms of interpretation, I think.
I found Derrida's "Grammatology" to reinforce things that I've learned.  "There is nothing outside the text," really resonated with me.  We cannot possible reconstruct intentions because we can only build from what is given to us, which is the text.  He mentions several times "the death of the author."  I have learned that an emotional severance from the author really allows the text to speak in it's own way.  "A Refusal to Mourn" is a great example of how the text can live on it's own, not to say that it spontaneously formed without an author.  By deconstructing the poem, we see that there are contradictions in the language that are similar to real life.  This part of the structure parallels the emotional state of human emotions, which are not clear.  Like in times of death and like the poem, emotion and language are muddled.  This partly connects with the post structuralist "reading against the grain."  It's interesting to see that they look for disunity in a piece.  I think it's hard to find unity simply because so many contradictions exist even within itself.