Month: January 2026

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Agostino

Exploration of adulthood – Agostino

This book is a lot shorter than the ones we read before. I really enjoy reading it, and I like the ending a lot. The theme I want to discuss in this blog is social class division and exposure to sexuality.

The protagonist, Agostino, is from a middle-class family. His father has passed away, leaving his mother and him a good amount of property.

At the beginning of the novel, I do not think Agostino knows the privilege he has, but this changes shortly. One of the boys asks him, “Are you rich?” Agostino responds yes, but when they ask how much money he has exactly, he answers, “I don’t know” (33).

They keep asking him if he has a big house. This time, he not only responds yes, but also stresses that there are twenty rooms in the house. Moravia describes his gesture as one where he “can’t resist boasting.” I think at that moment, he becomes aware of his privilege, which makes him stand out from the boys who look down on him and see him as an outsider.

They then ask him whether there are waiters in his house and turn to the waiter’s son in the gang, teasing him for that. From the questions the gang of boys asks out of the blue, as well as the later ones, it is very clear that they are aware of the social class they belong to. This is not true for Agostino, who is basically unsure at the beginning, since going to the beach is a special period of time, a summer vacation, that is different from his day-to-day life. For the boys, however, the beach is where they live their routine lives.

As an outsider, Agostino tries to become one of them by pretending to be a boatman’s son. He uses the information he has just gotten from Saro, that he never goes to school.

I have also realized that even though the gang of boys is almost the same age as Agostino, they are more exposed to sexuality and adulthood. For example, when Agostino struggles with the idea of how a price can be set on those women (92). Tortima, the boy who deceives Agostino and uses his money at the brothel without any hesitation, clearly has more experience.

The question I have for this week is: Do you think social class impacts the timing of children’s exposure to sexuality?

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The Shrouded Woman

How can Emotional Bonds Vanish? By death? NO!!!!

The book we read this week is The Shrouded Woman, written by Maria Luisa Bombal. I used to think death is the end, that everything stops when a person dies. But from this book, I feel how an individual is constructed through a network of emotional bonds that may or may not vanish after they pass away.

As guided by the lecture video this week, I would like to write about the relationship between Antonio and Ana Maria in this blog. Through the author’s depiction, we see the differences between women and men at that (fictional) time.

Firstly, their identities under patriarchy are different.

In the book, the author describes that there is “a road her father permitted him to use,” which made it “easy for him to spy on her,” and that “he did not even need to get off his horse” [217]. It reveals how Ana María is manipulated through patriarchal authority shared between her father and Antonio.

This also shows that their initial attitudes toward marriage are different. While peeking through the window, Antonio was “already hopelessly in love,” as she is depicted as very pretty in the previous text [218]. However, Ana describes her bridal chamber as “cold” [218] and constantly feels “sad” [222] at the beginning of the marriage.

However, as time goes on, she starts to feel that “she needed his warmth, his embrace, all the encumbering love she had repudiated” [223]. But Antonio starts to become absent, which increases “her repentance, her thirst for love” even more [224].

She wants to see him badly. So when she runs to him, she has not even “rearranged her tousled hair, her tired face,” which causes Antonio to push her away when she hugs him [224]. After she falls in love with him, Antonio never shows his love to her anymore. Nothing can bring him back, not even her first child.

From these pages, I see the differences between women and men. As women are controlled by patriarchy, the only option left to them is to love their husbands while staying graceful and beautiful. Their husbands, however, see them as trophies. They love pretty appearances and are willing to showcase affection and love for those, but these feelings are not long-lasting. Unlike women, who are obligated to stay at home all the time, men can have a “life of gallantry” outside of marriage.

These differences all contribute to the hatred Ana has. I think her hatred consists of her attitudes not only toward Antonio but also toward patriarchy, which may vanish if women were also allowed to have lovers outside of marriage.

The question I have for this week is: After reading this book, how do we think of death?

Categories
Character

The Final Betrayal in Mad Toy

I spent my week reading this book, sometimes on the bus, sometimes lying on the bed. I genuinely could not read this piece all at once, as the events and the plot twists made me feel bad for Silvio.

I can hear distant voices, brilliant fireworks, but I am here alone, held down in my world of misery, as if by nine stakes (77).

When I was reading the book, this line drew my attention, as I thought it alluded to Les Misérables, since Silvio lives in a very similar situation to the protagonist of that novel. From various pages, I found that Silvio is really knowledgeable. He has read many books and invented things that impressed the board officer and lieutenants, but the jobs he eventually got are unstable and do not reflect his talents. He also loves poems and inventions, which are typically hobbies of well-educated people.

I felt exceptionally upset for him when the captain expelled Silvio from the army after he had just encouraged Silvio to study more to become someone. Like Silvio, I do not understand the reason for his expulsion, because Silvio has not done anything wrong. For that entire chapter, Silvio was looking for a job, but the positions accepted him are extremely low-status and none of those discovered Silvio’s intelligence. At the end of the chapter,  when the captain recognizes Silvio’s talents, I feel so happy for him, but it turns out to be a cliff hanger. The chapter ends quickly, and it is clear that there is no plot twists anymore. The next time I see Silvio, he becomes a paper salesmen.

At the end of Chapter 4, Silvio went to the house of an engineer. Even though Silvio is depicted as having talent and an interest in becoming an engineer, there is never an opportunity for him to do so. So I think this is an interesting design for the person who look down to him to be an engineer.

From the first a few pages of this book and this part, I notice that Silvio feels he is above Rengo for having a better morality. He reported Rengo to the engineer, but this action did not bring him respect from the engineer. The engineer thought he had betrayed his friend, which made Silvio feel that his dignity had been insulted.

Well… Silvio sounds like a complex character to me. How do you guys feel about the “betrayal”? What do you think is the reason of Silvio doing that?

Categories
Character Combray Food

Foods in Combray

Hi! Welcome to my first blog for RMST 202. We read Combray by Proust this week. As the recorded lecture spends most of its time explaining what modernism is, I did not recognize that during my entire time reading it 🙁

When I was reading it, I found myself unconsciously skipping the paragraphs written under the modernist perspective. I really wanted to follow the PLOT, like the part where the great aunt looks down on little Swann, but he turns out to be really successful. Jon said in the recorded lecture that this kind of novel makes us become better readers. I AM feeling that, as I have to force myself to read it several times just to make sure I am not behaving impatiently and skipping pages.

When I was skipping pages, the description of foods attracted my attention. From the description of the insomnia in the first few pages, I recognized Proust’s skills of description, which definitely fit with what my high school English teacher wanted from me: show instead of tell. With the “refined voice,” the language he used for describing foods and desserts grabbed all of my attention. Therefore, for the rest of the post, I want to discuss that.

  1. Madeleine

From page 45 to 48, Proust described in detail his feelings after having some tea and a piece of madeleine. I think I am able to divide that into multiple stages:

a. “A delicious pleasure” that came after the first bite, but the happiness was diminishing as he took more bites.

b. Because of the diminishing pleasure, Proust asked himself a few questions about where the pleasure came from and figured out that the pleasure did not come from the drink and the dessert, but from himself.

c. He then kept asking himself questions about where the pleasure came from, and he noticed that it was from a little piece of madeleine he had in Combray that was provided by his aunt Léonie.

d. He then concluded that even though he had seen these cakes on the shelf of a pastry shop, the reverie was not evoked. But a taste of cake and a sip of tea did, as memory of smell and taste is attached to the soul.

I am feeling connected to this because I have experiences of having something I had in my childhood that immediately made me think back to those old days. There was once when I accidentally added too much salt to my pineapple and realized that it was exactly the same taste of pineapple that my grandfather used to buy for me.

2. Foods in Combray

I also want to discuss foods in Combray. At the end of the first section, Proust talked about the madeleine, which brought him his childhood memory in Combray. In Section 2, there are some paragraphs written about food again, and some of those are tied to the portrait of a character, Françoise. She is a servant of the narrator’s aunt Léonie. With the author’s portrait, she has “her own genius” in the menu, where she was able to make everyone in the family love the foods she made. For example, the narrator’s father loved the chocolate custard, which is stated by the narrator as “a product of Françoise’s personal inspiration and attention.” Also, the narrator once showed his love toward cream cheese, and Françoise was able to bring that to him when he was there.

At the same time as being talented, she also had a bad temper. She yelled “Vile creature” while killing a chicken. The narrator said he wanted them to “dismiss” her “immediately.” He did realize that she was killing the chicken for their meals, but seeing her killing the chicken made him “tremble.” Overall, I believe Françoise is an important character who is worth discussing more. From the angle of seeing this novel as a recollection of memory, the narrator at that time is not the same person as the writer in the present. I divide this instance as follows: the one who trembled and the one who wanted to dismiss Françoise is the little boy in the past, but the one who realized that Françoise killed the chicken for them was the present writer. My question is, from the characters in Combray, do we see any more examples like this?

Thank you for reading my blog this week. Hope you are doing well!

Categories
Intro

Hi RMST 202!

Hi! My name is Doris and I am a third year student. I study math and data science but I am not committed to both of them, so I study actuarial science in my spare time. I passed my first actuarial exam last year, which was said to need about 300 hours of study. Since I did it along with a full course load, I am so proud of my multitasking skills that I never noticed before LOL. If you are on the same boat, feel free to talk to me! Maybe we can do exam prep together HEHE.

I have a very fluffy cat, his name is Tutu. Here is a pic of him:

 

I am very excited about this class because it has been a while for me to be guided to read and write. I would say I love reading but the genre I was reading was so limited and they all served for my personal entertainment. Therefore, I would love to read, feel, and experience in this course to share my thoughts, and listen to other people’s perspectives.

In the first lecture, we discussed the definition of literature. I really appreciated how one of the classmates said literature stood over time, and I am curious about what make those text not outdated as compared to others. Is it the message? Or the beauty of language? Or the great fame the authors have? I don’t have an answer to this question. BUT, what I have noticed is that literature always takes me twice or more amount of time to read through!

As I watched the Inventing Romance Studies video, I surprisingly found out that this course is somehow comparative literature related, which is a field I am always interested in, but never have the opportunity to interact with. The obstacle that prevents me from diving into this field is language. I used to think it is necessary for me to learn the language before starting to analyze the literature, or some of the hidden meanings will never been unfold due to the translation. Aside from language, I am also afraid of lacking knowledge of the culture and history of the literatures I would like to do comparative analysis. As it is exhausted just to think of these difficulties, I have never give it a try. But as suggested by the video, all the text we are going to read are translations, so it’s a great opportunity for me. I am so happy to do comparative literature this term!

Nice to meet you guys! Hope to have a wonderful semester!

 

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