No this is not an analysis of the of the Bloomberg report on the S&P 500, but rather a reflection on Bloomsbury nature aesthetics. Having admittedly failed to complete Howards End, I found it difficult to connect the concept of nature aesthetics to our readings. However, I found strong evidence of this in George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss. The language used to personify the mill is grandiose and faltering of nature. Everything natural, English, and green is described in full colour, while the iron wheels of the economy are tainted and black. I also believe that Eliot attaches these ideas of nature aesthetics to feelings of nationalism. Produce cultivated in England, namely corn, is depicted in a  righteous  and honourable light, while commodities from over seas, such as the Dutch sheets described early on in the novel are seen as unnecessary – as those from England are plenty good enough.

I am left wondering then if George Eliot uses Bloomsbury nature aesthetics and images of nationalism as advocation for domestic production? Furthermore, is she foreshadowing a market where off-shore production becomes the common practice?

For those who have studied Economics before, they might notice this strong notion of causality: Y happened because of X. A few examples include: a fire in a factory causes a shortage for goods made in that factory; some hip trend causes a shift in demand for a particular good. And more prominently, a lack of confidence in the market causes a stock market crash, which causes a recession – and layoffs, lack of overall spending, slow economy, etc. Moreover, causality is especially prevalent with money and credit. Credit, of course, depends heavily on causality; your credit is either great, terrible, or somewhere in between, depending on your ability to pay back loans, pay rent, bills, etc.

Throughout the novels in the course, we can find this theme of causality. So far, the novel that emphasizes this theme the most is probably Roxana. In the early parts of the novel, we can conclude that Roxana’s initial predicament in poverty is caused by her first husband – her only real source of income at the time – and his lack of prowess in business and credit. His poor credit and reputation can be caused by his lack of proper dealings with his clients and stakeholders. We see this again further on in the novel when we revisit him via a spy – he gains a reputation as a sort of swindler. And there’s just many, many more examples of causality in this novel: Roxana herself haunted by Susan, a daughter conceived by her past trysts; the jeweller murdered,  perhaps with the assailants’ knowledge of his precious jewels and his complete absence of security; even Roxana’s philosophy on marriage, based on her experience with the rigidity of having just one husband versus the flexibility of moving between lovers.

However, we can also argue for the lack of causality throughout the novels in the course as well. The most recent example of this is the abrupt ending in The Mill on the Floss, where our beloved main characters are unexpectedly killed by the flood. It’s in these chance moments where we think to ourselves, “how on earth could that have possibly happened?” And even in the beginning of the novel where our main Characters, Tom and Maggie, are each given default circumstances beyond their individual choices (warning: inequality overtones ahead). Tom, born a male, is given the privilege of higher learning by default. Unfortunately, he also has been given the responsibility of paying off his father’s debt without a choice. On the other hand, Maggie, born a female, is denied an education at first. She is also promptly reprimanded during moments when she does something unladylike (cut her hair, does/doesn’t wear something in particular, etc.). (Note: this is all in the past now; we clearly have stronger notions of gender equality today)

Throughout the novels in the course, where can we find other examples of Causality? Or even any unexpected happenings?

Like Roxana–and decidedly unlike Emma–The Mill on the Floss ends very sadly. Why? Obviously there is a symbolic relationship between the Flood and the water imagery the “runs” all the way through the novel and which we saw working very strongly in Ruskin too. But why end the novel so tragically? What might this final image tell us about the relationship between fiction and economics? Is there, moreover, a correlation between the way Eliot ends her novel and her take on Maggie’s sexuality, education, and gender?

I’ve been reading the posts on Mill on the Floss with great interest. Let’s keep them up!

We ended last class talking about the relationship between the “love” plot and the “money” plots in the novel. Poovey sees them as quite different strands that compete with each other for the interest of the reader and, possibly, point out some of the ironies in the way readers of “financial journalism” might have encountered a novel that only seems marginally to do with finance and capital–but which actually is. Kreisel, by contrast, sees the two plots as intimately related on the evidence of economic language (she is similar to Miles here) and of parallels between the novels’ major narrative developments and ongoing debates in political economy about social progress, consumption, and economic order. I’m wondering if any of you have a preference for either of these readings? Why or why not?

While reading The Mill on the Floss, I encountered one problem regarding education that I believe is still relevant today. That would be the idea that young people are being inadequately prepared for future jobs, some of which possibly don’t even exist yet. Eliot first presents this problem in the novel when Tom is being taught Latin and Euclid by Mr. Stelling, topics that are “academic” and interesting but do not prepare him for the money-centric business world of book-keeping and accounting. Some of you have probably seen this video before, but it does a nice job of illustrating the problems regarding education and employment from the 19th to the 21st century (His distinction between the economic and intellectual pillars of education I believe is quite relevant to the novel):

I think it’s interesting to see this issue appear in The Mill on the Floss since it testifies to the prevalence of this problem throughout history. I believe that with the incredible reliance on computer technology in the 21st century, our job economy is going through a radical transformation similar to the one that occurred during the dawn of the British credit economy. In fact, there’s a strong push in American public schools to begin teaching kids coding skills to prepare them for future jobs, with organizations such as Code.org are at the forefront of this movement. More recently, Obama has announced an initiative to fund and teach computer science to students throughout America, stating that computer skills will become “basic skills”. In December, Arkansas passed a law requiring computer science courses to be available in all public and charter schools.

I think that this problem of future job security is quite interesting, one that I grapple with myself as an English Literature major. I was wondering what anyone else thought about this problem as it appears in the 21st century? Also, does the novel present it as an issue that can be overcome, or is it an issue that is a natural product of a modernizing world?

Regarding the video, do you agree with his observations and opinions?

My apologies in advance for the lack of page numbers- my e-text doesn’t have any!

Reading Chapter III of The Mill on the Floss, I was struck by the use of the language of education to convey credit, particularly that of Mr. Stelling. Mr. Tulliver wants his son Tom to go to a school where he can learn a skill set more appropriate for a middle-class career, and seeks the advice of his middle-class friend Mr. Riley. Mr. Riley realizes the capability of education to raise one’s social credit, and recommends the Clergyman Mr. Stelling, recognizing that an education from a person of this profession will add to Tom’s social credit. The lower-class Mr. Tulliver seems to have difficulty understanding this, and is concerned that a Parson would “be almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o’business” such as Tom, while expressing that Clergymen possess “a sort o’ learning as lay mostly out of sight”. While Mr. Tulliver recognizes that Clergymen have great learning, he is unable to identify this knowledge exactly and labels it as “out of sight”, yet the Clergyman’s educational credit leads Mr. Tulliver to assume it exists. However, Mr. Tulliver does not initially see this form of credit as being applicable to Tom’s, who will be going into ‘business’, which Mr. Riley refutes by stating: “a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit”, implying that educational credit is required in order to start a career that generates credit in itself.

Towards the end of the chapter, we learn that Mr. Riley is also forming assumptions about Mr. Stelling’s qualifications, as he does not actually know him. However, Mr. Riley is able to recommend him based on other people of credit, stating that “he believed Mr. Stelling to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said so, and Gadsby’s first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would have been, for though Mr. Riley had received a tincture of the classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of understanding Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready”. Mr. Riley takes on a role similar to Roxana at this moment, whose own account is not reliable but is validated by other creditable sources, and can therefore be taken as truth.

Interestingly, Mr. Riley’s assumption of Mr. Stelling’s credit, though he knows it is not founded in personal experience, convinces him of Mr. Stelling’s merits. By the end of the discussion, Mr. Riley has decided, “that if Mr. Tulliver had in the end declined to send Tom to Stelling, Mr. Riley would have thought his ‘friend of the old school’ a thoroughly pig-headed fellow”, expressing both his newfound conviction of Mr. Stelling’s qualifications and of his own class-based credit over Mr. Tulliver. It is also based in the credit of other people that Mr. Riley is able to make assumptions about Mr. Stelling’s economic credit, including the amount Mr. Stelling would charge for his time and services, and about what Mr. Stelling is qualified to teach. Though “he knew very little of that [Stelling’s] M.A. and his acquirements”, Mr. Riley still feels confident enough to tell Mr. Tulliver that “when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he’s at no loss to take up any branch of instruction.” This passage demonstrates a moment where education becomes synonymous with personal credit and economic credit in the text, which, if Tom goes on to be educated by Mr. Stelling, might be a continuing theme in the novel.

Any thoughts about the relation between education and credit, or anything to add about this passage?

We spoke about the advances Austen made in character dialogue a little bit last Thursday and I wanted to take this opportunity to comment on what was being said. A moment that interested me appears on pages 185-186 and features Miss Bates talking to Emma about Frank Churchill repairing Mrs Bates’ glasses. In this passage, Miss Bates invites Emma over to her house, reports to Emma her earlier conversation with Frank Churchill, and includes many hyphenated breaks in the dialogue. What interests me about this moment is the different techniques Austen incorporates within one set of quotation marks: there is the initial layer of Miss Bates’ direct speech to Emma, followed be her indirect report of what Frank Churchill had told her, and followed by the implied questions Emma asks her, signified by the hyphenated breaks, and their subsequent answer. Thinking in terms of novelization, this technique of dialogue features two relationships based on confidence: between Emma and Miss Bates and between the reader and the novel. In the former, Emma has to trust Miss Bates in what Frank Churchill has said to her, and have confidence that what she said is true. In the latter, the reader has to fill in the implied questions Emma asks Miss Bates so that they match Miss Bates’ answers. By incorporating these two relationships within her dialogue, Austen succeeds in including the readers themselves into the dialogue, therefore increasing the self-awareness of the amount of confidence between the reader and the novel.

I was wondering what anyone else thought about the dialogue in Emma, and if there is a way to compare it to Roxana? Is there a way to read the dialogue of this novel more economically?

A connection I have made between Roxanna and Emma, is that the time period in which both novels were written coincide with distinct periods of war. To this day war seems to have a profound effect on the economy, and more specifically the ability to save a nation from economic doom, or send it into depression. The beginning of World War II marked a dramatic change in the American work force. Women were entering into predominantly male positions as a many American males were drafted and sent off to war. Comparing times in which unemployment rates in America peaked to the start and end of the WWII, a very clear negative correlation can be seen. Times of war are marked with a decrease in the unemployment rates, while peace times seem to spark a sharp spike. More recently the DotCom crash of 2000 – 2002, and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 are also closely matched, with war being the solution to an economic down turn.

Connecting this pattern to Roxanna and Emma, and the various historical events that took place during the period in which they were written, the discourse surrounding the economy is not entirely immune from the perils of war. Miles very deliberately drew attention to this by highlighting the time period in which Jane Austen both began and completed the novel Emma. Times of war seem to question the stability of currency and shake the trust people have in the economy, and standards of currency as well.

I am curious if anyone else has anything to offer on the idea of war, money, and the world economy?

Adding to the discussion we had today in class about the Gold Standard and Ideology, I found an interesting blog post which is a contemporary address to the movement that it would be a good idea to reintroduce the Gold Standard.

Gold and Ideology

I thought it was especially interesting that the author ends his post with a quote from Samuel Johnson about marriage, and relating that, specifically the notion of a failed marriage, to the idiocy of reintroducing the Gold Standard. There it is! Marriage as a traditionally viewed rock solid social institution, and the Gold Standard as something constant that we can put our faith into! We talked about marriage with Roxana, and we will discuss it revolving around ideology, the Gold Standard and Emma. How perfect is that?!

I frequently listen to CBC podcasts, namely Ideas and The Current. This recent production titled “It’s The Economists, Stupid” sheds some light on the ironies of our current economic system.

I found one point particularly engaging: That economists, as our main source of information on the market, create instability through their projections. However, these predictions are based primarily on feelings, judgments and best guesses. Instead of being transparent about this, they state these predictions as fact. This can result in mass panic and economic instability, even economic crisis. However, we look to these same economists for solutions to economic crises as they occur. This questions is particularly pertinent in our discussion of credit.

It’s definitely worth a listen.

My question to you is:

Will transparency create stability (we won’t worry as much about the predictions of economists) or will it create mass panic (if economists don’t know for sure, can anyone guarantee anything)?

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/it-s-the-economists-stupid-1.3219471