Monthly Archives: January 2024

The Shrouded Woman, My Personal Horror Story

Posted on by under Bombay

The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal constantly made me think of memories and death, honestly I didn’t enjoy this aspect of the story, let me tell you why. Often I worry about death and ending and spend a lot of my time fearing them, something I am trying to get over. I often worry about everything really (you could ask any of my family and friends) from earthquakes to crashing planes. So what I didn’t enjoy about this book was the constant looming of death over the entire novella. With every sweet memory the author spoke of I found myself almost forgetting they were dead, I was going through a roller-coaster of emotions.

I think if I passed away I wouldn’t want to be able to think of all my memories. I think I would ponder on them too much, even thought I would be dead, and the anxiousness of what could’ve been if I had done things differently would overtake me. I don’t think I would enjoy that very much.

What I did enjoy about this novel was it was much easier to follow than some we have been reading. In no way am I saying I enjoyed the other books we’ve read less, they were just more of a challenge to dissect. This felt a lot more digestible. Something that did, however, throw me off at points was the point of view, sometimes I couldn’t really figure out who was telling the story. This could just be my own confusion but I also believe that the point of view is what made this novel so unique.

Throughout the story there was a lot of descriptions of nature, lots of forests, rivers, and storms. It all made me think of Mother Nature and the give and take of nature in relation to the story. In a way I think Ana Maria was Mother Nature as she accepts her deaths and just wants to “feel the grass grow, new islands emerge, and on some other continent, the unknown flower bursting open that blooms only on a day of eclipse” (pg.259). There was a sort of mystical-ness to the story as Ana-Maria travelled through what seemed to be a sort of in between of her life and death, an opportunity to silently observe and recall given to her by a figureless light. Sometimes nature represented this in-between with forests and snow.

I also noticed lots of underlying proto-feminism with Ana-Maria, I feel like at this time a story from a women’s point of view, with such a life that Ana-Maria lived, was perhaps a little scandalous. She brings a lot of awareness to the struggles of women, their emotions and their passion, coming to some very forward thinking (for that time). We see this in page 226 when she says “Why, oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?”. I personally really liked that quote, it made me think a lot about my own life. I also liked the cheeky fact that all the men were in love with her, I feel like it gave her a lot of agency to say no.

Question: Do you think the women in this story act on their agency? Do they use it for gain or fear it?

Nadja the Dream Woman

Posted on by under Breton

Reading Nadja by Andre Breton was quite interesting to me because I have a little bit of background knowledge, I am going to Major in Visual Arts and during my studies have seen Breton’s artworks, I have also read and learned a lot about surrealism, what it is, it’s history, it’s practice, so I feel like because of that knowledge I have some groundwork. To me surrealism knows no bounds, Surrealists are focused on the involuntary, the unconscious, and psychoanalysis, it was an art movement created to get artists out of their heads and away from the perfectionist square box of fine art. At least that is my view of it. I’ve never really been a huge fan of surrealism fully myself and in my practice, but I can appreciate it. Surrealism visually can be a confusing and analytically deep concept to grasp for me, so you can imagine surrealist writing left me staring at the words for many long seconds. I was definitely a little lost sometimes (many times) and many sentences I would read were not creating any sort of logic or thought outcome in my head. I did find it easier to digest sentences further into the story. I did also feel this overall sense of drama, everything was written very dramatically as he talked of deep thoughts of fate and the universe.

Something this style of writing reminded me of was a surrealist practice called automated writing, where you are just supposed to write whatever comes to mind. To me, some sentences seemed to have no rhyme or reason.

I think there is a very fine line in this story about who exactly the woman, Nadja, is. Especially the line about whether she is real or not. She is quite the mystery! The jumbled thoughts and obsession almost make me think that this woman could be made up, a figment of his imagination or desires. Maybe this book reflects Breton’s unconscious desires, which is a very surrealist idea.

Another thing I noticed throughout the story was there was a lot of first person, the story is very much told from the writer’s perspective and is very involved with his thoughts and concerns only. The story being told solely from one perspective doesn’t give much room to think about other perspectives in the story. I definetly think that the ideas and thoughts that the main character rambles on and his deep obsessions with the world and Nadja about almost make me question his sanity (if that is fair to say), therefor I question his authenticity about his experiences with Nadja.

My discussion question: Is there a line between being infatuated with love and obsession? What do you think differentiates the two?

The Magical land of Combray – Marcel Proust

Posted on by under Proust

Combray, Proust

Combray by Marcel Proust overall gave me an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. It reminded me very much of, from what I can remember, being a child. I felt connected with these scenarios of family situations, being a child at family gatherings. You know who everything is, you know kind of what’s going on, you know what feelings you are feeling but as a child, you don’t truly understand the gravity of things going on or being said and why you are feeling what you are feeling. I think this is described very well in the book, the boy knows he’s feeling anxious but can’t quite pinpoint why that truly is, all he knows is he wants his mom. I especially related to the scene where he wanted to see his mother even though he was not supposed to be out of bed and the anxiousness you feel as a kid wanting to talk to your parents when you should be sleeping. So in a sense the description of that scene was nostalgic for me.

Maybe it was just my reading into it however I found some bits of the novel and its trajectory hard to understand. I never quite knew where his thoughts were leading, like some thoughts spiralled into others which as a reader caused some confusion. But when I think about children and their sporadic train of thought this thinking process made sense to me. Often the child would see something that would remind him of something else, like seeing a book and remembering that his grandma bought and returned books for him which led to a thought about his grandma’s old spending and gifting habits. Often times I forgot about what the original thought or scene was until it was circled back to.

A recurring action throughout the novel is physical cues associated with memories, tastes, smells, actions, and feelings. There were a lot of combinations of scents that caused powerful and very lucid recollections. For example the smell of varnish that reminded him of a particular staircase, the smell and taste of the madaline and tea, the “dark cool smell of both forest and ancien regime” (pg.75) of a room he used to read in. This boy has a very acute sense of smell! I was amazed at the visual detail that was thoroughly described in some of the memories, not one detail was left out which made picturing scenes in my head very easy. – 50pg

I also thought his relationship/slight obsession (?) with his mother was very almost Freudian. Overall I picked up on the themes of memory, dreams, class and lucid visuals and enjoyed the vivid imagery of the settings in the novel. I found it quite ironic when he talked of places one has not been but heard stories and seen photos of, and how seeing it is almost disappointing all while the author creates this magical land of Combray.

Question: Do you have a childhood memory that is a very vivid memory for you?

All About Me (Avery Patterson)

Posted on by under Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is Avery, I’m in my second year and I’m in Arts planning to major in visual arts,   I’m also in the B+MM program so if you are in either of those let me know because I love meeting people in my program! I’m a North Van girly so I’m into all the classic North Shore things like snowboarding, hikes, and all things nature. I enjoy travelling and being immersed in different cultures, my favourite place so far is London and I am hopefully going to be visiting more places in Europe this year! (if anyone has recommendations let me know!). I also love music, and can often be spotted walking around campus with headphones on, if you stopped me to ask I’m most likely listening to SZA.

I’m very excited for this class because I enjoy reading (mostly fantasy, as a guilty pleasure) and I expect that by the end of the term, I will have expanded my bookish horizons as well as possibly learn some new strategies for analyzing texts. During the school year I never really have time to read, so this will be a change for me. I’ve also never done any sort of course like this (literature studies/language studies), as my degree contains mostly visual aspects, so I’m very curious to learn what it’s all about. I’m expecting to develop my reading abilities and engage in conversation with others about all that we are learning, hearing what others see that I might not. Another expectation of mine is to get better at analyzing texts, I’d say a weakness of mine is analyzing deeper meanings in texts, questioning and taking information further, a weakness I am hoping to improve on.

Watching the lecture video and conversation video I first of all learned that I know nothing about what Romance Studies actually is (!) and I’m sort of going into this blindly. The conversation of similarities and differences in works of literature that are all grouped under the “Romance Studies” category was very interesting to me and something I want to keep in mind while reading our novels. The idea brought up in the video lecture that “Romance studies belong nowhere, and it finds a place everywhere” and saying that not one person is closer than another to the source of “Romance Studies” allowing for expressive freedom and there is no language or way to speak “Romance”, to me this was almost reassuring as it felt like it levelled the playing field a bit!

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