I be a writing person!
Oct. 20th, 2005 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dagas_isaHaving finished the next part of "Closest" and just letting it sit before I give it the read over for coherence, I decided to open up my Random Acts of Linguistics document and finish getting some of the basics of Axismantei done so that I can post it on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sombrelucian. This means that the infodumps are ending as I want one for Utame, and maybe one for general history and culture stuff. And then I can work on profiles and stuff. Yum!
In other news, I feel like RPing again, and as such I'm actually, you know trying to write up a post for Lana, seeing as I don't believe that I know enough about Firefly/Serenity to try and beg my way into getting that one.
Mary Sues used to annoy the living daylights out of me. I guess they still do, in the way that I avoid reading them as much as I can get away with, although I will read and review if specifically requested to. I just don't actively persecute them anymore.
Part of this has probably come from taking a few lit classes in Uni, and coming to the realization that the Mary Sues have always been a part of literature, or what we would define as literature. I'm sure that there were accurate descriptions of appropriately flawed and complex characters somewhere in literature (note that I'm not an English major or anything close to that), but for the most part characters are archetypes not people.
The Lais of Marie de France always have a beautiful noblewoman and worthy knights who fall in love with them. Chaucer had his Clerk's tale about Griselda, the woman who was the Clerk's paragon of what the perfect wife is. Characterization the way that most of my friends list likes to think about it is relatively new. Archetypes have always come first.
While writing my essay for English (it's an African American Women's lit course), I was faced with comparing the deaths of two different characters from two different books. The first one was Jewel Bowen from the novel Hagar's Daughter, while the second one was Claire Kendry from the book Passing. Conceptually, are very similar. Both are biracial and both are 'passing' in the white world although Jewel is unaware of her heritage. Both are either married to or romantically involved with white men. Oh yes, and both are beautiful.
The difference between them lies in their execution. Claire Kendry is much more complex than Jewel Bowen, for every similar issue that the two women have, Claire's is better thought out. Jewel is in love with a white man and even after some contrived scenario that separates them, she marries him while he is in jail waiting to go to trial for a murder. Claire Kendry marries a white man for money, but is discontent in the white world, and longs to go back to Harlem, at the end of the book, right before her death, it's implied that she's sleeping with the black husband of the other main character and that if it weren't for the daughter that she doesn't really care about anyway, she would gladly divorce John in an instant.
When writing the paper, I had to explain why of all the women in Hagar's Daughter who were passing for white, Jewel Bowen was the one who had to die. I think in the paper itself, I explained that she was "symbolic of perfection", but "Mary Sue" is much more accurate. And since Pauline Hopkin's (the author of Hagar's Daughter couldn't very well have Jewel Bowen ending the racial divide between blacks and whites in the late 1800s single-handedly without getting censured by her audience and creating a bizarre fantasy America, nor could she just settle down with her rich, prominent white hubby whom she'd dearly in love with and have a happy ending, Jewel Bowen had to die, just of a fever while her poor husband mourns for her.
So umm... I had no clue where I was going with it. Just sort of an observation that what we call Mary Sues today have actually been around in many forms before Original Characters came into common use.
Oh! Those things we call Original Characters happen when the author is focused on the characterization as the main part of the story. If the author chooses to focus on something like social commentary, or romance, or the plot, the more the author focuses on these things the more likely it is that a character will transform into the archetype (a.k.a. the Mary Sue). Of the 4 novels we've read this semester in Litclass, only Passing focused on the characters for themselves. Hagar's Daughter tried to be commentary on racism in America while also being a conglomeration of all the famous literary genre of the day. Their Eyes were Watching God is almost a Fantasy story, although it's more of an ethnography of the rural black community with the main character almost being an avatar of Zora Neale Hurston although much less a blatant Sue than Jewel Bowen. And with The Street being a naturalist novel, Lutie Johnson is more of a test tube specimen than a fully developed character.
Okay, so none of this is making sense.
Over and out.
sombrelucian. This means that the infodumps are ending as I want one for Utame, and maybe one for general history and culture stuff. And then I can work on profiles and stuff. Yum!In other news, I feel like RPing again, and as such I'm actually, you know trying to write up a post for Lana, seeing as I don't believe that I know enough about Firefly/Serenity to try and beg my way into getting that one.
Mary Sues used to annoy the living daylights out of me. I guess they still do, in the way that I avoid reading them as much as I can get away with, although I will read and review if specifically requested to. I just don't actively persecute them anymore.
Part of this has probably come from taking a few lit classes in Uni, and coming to the realization that the Mary Sues have always been a part of literature, or what we would define as literature. I'm sure that there were accurate descriptions of appropriately flawed and complex characters somewhere in literature (note that I'm not an English major or anything close to that), but for the most part characters are archetypes not people.
The Lais of Marie de France always have a beautiful noblewoman and worthy knights who fall in love with them. Chaucer had his Clerk's tale about Griselda, the woman who was the Clerk's paragon of what the perfect wife is. Characterization the way that most of my friends list likes to think about it is relatively new. Archetypes have always come first.
While writing my essay for English (it's an African American Women's lit course), I was faced with comparing the deaths of two different characters from two different books. The first one was Jewel Bowen from the novel Hagar's Daughter, while the second one was Claire Kendry from the book Passing. Conceptually, are very similar. Both are biracial and both are 'passing' in the white world although Jewel is unaware of her heritage. Both are either married to or romantically involved with white men. Oh yes, and both are beautiful.
The difference between them lies in their execution. Claire Kendry is much more complex than Jewel Bowen, for every similar issue that the two women have, Claire's is better thought out. Jewel is in love with a white man and even after some contrived scenario that separates them, she marries him while he is in jail waiting to go to trial for a murder. Claire Kendry marries a white man for money, but is discontent in the white world, and longs to go back to Harlem, at the end of the book, right before her death, it's implied that she's sleeping with the black husband of the other main character and that if it weren't for the daughter that she doesn't really care about anyway, she would gladly divorce John in an instant.
When writing the paper, I had to explain why of all the women in Hagar's Daughter who were passing for white, Jewel Bowen was the one who had to die. I think in the paper itself, I explained that she was "symbolic of perfection", but "Mary Sue" is much more accurate. And since Pauline Hopkin's (the author of Hagar's Daughter couldn't very well have Jewel Bowen ending the racial divide between blacks and whites in the late 1800s single-handedly without getting censured by her audience and creating a bizarre fantasy America, nor could she just settle down with her rich, prominent white hubby whom she'd dearly in love with and have a happy ending, Jewel Bowen had to die, just of a fever while her poor husband mourns for her.
So umm... I had no clue where I was going with it. Just sort of an observation that what we call Mary Sues today have actually been around in many forms before Original Characters came into common use.
Oh! Those things we call Original Characters happen when the author is focused on the characterization as the main part of the story. If the author chooses to focus on something like social commentary, or romance, or the plot, the more the author focuses on these things the more likely it is that a character will transform into the archetype (a.k.a. the Mary Sue). Of the 4 novels we've read this semester in Litclass, only Passing focused on the characters for themselves. Hagar's Daughter tried to be commentary on racism in America while also being a conglomeration of all the famous literary genre of the day. Their Eyes were Watching God is almost a Fantasy story, although it's more of an ethnography of the rural black community with the main character almost being an avatar of Zora Neale Hurston although much less a blatant Sue than Jewel Bowen. And with The Street being a naturalist novel, Lutie Johnson is more of a test tube specimen than a fully developed character.
Okay, so none of this is making sense.
Over and out.
