Nightmares

It’s a friday night and it feels like you might be dreaming, but it’s not the kind of dream in which you know you’re dreaming and can do whatever you want but the kind of dream that just hasn’t turned into a nightmare yet. And it rains, not a little nor a lot, and you’re kind of tipsy but not drunk, and you’re trying to cross a street with a couple of lost tourists cramped under a small umbrella when a bus goes by, and it’s not one of the shiny new ones nor one of the cool old ones, just a red double decker trying to live up to its own standards. And a bike has been carelessly chained to a streetlight that gives off a loud kind of yellow light, and neither of the bike’s tires have been stolen yet but you wonder how long it will be. You get on a bus and it’s full of drunk people who are neither teenagers nor adults and they are not going home, because even though the night isn’t young anymore it still isn’t over. And the rain causes fog on the windows so you see nothing but you know exactly what life is passing you by.

You doze off on the bus but when you close your eyes all you see is a vacant street with a lone streetlight and even though there are no clouds in the sky and the night is dark, there are no stars and no moon, just darkness and buildings and a rustling sound in the distance and you know it’s just the sound of the bus. And you look up and you see a pair of legs visible in the light and nothing more and you’re startled by the sight and open your eyes but you decide that your slumber was just disturbed by the loud young people in the back of the bus.

You’re walking on a busy street and it’s midnight and it’s foggy and wet and you wish the streetlights were blue and not yellow, and you want to put your headphones in but you don’t because you want to be aware of your surroundings for the sake of your safety, when a man dressed in leather smoking a cigarette in front of a pub whistles behind you and asks where you’re going, why don’t you stop for a drink, what’s the matter with you cunt fucking bitch and then spits in your direction, you wish you hadn’t heard any of it. And you’re surrounded by the world and its darkness and wetness and cold light and traffic with its beeping and screeching and roaring and people with their laughter and shouting when you turn a corner and suddenly you’re not in the world anymore.

It’s quiet, so very quiet. The sky is a great dark blanket over the world and it has stopped raining and the streetlights are a soothing kind of blue. A gentle gust of wind feels chilly on your skin and your blood feels warm underneath. The stillness sends a chill down your spine but you’re not cold anymore. You’re warm. It’s a warmth you can only feel under your skin but the air you breathe is still the same cold air. Your heart is beating faster and your blood is running thicker. There’s a buzzing in your ears and it’s the only sound you can hear until the world starts intruding at the end of the street where you first turned a corner. The world is represented by a man on a motorcycle and for a minute that feels like an hour you think it might be the man from the pub and you wonder what he will do if it is. You feel like you’ve insulted his being by not giving him an answer even though his question wasn’t really a question. You suddenly feel very hot and you start sweating. You wonder if he might even be following you because you disregarded his speech. The buzzing in your ear grows louder and louder. Any minute now the man on the motorcycle will ascend the crescent and see you standing on the sidewalk. You think maybe you should hide, maybe you should knock on a nearby door or jump behind a fence and maybe you should cross the street and try not to be seen under a broken streetlight on the other side but it’s too late. You know that no matter what you do he’s going to see you and you freeze on the spot and you’re sweating and shivering and breathing heavily and the buzzing grows louder and louder and you’re exposed to the world when the man on the motorcycle sees you and just when he catches you you’re awoken by the loud young people as they get off the bus.

You realize that you have already passed your stop so you get off as well. The street is busy and it’s midnight and it’s raining and you don’t mind the streetlights being the cold kind of yellow anymore because you know that even if they were blue it would make no difference. You see a crowd of people standing in front of a pub ahead and you cross the street so you can pass unnoticed. There is no man in motorcyclist’s clothing in front of the pub, just a group of men in suits smoking cigars and laughing at some joke. The world is loud and bright but when you turn a corner you notice that it has stopped raining. You look up in the sky to make sure that there are stars and even though you see only three because it’s a cloudy night, you accept it as evidence.

The street is quiet and the streetlights are blue. A gentle gust of wind feels chilly on your skin and your blood feels warm underneath. The stillness sends a chill down your spine but you’re not cold anymore. You feel warm under your skin but the air you breathe is still the same cold air. Your heart is beating faster and there’s a buzzing in your ears. You decide to walk on the other side of the road to take advantage of the broken streetlight if you should need to hide but you find that it’s not broken. Just when you’re under the streetlight that was broken in the dream you hear a vehicle ascending the crescent and you wonder if it might be the man. You suddenly feel very hot and start sweating. The buzzing in your ear grows louder. You wonder if you should hide, just in case, but it’s too late. You know that no matter what you do he’s going to see you and you freeze on the spot and you’re sweating and shivering and breathing heavily and the buzzing grows louder and louder and you’re exposed to the world when a blue Volkswagen passes you by and the buzzing goes silent.
And even though it may not have been the man from the dream, even though he did not stop, even though he did not come for you, even though maybe he did not even see you there, and even though the streetlights are blue they are cold and the wind blows into your face, carrying screeching and beeping and laughter from the main street and you think you might have imagined the buzzing the whole time.

And you get home and you go to bed and you’re lying awake and you’re painfully aware of the world outside your window because everything in your being says that you should be asleep: the aggressive yellow streetlight pushing through the curtains; the suddenly obvious ticking of a clock somewhere; and someone’s slow, deep breathing beside you. And yet you know that even if you were asleep you would feel the same and you might as well be sleeping for all you know. And when at last you fall asleep you find that you have been caught by the man and he has tied you up in a chamber somewhere deep beneath the city. And when he approaches you with a dagger in his hand you do not see his face, you do not understand why nor do you question it, you just accept that you are going to die and you stare at the dagger as the man cuts your wrists and then leaves you there to bleed out in a chamber far below the city. And you know that you could be happy if you could stop debating whether to fall asleep and never wake again or continue living your life knowing that even when you have the kind of dream in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming it just hasn’t turned into a nightmare yet.

The "Grandness" of Sarah Grand

A glimpse on  the “Grandness” of Sarah Grand 

A glimpse on  the “Grandness” of Sarah Grand

“Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them, than upon what they make us see in ourselves” 

― Sarah Grand 

The most prominent female writers of the nineteenth century are often said to be , Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Christina Rossetti. Eliot’s Middlemarch (1874) sold over 10,000 copies in six months and one of the other notable things was her ability to enlighten readers with her ideas and perspectives on old, rigid  traditions that particularly impacted the lives of women in the Victorian era. Charlotte Bronte was known for her courageous manners which challenged societal norms in her own right and Rossetti too was an influential figure, acknowledging that her talents extended way beyond her modelling abilities that you might have come across in the paintings of the “Pre-Raphalites” she also wrote a wide range of poetry, ,’A Dirge’  was cited by  J.K Rowling in  The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013). Now, it is presumable then that it isn’t surprising after all that Bronte, Elliot and Rossetti are representative of the “famous cultural icons of the nineteenth-century” ideology.  I want to, however, draw attention to a woman whose work was just as influential, and whose voice challenged the very conventions that were reflective ofVictorian society .

If you pick up any one of Grand’s novels, it wouldn’t take long to realise that she was onto something new and original. Amongst her many new themes, one of her prominent ones was the representation of women in the Victorian society. The construction of female characters in her novels wasn’t simply an act of mirroring the attributes of the “ideal” Victorian woman and that is something you’d find in works of Elizabeth Gaskell for instance where the female character is almost, always emotionally insecure and largely dependent on her husband. This is just one aspect that Grand saw as problematic. In terms of her method in characterisation, Grand’s first novel, Ideala (1888) was perhaps considered one of the most “notorious” novels in which Grand positions the protagonist, Ideala as the superior sex, domineering and outspoken, quite in polar opposites from the “Angel in the house” ideology. But more than it being simply deemed “notorious,” the novel is a testament of  Grand’s intellect.Through her narrative, Ideala questions social and economic issues that impeded the lives of women. Ideala speaks out against biased marriage laws, asks for reforms, writes poetry and even visits China all of which was considered unconventional for a woman of her time. In The Heavenly Twins (1893) she addresses the syphilis epidemic that caused a spur of debates surrounding the issues of double standards between sexes in which women were seen as the perpetrators of the disease. Again in this novel, Grand addresses the problem but does it in a distinct manner she offers an empathetic approach in response to these irrational stereotypes. She claims that if women were allowed sexual education,  they would be aware of how the contraction of the disease occurs i.e through her husband’s sexual activities.

As an advocate, Grand was responsible for the “New Woman” ideal. What the picture on the left shows is that gender roles were now reversed and women were no longer accepting to “orders” from their husbands. This is something that Grand should be credited for. Like many ‘New Women’, Grand was a= keen cyclist which later became a popular mode of commute for women The bicycle was also a symbolic representation of freedom.  In 1900-1910 there was around 10 million bikes on the road, adding to the course of female emancipation.

Looking into  Grand’s work today gives us an opportunity to re-consider the issue of gender inequality in a broader context. Importantly, it enables us to learn from her courage which has now given us women, a hundred years on a much more reformed position in society.

References

Driscoll, W., 2009. The Metaphor of Syphilis in Grand’s Heavenly Twins. NINETEENTH-CENTURY GENDER STUDIES, [e-journal] 5(1). Available through: < http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue51/New%20PDFs/NCGS%20Journal%20Issue%205.1%20-%20The%20Metaphor%20of%20Syphilis%20in%20Grand_s%20Heavenly%20Twins%20%20-%20William%20Driscoll.pdf> [Accessed  23rd January 2015].

Nicol, J., 2014. Madame Sarah Grand and the General Illustrated. Available at: <fwsablog.org.uk >

[Accessed  23rd January 2015].

Trouble in suburbia - narratives of suburbia in prose fiction and film

    

Small town suburbia is a strange old place and a place that many of us by our late teens and early twenties long to leave behind what with its seemingly ordinary way of life, limited opportunities and  escape  the frequent reminiscences of nearly always the one person who keeps reminding you of the cringe worthy time that you messed up your lines in a school play you can barely remember or when your six year old self thought walking around town in a Spiderman costume was a perfectly normal way of spending a Saturday afternoon! This sense of adventure during our late teens and early twenties often attracts us away from the suburbia of our childhoods to the bright lights of new places, allure of the city or the exciting enchantment of foreign destinations but somehow paradoxically a decade or so later the cycle for many of us comes strangely full circle when as we settle down and start families of our own, we somehow again find ourselves subscribing back into the same old small town way of life we not so long ago vowed to leave behind forever.

The film and prose narratives of suburbia including Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious and Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl strongly contrast with the often idyllic images our minds evoke of suburbia with its suburban tree lined streets where Mums push prams and chat on the street corner whilst Dad washes the car on a Sunday, where children play happily till dusk and where the rising smoke of backyard barbecues lingers in the lazy summer haze. Instead they often depict suburbia in a highly sinister light where small suburban towns are rocked and curtains twitch to the news of dark secrets suffused with tragedy, murder, sex and scandal.
 

Richard Yates sensational 1961 novel  Revolutionary Road brought to the big screen in the 2008 film directed by Sam Mendes and starring the winning pairing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet perhaps critiques the soulless suburbs the most out of the three. It charts the tale of 1950s married couple Frank and April Wheeler who move from New York to 115 Revolutionary Road in sleepy Connecticut suburbia upon the pregnancy of their first child and who seem on the surface at least to be the perfect all American couple who are reasonably well off, good looking, have two children and are very much living the middle class American Dream. This though as we find out is just a façade when April, realising her dreams of becoming an actress and anything more than a suburban housewife to be futile in small town Connecticut begins to feel trapped by the repressing confines of suburban domesticity and longs to emigrate to Paris where she idealistically believes herself and Frank also bored out of his mind with his job in New York as a marketing man at Knox Machines, could perhaps discover a new life and find themselves again away from the stultifying influences of suburbia.

These dreams and new sense of optimism are however abruptly shattered when the couple’s third child is conceived and Frank begins to find to new enthusiasm in his job as both Frank and April stray from their marriage, with Frank engaging in an adulterous affair with his city office colleague Maureen and April has a one night stand with her dull suburban neighbour Shep Campbell as their marriage begins to fall apart and Frank begins to put pressure on April to seek psychiatric help in regards to her troubled childhood and want of an abortion.  

A central theme in the novel and indeed Peyton Place is very much the need for conformity in 1940s and 1950s Middle America and how this often damages the individuals caught up in trying to conform to societal expectations. Yates himself described the book as ‘an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price…’ When you look at those in Revolutionary Road from Frank and April, the Campbell neighbours to Revolutionary Road’s busy body Mrs Givings, that despite all attempting to keep up appearances suffer from their own troubles and inner turmoil that often spill out into public situations.

 My favourite and I think most interesting character in the book though is John Givings who despite being labelled as clinically ‘insane’ is the only one ironically to comprehend the Wheeler’s dreams of emigration to Paris and their dislike at suburbia’s constant desire for conformity. Yates’ novel though ends with a chilling and tragic of endings when April overcome with the state of her life attempts to self- abort her child in the family bathtub whilst Frank is at work only to die from the blood loss leaving Frank and their two children to pick up the pieces of their lives whilst we the reader and viewer are left with a fated image of the American Dream and the resonating tragic fate of those who dared to dream beyond suburbia’s streets.

“It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares anymore; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity"  

 

 

Peyton Place is another one of those New England towns where the red white and blue flag flutters and seemingly all is idyllic until you look beyond the surface where issues of  rape , desire, murder, shame, suicide and moral hypocrisy lie at the heart of this picture postcard community. Metalious’ controversial 1956 novel and Mark Robson’s 1957 film adaptation of the book set from 1937 onwards deals with the dark and ugly secrets the residents of this small town hide depicted through three main female characters.

Constance Mackenzie (Lana Turner) who runs the local dress shop and who beneath her prudish prim and properness feels deeply lonely, sexually repressed and all the while under the auspices of being a widow is hiding the taboo of her illegitimate daughter Allison who she conceived through an extra-marital affair with a married New York man who ran an exotic cloth shop. Allison (Diane Varsi)  meanwhile despite her high achieving and bookish nature is quite the opposite to her mother being very much a dreamer, caring and sensitive with dreams of becoming a writer yet who increasingly feels as she nears the end of high school the repressive expectations of Peyton Place on her own shoulders as she starts a flirtatious friendship with the shy Norman only for both of them to be wrongly accused of skinny dipping and having sex at a local beauty spot by a town busybody. Selena Cross (Hope Lange) is best friends with Allison but is from a poor ‘Shacks’ family and begs the town doctor for a secret abortion after being made pregnant when her alcoholic stepfather Lucas, who is later forced out of town violently rapes her.  The fallout from this series of events is catastrophic as her own mother Nellie wracked with shame and guilt hangs herself and Selena upon the later return of Lucas from the Navy during WW2 murders her stepfather and buries him under the sheep pen.

Similarly to Revolutionary Road you see the seductiveness of suburbia fall away as the plot thickens with the sordid secrets of the town’s inhabitants. Constance is forced to admit after calling Allison a bastard in a fit of rage over her afternoon with Norman that she had never married Allison’s father and that he was already a married man. Allison who is deeply affected by the revelation and shocking discovery of Nellies suicide withdraws from her mother as the rift between them deepens and flees to New York where she becomes a successful magazine writer away from the salacious gossip of Peyton Place. Allison returns to the small town when she attends the trial of Selena, this is a pivotal moment in the book as the town’s residents only just coming to terms with the loss of some its young men during WW2 is forced to face up to its prejudices and double standards that are deep rooted in the community through an unlikely source and figure of authority.  This moment of hard truths occurs when Dr Swain the doctor who carried out Selena’s abortion gives evidence at her trial for murdering Lucas when he states how the town have  ‘become prisoners of our own gossip’ and that Selena was driven to kill through fear of both her stepfather and how the community she lived in would react. At the book’s close as Selena gets acquitted and as Allison reconciles with her mother and Constance finally lets herself fall in love you get a sense that the town although perhaps not entirely changed has begun to realise the flaws of narrow minded small town suburbia. 

 

 Gillian Flynn’s disturbing and intensely dark domestic noir thriller Gone Girl is another and more contemporary insight into the dark side of suburbia. For anyone who hasn’t read the novel or seen David Fincher’s film that starred Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris, it follows a couple Nick and Amy who upon both losing their writing jobs in the recession have moved from New York to the small town Midwest and present to the world a seemingly blissful marriage however all is not well behind closed doors. Amy loved her life as a magazine quiz writer in New York and can’t stand small town suburbia she and her husband have ended up in, Amy then mysteriously disappears on the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary leading to Nick as her husband and in a common parallel to many real life cases ends up being put in the spotlight as a sociopathic prime suspect by the police and media. 

What then follows is a deeply disturbing narrative as the dysfunctional nature of both main characters and their unhappy marriage is unravelled as Nick is revealed to have been having an affair whilst Amy plays psychological mind games with Nick by faking her own death and attempting to manipulatively implicate Nick by planting evidence against him including a completely fake set of diary entries where she states that she fears her husband in a clear attempt to frame him for her ‘death.’ Flynn’s novel exceeds in keeping us gripped as we the reader as well as the police and the media often do naturally in such cases of suburban disappearance and suspected murder believe more willingly Amy’s depiction of the dysfunctional relationship as a woman until it is revealed both are unreliable narrators as the story takes a further dark turn of events. Amy approaches her obsessive ex-boyfriend Desi in an attempt to hide herself but later murders him as he becomes possessive of her, then only to return to her husband claiming she had been kidnapped. The film and novels conclusion is perhaps the most disturbing however as despite Nick’s threats to leave Amy and the writing of a memoir exposing her deceit, he is forced to fake his love for her in the public eye and continues to be manipulated by Amy as she falls pregnant and forces him to keep up in an unsettling lack of closure the appearance of a happy marriage for the sake of his child as both continue to live a lie in the heart of Midwestern suburbia.

Suburbia is a place we will all probably encounter in our lives but despite the ordinary image its ability to intrigue writers and filmmakers alike with the dysfunctional human relationships, psychological and emotional turmoil contained behind suburbia’s  closed doors will I think always continue to capture interest and the imagination.

The ignored issues within the freedom of speech debate

Freedom of speech has become both a contentious and tedious subject of media discussion, political debate and societal cherry-picking. In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, we must evaluate what has been done since then which has also breached the basic principle of an ever-important civil liberty. The fact that some violations of freedom of speech have slipped by, almost entirely unheard of, is unsettlingly indicative of a current state of, not only pervasive anti-Muslim scapegoating, but of political and corporate interests and their hegemony over heard and unheard voices.

 

Allow me to elucidate: the awfully tragic murder of people, including cartoonists, journalists, a manual labourer and two police officers, drew international attention within minutes after it happened. It blew up on social media and was quickly grabbed up by news media platforms around the world. It was rightly condemned for its ruthlessness and lack of humanity, and criticised as an unnecessary attack on a magazine which simply demonstrated its freedom to satirise beliefs and ideas, as identified by legislation on civil liberties.

 

The "terrorist" label was attributed almost too easily. A huge amount of shootings and attacks of such sanguinary nature have been perpetrated worldwide, but only a handful have had the "privilege" of being referred to as terrorist attacks. In the '80s it was the Provisional "Provo" Irish Republican Army (IRA). The anarchist movement in some of its more extreme forms has had its own history of terror attacks. But post-9/11, the only terror attacks we ever hear of are those acted out by Muslims.

 

The delirium of many who make claim to the freedom to speak and express oneself, including the far-right (who, ironically, were also the subject of Charlie Hebdo's satire) can only be termed opportunism. Such opportunism seems to have benefited a recent breach of liberty - I speak now of Peter Oborne's resignation from the Daily Telegraph. In refusal to bow down to the inhibition on publicising the HSBC tax avoidance schemes (HSBC being an advertiser for the Telegraph), Oborne's actions highlighted an epitome of hypocrisy over the free speech debate: not even Western press institutions allow its journalists to express ideas freely. The safeguarding of corporate-affiliations and advertisers are prioritised over principle.

 

Time and time again Oborne has shown some principle as a journalist, providing well-balanced and articulate comments on the occupation of Palestine by Israel, reporting on the devastating impacts of the Iraq war, and, needless to say, vociferously coming out in defence of a freeing up of the press, with no vested interests in big companies and the alleviation of scandals causing detriment to their Public Relations departments.

 

One of the most insidious problems within the media is its silence on these issues. But even more guilty are those of us who are not interested enough to be informed about them. Take libel for instance, a piece of UK legislation strongly embedded in our system which allows one individual to take another individual to court for perceived "written slander". In the last year alone, the amount of libel cases prompted by traditional media rose from 20 to 37 (an increase of 85%), whilst social media-related libel suits skyrocketed by 300%. Some of these cases included trivial accusations, only furthering the argument that libel is a rich man's game. But when it comes to sincere (albeit sardonic) reporting on public figures from another satirical magazine such as Private Eye, the resort to defamation allegations is all too common. It is not unlikely that many people might not know that they could be taken to court for criticising someone with enough bob in their pocket to do so.

 

Of course I don't want you to regard this as a comparison to the means of reacting to freedom of speech which was taken up by the French-Algerian brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. Resorting to violence is never an acceptable response to being offended. We do have the right to offend in our portrayal of other people's ideas just as they have the right to do so with us. The real aim of freedom of speech should be to create a dialogue, and the Charlie Hebdo massacre is too obvious a contravention of this freedom.

 

But whilst I don't compare the issue of the silencing of people within the media - or of the lucrative libel game which often used to impinge on individuals' rights to freely criticise public figures - to the attacks in Paris, I do stress their importance and relevance to us as a society now more than ever. We are being fooled by those that try to warp our consciousness and use animosity as a tool. It makes us forget or lose sight of some of the most active enemies of free speech.

 

The English Society debated the issue of free speech in light of the Charlie Hebdo attacks on 19/01/2015. As a Society, we endeavour to uphold the rights of all writers and publishers to freely publish content as a fundamental civil liberty and human right. No idea or belief, whether religious political or philosophical (etc), should be exempted from either frivolous satire or sensible scrutiny.