2012.02.23

Overlord Minusplus Loogie

Homeplanet of Petronia

      Captain Iolia Borga of the Earth Female Sample Expedition reporting. I hope this letter finds you well. I am pleased to inform you that this is my final, completed summary of my sample of female humans and I am preparing to come home. I am glad that I resisted the temptation to study the spotted Corndoggians inhabiting Olympus Mons on planet Mars! As you are well aware I have been closely monitoring the evolution of the female population within North America (also called the United States) over the past century, with my research dating as far back as the late 19th century time-period. I am satisfied in the amount of information I have accrued during my stay. Earthlings are meticulous record keepers, so gathering sufficient information was incredibly time consuming but relatively straightforward. The decision of whether or not to relocate the female race for the harvest of their ability to procreate is still up for debate; I would like to confer with you in person about the important part male humans play in this process when I return home to Petronia. Upon arrival to Earth my colleagues spread themselves in random places around the world and I have lost communication with them. I am unsure of how this happened, but now I am all alone. This factor does not disturb me as much as I thought it would because I am confident in their ability to survive. I have also come to realize that performing solo research is my preference because it is less distracting, please make a note of it. I have learned many things during this residency. The results of my tireless study allows me to conclude that the most important beliefs held by North American women in the late 19th to early 20th century involve a way of thinking that is greater than the earthly bodies they inhabit. The strong will and intelligence of women in the United States has given them an affinity toward the preservation of a moral and ethical society, a distaste for conventional society resulting from their ability to recognize the unfair and excessively rigid roles imposed upon them by a male-dominant society, and a contradictory view of the actions and ideals performed by a heavenly being they call God, once again resisting the model of their male conterparts. Although I fear for the future success of this planet in the presence of males, I am thankful to have had the opportunity to extensively research the literary prowess of these child bearing beings. 

     Taking a chronological approach to my research seemed to be the most sensible way to start. Cavewomen drawings were impossible to understand so I jumped forward to the late 19th century, known as the Guilded Age, where Earthlings seemed more civilized. This post-Civil War time period sure was revolutionary! Shuffling through the literature via telepathy, I found an accomplished female author by the name of Sarah Orne Jewett who is considered a literary realist. When I first read the term realist I didn't fully understand it because at the time I was not 100% affluent with Earth terminology. I searched for more information and found specific examples of what realism means. Patricia Penrose elaborated on a single aspect of realism, "Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject."(Penrose "American Realism: 1865-1910"). One story of Jewetts, "A White Heron", characterized a peculiar young girl named Sylvia who contemplates a moral complex involving the fragile life of an endangered bird versus a socially acceptable relationship combined with the promise of money. This uplifting story helped me see that there are people on this Earth who abide by moral values and deeply consider preservation of helpless living creatures, unlike the remainder of the population who are more concerned with industrialization and reproduction. Thanks to authors like Jewett I have a sparkle of hope for the future of this planet.

      Anyways, while Sylvia was tending to her favorite cow, she met a young hunter in the woods. He was someone Sylvia thinks she could maybe fall in love with. He promised her money if she told him the whereabouts of a rare heron so he could kill it, stuff it, then admire his work. However, she did not think that hunting for pleasure was very attractive. Jewett writes, "Sylvia would have liked him vastly better without his gun; she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much."(Jewett "A White Heron"). By the end of the story Sylvia decides to withhold the coveted location of the heron and so the young hunter moves on, extinguishing her chances with him as a mate. Jewett explains the reasoning behind Sylvia's decision with the use of imagery to describe the heron's flight, she writes, "No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird's sake? The murmur of the pine's green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron's secret and give its life away."(Jewett, "A White Heron"). Many of Jewetts stories were filled with view points criticizing cultural norms; this story is a prime example. As I pondered the meaning behind this story, I came to the conclusion that this mature decision made by such a young girl is a reflection of Jewetts feelings towards the underestimated intelligence and unfair treatment of women during the Guilded Age. I have been follwoing the work of a college class conducting their own research on literature. They are a small group of bright individuals who have a firm grasp on a range of texts, and their interpretations parallel my own. One student from this class wrote, "Reading this story as a parable wherein every character and action is analogous to society and the relationships between men and women at the turn of the century reveals a great deal about Jewett’s own life and her feelings toward gender and sex roles."(Daniel Erstad "Jewett"). Jewett focused on the natural ability of women to rise above suffocating archetypes to prove that they were capable of complex decision making and resisting temptations. These students aren't the only ones who saw a deeper meaning to this story. The author of a short biography about Jewett briefed the significant cultural reference behind "A White Heron", she writes,  "A story of female initiation (or, actually, anti-initiation), it offers a highly critical perspective on heterosexual romantic love and attraction in modern Western culture."(Ammons "Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)"). 

     As I ventured forth in time, my search for women who embodied a unique perspective of womanhood in North America revealed a remarkable poet named Anne Sexton. Sexton was associated with a group of male writers in the 1950's collectively known as The Beat Generation. Individually they were referred to as a Beatnick. However, she was not a typical Beatnick because her writing was from the female perspective and was considered "confessional poetry" (Academy of American Poets "A Breif Guide to Confessional Poetry"). Sitting in this tiny ship I telepathically shuffled through countless descriptions of family life in the 1950's. It became obvious that on a superficial level Anne had everything a woman in this era could want. She was born wealthy, grew up near the ocean and recognizing her natural ability to attract attention she became a model. However, her life was peppered with abuse, rejection and death. A nagging premonition that she was meant to live her life in a different way set Sexton apart from the norm. In an attempt to conform to her expected role as a woman, she married and produced two offspring. I was not surprised to learn that motherhood caused Sexton to become terribly depressed. She could not put up with the charade for long; eventually divorcing her husband because she was having extramarital affairs. Alongside her struggle with mental illness, she developed a disease known as alcoholism. These factors caused her to become suicidal and estranged from almost every person in her life, including her children. These unfortunate events proved to be the final straw in Sextons life because in October 1974 she ended her own life by poisoning herself with carbon monoxide in the garage of her coastal city home. I was intrigued by the tragedy of her life because even though she started off with everything, the "ideal" lifestyle of the 1950's wasn't well suited for her intellectual appetite and it drove her mad. I think she was a glaring example for the trials that many women were facing in this time. 

      Sextons poetry was something that her readers could understand on a very emotional level. American women in any social bracket could relate because their societal role was very unforgiving as they dealt with stifling oppression from their male domineers. Describing her as "Supreme fiction" (Linda Wagner-Martin "Anne Sextons Life") seemed to be a good way to summarize her body of work. After reading "Her Kind" I was able to construct a deeper understanding to the term confessional poetry. Expanding on Jewetts technique of using the female persona to expose discrepancies between genders, Sextons poem was written to reflect her intense, personal struggles with being a woman in such an unforgiving patriarchal society. Although I believe Sexton was referring to herself in this poem, a student conducting his own research on the subject shed light on a different point of view which hadn't previously occurred to me. He writes, "This woman that Sexton related herself to was in a troubled state of mind, an outcast, a menace of society."(Andrew Berg " 'Her Kind' by Anne Sexton"). His interpretation of the poem stated that Sexton was first referring to a separate woman to help describe her personal despair. This notion is very similar to my thought that Sexton's work could chronicle the life of any woman in her time. Also, because she repeats the same line at the end of each stanza, I can see why Berg would think that she was relating to someone and not initially talking about herself. An example of this repetition can be seen at the end of each stanza of "Her Kind":

"lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind/A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind." (ll. 5-7)

"A woman like that is misunderstood/I have been her kind." (ll. 13-14)

"A woman like that is not ashamed to die/I have been her kind." (ll. 20-21)

Sexton was a confessional poet, so I am inclined to stand by my idea that she is referring to herself in the third person in this poem to express her deeply personal and tumultuous relationship with her own demons. She may have referred these "demons" as another woman to make the experience of publishing it more bearable.

   From the Guilded Age to the Beat Generation I found countless references to God, but not one author I could find had such a unique perspective like Mary Flannery O'Connor. She was a devout Catholic, born and raised in the southern region of the United States; a culture that collectively practiced Roman Catholicism very seriously. At first, I assumed she would write about how much she loved God and how great he is, but a biographer who wrote about O'Connor in the 1960's described her work more accurately, "Socially, her context was the Bible Belt, and she had a penetrating eye for its grotesqueries --- the tent revivals, the child evangelists, the sawdust salvations, and the highway admonitions to "repent or burn in hell." She had no illusions about the South being Christ-centered, but she did find it "Christ-haunted."( Collier "O'Connor Country"). I was intrigued. After reading the biographies and a few stories including "A Good Man is Hard to Find", I was able to fully comprehend the basis of these observations. I was very curious to see what the college class thought about it, so I telepathically shuffled through all of their entries. I found a statement made by a student born in the South who articulately expressed his admiration for O'Connor, he wrote, "That a woman, who by all accounts, was as kind and gentle as could be was able to explore the darkest corners of human nature in order to for the best part of us to shine ever brighter is one of the great literary achievements in my opinion."(Lopez "O'Connor and the Grotesque"). I searched for pictures of O'Connor for amusement because I expected to find pictures of a mean, scowling old lady. I was shocked when I saw pictures of O'Connor because she looked like a sweet, innocent young girl. I came to thouroughly enjoy her work, as Luis Lopez did, with the thought of this sweet woman whose work would be collectively described as haunted and grotesque.  

     The literary work she produced was memorable to say the least. Like Anne Sexton, O'Connor explored vivid and often disturbing imagery to send her words straight through the hearts of her readers making her work seem realistic yet dark and disturbing. A biographer observed this trait writing, "it is funny but also horrifying."(Clark "Flannery O'Connor") and she has also been described by her peers as "Grotesque, Catholic, Southern"(Clark "Flannery O'Connor"). After reading a few O' Connor stories, I feel it's appropriate to say that she felt a strong need for God to deal out overdue death sentences to deserving people. To make the reader understand her reasoning behind the conclusions of her stories, O'Connor was meticulous in characterizing the details about her main characters appearance, behavior and dialogue to foreshadow their ironic demise. These details are important and are used throughout her stories. For example, she hinted at the unexpected murder of a little old lady by writing, "the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady."(O'Connor "A Good Man is Hard to Find"). This woman died in her ornate garb by the specific person she intended to avoid in the beginning of the story. By the end of the story the elder is terrified, babbling to her reaper about Jesus. It is a grotesque and horrifying way to kill a helpless character and O'Connor does it to the extreme, but that is a big reason why I like her. 

      The story "Everything That Rises Must Converge" is set in a time where segregation of black Americans and the resulting prejudice against them was the social norm. The son, named Julian, is in favor of the recent de-segregation and accepts African Americans as equal people, but feels increasingly averse to his mothers unreasonable racism. In the climax of his frustration he sees an opportunity to point out his mothers flaw, as O'Connor writes, "The vision of the two hats, identical, [ hats worn by his white mother and a black woman ] broke upon him with the radiance of a brilliant sunrise. His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his mother such a lesson. He gave a loud chuckle so that she would look at him and see that he saw. She turned her eyes on him slowly. The blue in them seemed to have turned a bruised purple. For a moment he had an uncomfortable sense of her innocence, but it lasted only a second before principle rescued him. Justice entitled him to laugh. His grin hardened until it said to her as plainly as if he were saying aloud: Your punishment exactly fits your pettiness. This should teach you a permanent lesson." (O'Connor "Everything That Rises Must Converge"). This is an example of how O'Connors vision of the South being "Christ Haunted" appeared in her writing, saying that Fate (or God) appeared on a bus and was providing "justice" to the African-American woman by teaching his Mother a lesson about harboring racism. Blinded by her detestable bigotry, she insulted this African-American woman who proved to be superior in strength and morals. I am not exactly sure what happens at the end (the Mother was impaired by a stroke or a heart attack) but from the description of her actions before collapsing I can assume that she died. Mother learns the permanent lesson that her son was trying to convey, and the process of this education costs her the ultimate price. I think that O'Connor felt many Americans could use a permanent lesson. She was a woman who had a strong point of view that can be translated over many situations. 

     Women of the United States are truly a rare breed of human. They have incredibly complex thoughts and emotions. I would love to have them come to Petronia to help save our race from extinction, but as I mentioned before this topic is better discussed in person. I've got a lot of explaining to do!

See you soon, 

Captain Iolia Borga (Lacey McCormick)

Earth Female Sample Expedition