The Blitz walking tour today was very interesting, and helped me to better picture the setting of “Mysterious Kôr” as well as the characters experiences. When I read the story the first time, I thought about how I’ve lost myself in fantasy worlds, just to escape every day life. I think I did this more when I still lived with my parents, which is in the middle of farmland where there are not many opportunities. The world in which I lived was very real to me, yet at times I felt like I was in a dream like state because I let myself get wrapped up in the worlds of the books I was reading or the movies I had watched. I think Bowen was able to represent that feeling really well with the characters. However, seeing some sites from wartime London, and especially seeing the photographs of the rubble, helped me to see the “real” experiences the characters felt also. Because Bowen’s readers at the time she published were already familiar with the real life of wartime London, they probably were able to see the harsh reality of the setting in a way that someone who has not eperienced it cannot. However, I do think many people can probably relate to the feelings the characters had, even if they have not had as much trauma in their lives. I think it would be interesting to read the rest of the stories from The Demon Lover now that we have discussed “Mysterious Kôr” and seen London.

WWII is the most fascinating war of the 20th century to me because it was merciless and such immense  technology was created then. This war changed the world more drastically than others before, yet writings were similar to other war-time or post-war narratives. I love Bowen’s short story “Mysterious Kôr” because it discusses the defensive mechanism humans take up when war is brought to their doorstep. I thought of Kôr as this place like Never Never Land in Peter Pan. Both stories allude to this place far from the worries people have to face everyday in London. Pepita seems to go to this place quite often, and I got the sense she stays there for long periods of time. Kôr is her fantasy world she thinks of when daydreaming and sleeping. I used to daydream a lot, but now when I catch myself doing it I try to silence my mind. I like being in the present, and for the people living back then the present was a living nightmare. Pepita’s Kôr allowed her to keep her sanity longer because I assume she didn’t want to truly face what was happening. I infer this because she didn’t want to go to the bars and be looked at by the people or even walk through the park. The outside world on a well lit London night was too much to bare, so she shuts it out and plays Kôr with Arthur. I also enjoyed how this story ends. At first, I was confused by this part: “She still lay, as she had lain, in an avid dream, of which Arthur had been the source, of which Arthur was not the end.” I understand it now as Callie going back to bed and after the conversation with Arthur she is trying to fall back asleep and thinks of Arthur, but I don’t see it as being sexual. The last three very long sentences say to me that Arthur is taking Callie to Kôr and then she explains that he gave her the idea, but he is not the escape; it is Kôr that allows her to drift away.

We had one hell of a discussion today! I think everything we talked about really sank in because of the crazy dreams I had when I got back to my room! The craft elements that were used in “Mysterious Kôr” really pulled me in. For example, I really enjoyed the use of second person in the beginning of the story because it gave me the feeling that the narrator actually experienced the story first-hand, which made it more believable and put me right there in the story. The dialogue was also great because it was as if Pepita was relaying a story about Kôr. It felt like she was using the story as a way of entertainment and escaping the darkness of London, but she was also creating an analogy between London and Kôr. “..a completely forsaken city, as high as cliffs and as white as bones, with no history.” (P. 198) I love the life she gives the moon as well. It’s as if the moon is a god and controls their behavior, which in a way it did because at night, if there was enough moonlight, then the soldiers could drop bombs easily because they could see the ground better.  “Yes, I was so glad you had the moon.” “Why? There was too much of it.” (P. 208) So in this case, making the moon a dictator makes complete sense and goes along with the context. I found it clever to describe Arthur and Pepita as a “collision in the dark” because that is exactly what it’s like when love sneaks up on you from a person you never even noticed. This story is full of beautiful lines and it is most certainly prose poetry. I’ll end with my favorite line in the story:

“From then on she felt welcome beginning to wither in her, a flower of the heart that had bloomed too early.” (P. 202)

To be frank, I wasn’t really interested in the almshouse that we saw when we were there. I just never really cared for old furniture. However, it wasn’t until I got home and thought about it and re examined the almshouse with north and south that I gained a bit more of an appreciation  for it. I instantly thought of Betty and her father and thought to myself “they most likely own a chair that they had to cut the legs off slowly to save money, just like the chair in the almshouse.”  Or something along those lines. Then I thought back to the protest, and the call for social justice in terms of the workers rights being violated. The living conditions really showed the standard of living at the time was so dreadful for the poor I got a bit more insight on the style of living in North and South.

Also, I was curious about one of the paintings in the the lecture room that we saw. I noticed that one of the paintings was of a woman who was sitting a bit solem and grey surrounded by bright colors and laughing children and other bright things, but she was hunched over and looked withdrawn. I wondered to myself as I was reviewing my pictures if this painting was of Woolf. Because I beilive it was Katy who said that Woolfs sister was the artist

Today’s discussion in Virginia Woolf’s old drawing room was truly beautiful. The park view really made it memorable! When we began talking about the way Woolf uses the passage of time in the book it reminds me of the way movies also work. The constant cuts and shots seamlessly flow together while time jumps, moves forward and stops. This type of editing wasn’t popular when invented, because the producers thought no one would understand how to compared the change in time. Though unknown to them, humans already altered time in narratives with books. Mrs. Dalloway is a great example of how time can be stopped in the narrative and it can still be understood with the usage of flashbacks to progress the story. The way this book changes points in time is my favorite part!

Going to the almshouse and the museum today really gave me more insight into the way people lived throughout the Victorian period. It’s been interesting to see the outside of houses, the communities people lived in, and hear about the living conditions, but it really was another thing entirely to be standing in a room that people lived in, surrounded by the things that they would have used in their daily lives. It really helped me to better understand many of the characters, because how we live our daily lives, I think, has a huge influence on who we are and how we view things. I think the tour and museum today was especially helpful since technology has made our lives so different than the characters we read about in Victorian literature, but on the other side of the coin our lives are also very similar. Seeing the rooms at the museum helped me to better vusualize the setting and the characters, much like I can already do with characters in literature set closer to this time period. It made the setting and struggles of the characters more tangible. And I found the information about how people lived fascinating!