For many reasons, my experience with studying abroad in London over Spring Break is one I will never be able to forget.  Not only did this trip introduce me to traveling abroad, but I learned a lot about the importance of knowing the history behind literature.  Many of the women authors we read used writing as a way to talk about current issues in England; usually, they were either trying to shed light on injustices, acknowledge the times, or make a change in their society.  I learned how beneficial it is to learn about and know the history behind literature.  By gaining this knowledge about England’s history through our walking tours or having class in one of Virginia Woolf’s homes, I now have a deeper, more enjoyable appreciation and understanding of British women writers.  Overall, I would say this trip has opened my eyes to the relationship between literature and history.

Fatou’s life is more than restricted by her employers.  She is allowed to leave the house, but she is not paid in money for her work at the  Derawals.  Instead, she is paid “for the food and water and heat she would require during her stay, as well as to cover the rent for the room she slept in.”  The narrator states that Fatou often “wondered if she herself was a slave” (Smith).  This reminded me so much of the struggle of the lower class in North and South and the lower class of South Wark in London we learned about during our Darkest Victorian London Walk.  The lower class of South Wark had similar accomadations as Fatou; their employers often paid them in vouchers for specific stores, so they couldn’t spend their money elsewhere if they wanted to.  “The Embassy of Cambodia” is set in modern times, and in comparison with the same issues of the 19th century lower class shows that worker’s rights are still a vital discussion.

I do not know much about Cambodia itself, but from what I can gather from the text and from light research, some terrible things happened within its history: “I doubt there is a man or woman among us, for example, who – upon passing the Embassy of Cambodia for the first time – did not immediately think: ‘genocide'” (Smith). I wonder what the connection of the Embassy of Cambodia is with Fatou’s life, or what exactly it is symbolic of.  Also, does anyone have any interesting insights on the symbolism of the shuttlecock?

The Blitz tour served as an appropriate backdrop for the short story Mysterious Kôr by Elizabeth Bowen that we discussed during our class session this morning.  Our tour guide brought us through the financial district of London, and showed us all the buildings surrounding St. Paul’s Cathedral that had been bombed during The Blitz.  Because of this tour, I have a deeper understanding of what the setting may have been like for the young characters Pepita, Arthur, and Callie, for this story is set during war time (WWII).  This short story was one of my favorite readings for our class, so I was intrigued by all the comments about the story itself and the information in the postscript shared by my classmates.  Excitingly, I found an old copy of one of Elizabeth Bowen’s books in a bookstore today in Bloomsbury!  Since I liked this short story so much, I will buy it tomorrow to continue reading her works.

I noticed as I started to get further into Mrs. Dalloway that the writing made me slightly uncomfortable.  There are no chapters, but a constant stream of description about one character’s thoughts and actions as a focal point to the next.  Automatically, my original thought was that this was written in stream of consciousness form, as we discussed in class; however, Mrs. Dalloway is not written in first person, which is a requirement of stream of consciousness.  Virginia Woolf wrote this novel in what is called free and direct discourse which is written in third person omniscient.  While I thought Mrs. Dalloway was somewhat hard to read at times because of its continuous action, I respect it for its unique form.

Additionally, my first judgement of Clarissa was that she was a young girl, whereas Septimus was an older man, perhaps in his fifties.  These initial judgements were wrong and quite the opposite.  We touched lightly upon this in class, but I do think it has to deal with each character’s experience in the world.  Clarissa is mostly busy hosting parties, and so she lacks any real knowledge of what goes on outside of her upper class life.  Septimus, being a war veteran, deals with having too much knowledge and experience of the horrors of the world.

Today we took a walking tour of Bloomsbury – a more upper class area of London.  Since we just toured the extreme opposite of living environments yesterday in South Wark, it was shocking to visit such a drastically different area in close proximity.  The buildings in Bloomsbury are immaculate, much taller, and built with what seems like better materials.  We walked through many parks in Bloomsbury, yet in South Wark, it seemed like there were close to zero.  By being able to physically witness these disparities through the walking tours, it is easier to identify the great gap in between the lower and upper classes in North and South that Gaskell represents.

Also, our class discussion centered around the topic of gender in North and South.  Our discussion opened my eyes to how interesting Margaret is for a female of her time period.  I particularily enjoyed talking about the “2 1/2” proposals, paying close attention to the detailed action and description of the text.  For example, when Henry Lennox proposes, he takes “sudden possession of her hand,” presumably in order to gain some kind of influence or power over her answer (Gaskell 30).

Although the material of North and South is not primarily set in London, but in the fictional town of Milton, these two towns hold many similarities. Our tour guide of the Darkest Victorian London Walking Tour led us to Southwark, one of the poorest areas of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Even though these areas have slightly alterred physically over the past century, it is easy to imagine what the poor of London actually went through with the tour guide’s knowledge of what to look for. For example, the yellow Victorian brick seen all over Southwark; this brick was extremely cheap to use to build homes and other structures. What reminded me most of North and South were the homes built in order to house the brewery’s employees. Although the brewery supplied these convenient homes – they were right across the street – the employees were restricted in many ways. The brewery would send people to check to make sure the employees were in bed at a specific time in order to ensure that they would be punctual to work. Their managers would sometimes pay them, not in cash, but in vouchers to specific stores. Workers lost many freedoms during the industial period for they were seen as hands and not humans.

Hasina’s friend in the hospital says, “These secret things will kill us.  Do you have any secret?  You want to tell to me?  I keep it safe for you!” (Ali 303).  This quote is pivotal to the novel as a whole for many of the characters keep their inner emotions and thoughts private.  Nasneen at this point in the novel is having an affair with Karim, wondering whether or not anyone – especially her husband – knows about her secret double-life with Karim.  Chanu throughout throughout the novel wants to be seen as a strong, intellectual man that has made his wealth by moving to London.  Amma, Nasneen and Hasina’s mother, is renowned as a saint in their village, yet she struggles with some unvoiced secret, which she silences by her death.  Amma’s end highlights Hasina’s friend’s statement that death is the penalty for not sharing the inner self.  I think Amma’s character is quite interesting, so if anyone has anything they would like to add or discuss, please do!