Option 2
Tom Standage, “How Commonplace Books Were like Tumblr and Pinterest,” tomstandage.com, May 5, 2013, https://tomstandage.wordpress.com[T]he practice of maintaining a commonplace book and exchanging texts with others also served as a form of self-definition: which poems or aphorisms you chose to copy into your book or to pass on to your correspondents said a lot about you, and the book as a whole was a reflection of your character and personality.
Abstract
As I reflect on my Commonplace Book entries throughout the semester, I begin to notice patterns in my thinking. And therein, patterns that reflect curiosities and interests of mine. In this way, my Commonplace Book has become a reflection of myself, or perhaps a definition of myself – to the extent that my academic curiosities define who I am.
As follows, this page will consider a common theme within my Commonplace Book. This concept is insecurity. Specifically, societal insecurity about changing norms and standards vis-à-vis race, class, and gender.
Consequently, this page will be a three-part exploration into how insecurity was a common theme in my CPB and QSQ entries. First, by focusing on my commonplacing; secondly, by synthesizing and applying this theme to QSQ entries; and finally, the ensuing opportunities for further inquiry.
Part 1: Commonplacing
Standage expresses that the practice of keeping a commonplace book is a form of self-definition: a reflection of character and personality. While I agree to a certain extent, Standage is wrong in assuming that a commonplace book can be a comprehensive and full description of one’s character. I do think, however, that it can offer a lens into a strong interest or area of fascination. This area of interest, for me, seemed to be societal insecurity.
When first thinking about monstrosity, I was grabbed by the course theme of what creates a monster? At first, I understood this question to mean what conditions create a person to become monstrous. But in reading Cohen’s seven theses, more specifically, Thesis 1: The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body, I began to think of that question differently. Instead of what conditions make the individual monstrous, I began to ask what social conditions make the perception of monstrosity. In other words, “what creates a monster” is as much about external perception as it is internal characteristics.
This line of inquiry was revealed to me, in part, by reflecting on my commonplace book entries. Some, in particular, where I thought this theme to be present was in CPB 8, 9, and 11. These entries were focused around The Beetle and Dracula. These reveal the common thread of societal anxiety and fear – specifically around ethnic diversity and changing gender norms.
In CPB 8 and 9, I explore the connection between Richard Marsh’s The Beetle, and the French and English colonization of Egypt. In these posts, I present pictures of Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt; and Britain’s colonization of Egypt. In CPB 9, I emphasize the notion of Egyptian culture as savage, and how Britain felt the need to dominate Egyptian men, and act as a savior for Egyptian women. From this, one can infer the English perception of Egyptian men as dangerous, thus the reason to be scared of their potential “invasion” of British society. And so by contextualizing The Beetle – that is, what was happening in the world during the late 19th century, it becomes clear where the anxiety would be coming from: the bleeding over of Egyptian culture into the English sphere.
Therein, when put in context of imperialism and colonialism, it is easier to re-contextualize the monster, and extrapolate to form an understanding of larger social implications. In other words, how the beetle reflects an insecurity of Egyptian influence on British culture.
Another commonplace book entry that reflects social anxieties is CPB 11, where I explore the “new woman” as revealed and discussed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In doing so, I looked at texts from Sara Louise Fatemi Cristin, who wrote, Subversive Sexuality and the Decline of British Society: The Demonization of the Victorian New Woman in Dracula, and Carol Senf’s Dracula: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman. Discussed in Cristin’s piece is how the new woman is an attack on social and domestic constructs of marriage and family. This is done by aligning sexuality with moral degeneration. Carol, on the other hand, theorizes how the more realistic description of a liberated woman actually makes the character, Lucy, into a heroine.
As one can likely notice, many of my commonplace book entries were dominated by pictures and screenshots of textual excerpts. In this way, my commonplace book was an effort to visually conceptualizing the conditions of what might be lending to social insecurity. This allowed me to read the novels with a better picture of what the authors might have been living, and moreover, what the readers might have been living also.
Conclusively, and in reflecting on my commonplace book entries, I have noticed reconceptualization of monsters as reflections of social fears and anxieties.
Part 2: Synthesizing and Applying
This idea of social insecurity was present in many of my QSQ entries – specifically, QSQ 1, 2, and 11.
In QSQ 1 and 2, I discuss the creation of monsters as embodiments of society, but also how they’re intentionally ambiguous and hard to define. In other words, how monsters are reflections of real social phenomena, but simultaneously obscure and indistinct. In this way, there is more strength in the claim that a monster’s body is meant to be a cultural body. This is because it is intentionally ill-defined so that each reader can construct the monster through their own anxieties, thus making the fear realer and threatening.
QSQ 2 expands on this common thread of inquiry as I explore the concept of Derrida’s deconstruction theory – which is how the meaning of a given work is unstable because it could have multiple or alternate meanings/interpretations. This applies to the QSQ’s conversation of ambiguous monsters by substantiating the theory of differential interpretation of texts. And while Derrida explores this concept as a negative form of academia, novelists can use it to create more colorful work.
In QSQ 11, I focus on the feminine description of monstrosity. In synthesizing this with CPB 11, the scholarship about changing gender roles and anxiety in Dracula can be expanded to the sexualization of female monsters. This is because of the purely facial deformation of feminine monsters, but the seemingly preserved and unchanged physique of female characters. Or, in the case of Bertha, while the face is “savage” there is still an emphasis of enlarged lips, and a description of the brow and eyes.
Part 3: Further Inquiry
In final consideration, this book has inspired an inquiry of further research and reading about what societal insecurity are present today. As a political science major, I have recently done some surface examination of recent trends towards chauvinism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and the consequent demagoguery. This discussion has revealed itself in contemporary debates around immigration, the value (or lack-thereof) of international alliances and agreements, and the use of race-baiting or scapegoating. When relating this to discussions about changing gender norms and ethnic diversification, it becomes clear that fears and anxieties that were present over a hundred years ago persist today.
