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07 sep 06 "hester Prynnes hobbie" i smell an anagram. my favorite solution is definitely "herpes snobbery thine". i can't imagine that was your original phrase, although it should have been. "nyeah nyeah, i have herpes and you don't." it can't be coincidence that colonial hester prynne would have said "herpes snobbery thine" as opposed to "your herpes snobbery", and furthermore that the scarlet letter was themed with sex and morality, ideas that frame venereal diseases and their transmission. it all comes together. hester prynne's hobby was sitting around with a big red "A" on her blouse and feeling righteous, if i recall correctly. there's a musician who takes the stage-name of 'hesta prynn' -- a rapper in the all-female and hailing from long island, tongue-in-cheek, semi-intelligent and semi-worldly answer to the "beastie boys": "northern state". supposedly the three yet-to-be members of "northern state" were in one of their apartments dreaming up a name for their band, and one of them said something like "just so long as it's not something hyper-feminist like 'hester prynne'". so obviously, that had to be somehow incorporated (i guess that the "e" at the end of "prynne" wasn't hip-hop enough). "northern state" was chosen after a parkway (upon which one drives) in long island. i have a lot of respect for northern state. furthermore, i don't mind listening to them, even though i'd probably rather be listening to something else. ok, here's what happened in the scarlet letter, by nathaniel hawthorne: hester prynne (a woman in puritanical 1600's boston), believing her husband to have died at sea, has an affair with the town preacher. this yields a baby, "pearl". the townsfolk scorn hester, because she's supposed to remain a chaste widow. as part of her punishment, hester is made to wear a big red "A" on her clothes ("A" for "adulteress"). she refuses to admit any wrongdoing, or reveal the father's identity. the scarlet letter offers criticism of moral authority, which shouldn't really be something we need to hear more of, even though we apparently do (consider pat robertson). but it was published in 1850, and sentiments of "rage against the machine" were less-common back then. the novel is also, as "northern state" implies, something of a feminist work. however, i don't think this constitutes a very deep focus. the greater theme is "there is no absolute morality, and its enforcement is tantamount to oppression". however, in the area of abrahamic sexual morality (what is "right" and "wrong" reproductive behavior), the evil-doer has historically been seen as the woman, something that dates back to eve tempting adam. we see this blame today, grossly exemplified by muslim women wearing burqas to cover their sinful flesh, so as not to seduce otherwise-righteous men into lustful fornication. considering the intersection of women, morality, and sex, we arrive at the phenomenon of "female circumcision" (or female genital cutting). this is a procedure (still condoned and performed in some parts of the world) in which the labia and/or clitoris are partially or fully removed in order to eliminate sexual sensation, thereby keeping woman-lust down to a minimum. we see the similar goal in the implimentation of routine male circumcision in the late 19th century (shortly after the scarlet letter!) of discouraging masturbation, but it didn't work out so well; studies on the effects of male circumsicion on sexual sensitivity are very inconclusive (just like penis-size surveys). furthemore, circumcised men beat off just as much as uncircumcised ones. but, it's still mostly unecessary and silly, not to mention expensive, so it's been rapidly on the decline. but getting back on topic, there's a persistent social element of controlling female sexuality with paternal force, which is well-documented in and exemplified by the scarlet letter. but reading it as only or even primarily a "feminist work" is to overlook a more fundamental point -- hawthorne's novel is about moral order, and how any sort of enforced morality damages people and hinders the progress of society and civilization. of course, this is from my perspective -- obviously a feminist theme isn't going to be as meaningful to me as a meta-ethical one. interestingly, i see that wikipedia picks 1850, the year of the scarlet letter's publish, as a turning point of sorts for the women's movement, but it doesn't mention the novel's influence on the movement or the movement's influence on the novel. it would be foolish to overlook the correlation -- i'm sure changing attitudes and hawthorne's writings were inter-causal, if perhaps not in an overwhelming way. that same college sophomore tells us that christine de pizan was, for all intents and purposes, the first feminist (ca. 1400). i bet you didn't know that (and you call yourself a feminist). i realize that the closest i came to literary criticism was in high school. for english class in community college, i did my final "research thesis" (or whatever) on marijuana legalization, a topic chosen by two other degenerate boys, one of whom pulled a factoid about processed hemp yielding more paper than trees from a "cypress hill" song (read this, even though it's written by a biased author). but isn't it funny that, 99.9% of the time, people who cite economics and ecology as reasons to cultivate and use hemp just happen to be bleary-eyed stoners? i suppose they'd say that their use puts them in intimate contact with the plant, which gets them thinking and learning about it in general. however, i'm sure very few advocates would care so much about hemp legalization if this didn't mean that they could more easily sit around smoking it all day. however, this doesn't mean that hemp doesn't have viable uses other than as an intoxicant, regardless of who's advocating it's being grown or why. i just re-wrote my paper. One acre of hemp will produce as much paper as four acres of trees. -- MC b. real (what's your source for this? what sort of primary source does this statistic come from? what kind of trees? are they being grown expressly for paper? how close together are they? does hemp being capable of producing this much paper mean it does? ie, are there some other properties of hemp or its cultivation that preclude super-efficient paper-making? etc) i'm not sure why i chose "legalize pot, man" for a paper topic -- i didn't smoke much pot at all, nor did i much care about it; it certainly wasn't an integral part of my lifestyle, a somewhat worrying status the weed attains with a lot of its users (see: "the sacred use of cannabis", under rasta). perhaps i only wrote it because this "cause" was something i didn't have to think about very hard, since it's an idealism that was endemic to my gender, age, and social location (not going to elaborate there). hester prynn is a heroine who finds her true home in the pages of thus spake zarathustra, as opposed to in those of the beauty myth. her hobby was sticking to her guns, and not taking any shit -- a "joan of arc figure" if ever there were one. |
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