Having completed the second half of the book, I now feel that I have a somewhat different set of opinions and thoughts about the novel as a whole, especially when it comes to Ruiz de Burton's writing style. As I believe we have established in class this is a novel criticizes the aspects of class, race, religion and gender in 18th century American life.
First off, being aware of how highly critical this novel is, let's ask the important question of; Is this criticism really valid and sufficient? I strongly believe that this is fundamental to the way we judge the aspects of the novel. We must take into consideration who the target audience is. We, being young, generally liberal Canadians in the current time period, now apply very liberal approaches to society as a whole. For example, if you were a Nazi in Germany during the holocaust, you wouldn't think "I'm such an awful person, what on earth am I doing?" My point being, it is almost certain that if an American, in the 18th century read this novel, it would probably just seem like a sad story with a happy ending. Perhaps he/she would say "Hackwell seems like a fairly dodgy character"
That being said, this novel facilitates a very easy environment for us to judge these New England families over their racist and sexist lives because of the way we currently live ours today. If we examine an example of something which is currently universally accepted, like the fact that same sex marriages are illegal in 48 states. In this case, there is a minority who is critical of this, Canadians and Californians for example, however thinking about whether it will be the same in 100 years, the majority would probably disagree, and say that it will be legal nation wide.
First off, being aware of how highly critical this novel is, let's ask the important question of; Is this criticism really valid and sufficient? I strongly believe that this is fundamental to the way we judge the aspects of the novel. We must take into consideration who the target audience is. We, being young, generally liberal Canadians in the current time period, now apply very liberal approaches to society as a whole. For example, if you were a Nazi in Germany during the holocaust, you wouldn't think "I'm such an awful person, what on earth am I doing?" My point being, it is almost certain that if an American, in the 18th century read this novel, it would probably just seem like a sad story with a happy ending. Perhaps he/she would say "Hackwell seems like a fairly dodgy character"
That being said, this novel facilitates a very easy environment for us to judge these New England families over their racist and sexist lives because of the way we currently live ours today. If we examine an example of something which is currently universally accepted, like the fact that same sex marriages are illegal in 48 states. In this case, there is a minority who is critical of this, Canadians and Californians for example, however thinking about whether it will be the same in 100 years, the majority would probably disagree, and say that it will be legal nation wide.
I won't let this get too lengthy. Overall I found the ending to be slightly dissapointing. I'm assuming I'm not alone in saying that it wasn't as exciting as we all had hoped for, even though Lola and Julian ended up living happily ever after in Mexico.
3 comments:
You've mentioned a very good point. We definitely have to think about Ruiz de Bruton's audience at that time. Time and location also are very important matters when it comes to analysing the books. People grown up in Canada are way more conscious about gender and race matters. Your point made me think, and i hadn't thought about it myself. so Thank you. Your comment about Mr. Hackwell "being a somewhat dodgy character" cracked me up in the library!
I liked that you brought up the point about assessing the novel from within its historical context. This is especially important in the case of that difficult question "Is this a feminist novel?" What was a feminist act in that time period? How much can we use our own standards to evalute the actions of those in the past?
-Serena
oooo, yah, I really like that comment you made on my blog! (sorry to use your blog to write back...hehe) I never thought about how the dependence that the Cackles had on the Norvals and Lola would be an aspect of the satire that Ruiz de Burton is creating. You're very into politics...I'd be interested to know if there are any similarities between this instance and any situations happening in our day and age.
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