Week 9
What you love is not a woman, Romney, but a cause; You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir, A wife to help your ends--in her no end. Your cause is noble, your ends excellent, But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love, Farwell.
What is Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh.
You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,/Or wounded in a mentionable place./You worship decorations; you believe/ That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace./You make us shells. You listen with delight,/By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
Who is Siegfried Sassoon, "Glory of Women"
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.
Who is George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,/Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?/I who have cursed/The drunken officer of British rule, how choose/Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Who is Derek Walcot, "A Far Cry from Africa"
The only privilege literature deserves--and this privilege it requires in order to exist--is the privilege of being the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of languages can be acted out.
Who is Salman Rushdie, "Is Nothing Sacred?"
Their offers should not charm us,/ Their evil gifts would harm us"/ She thrust a dimpled finger/ In each ear, shut eyes and ran:/ Curious Laura chose to linger/ Wondering at each merchant man./ One had a cat's face,/One whisked a tail
Who is Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?/Only the monstrous anger of the guns./Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/Can patter out their hast orisons./No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,/Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--/The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;/And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
Who is Wilfred Owen, "Anthem for Doomed Youth"
What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us?...If only Mrs. Seton and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money...Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children--no human being could stand it...because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned.
Who is Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
And them I went to school, a colonial school, and this harmony was broken. The language of my education was no longer the language of my culture.
Who is Ngũgĩ , "Decolonizing the Mind"
Though so profound a double dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I labored, in the eye of the day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.
Who is RL Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
She casts her best, she flings herself./ How often filings for nought! and yokes/ Her heart to an icicle or whim,/ Whose each impatient word provokes/ Another, not from her, but him;/ While she, too gentle even to force/ His penitence by kind replies,/ Waits by, expecting his remorse,/ With pardon in her pitying eyes.
Who is Coventry Patmore, Angel in the House
In all my dreams before my helpless sight/He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Who is Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"
I perceived in that moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing, dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib...A Sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things...And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
Who is George Orwell, "Shooting An Elephant"
The force that through the green fuse drives the/flower/Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees/Is my destroyer./And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose/my youth is bent by the same wintery fever.
Who is Dylan Thomas, "The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"
Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good, unless it be imperfect.
Who is John Ruskin, "The Stones of Venice"
She objects to the cowardliness which will trade upon a young, ill-educated girl's indolence, love of luxury, and mistaken notions of life; who knows her nature while she herself is kept in ignorance of it, and uses his knowledge to degrade her."
Who is Sarah Grand, "The New Woman and the Old"
And bending down beside the glowing bars,/Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled/And paced upon the mountains overhead/And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Who is William Butler Yeats, "When You Are Old"
I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.
Who is Virginia Woolf, "A Mark on the Wall"
They are allowed to inherit/the sidewalks involved as palmlines, bricks/exhausted and soft, the deep/lawnsmells, orchards whorled/to the land's contours, the inflected weather/only to be told they are too poor to keep it up,
Who is Margaret Atwood, "The Immigrants"
I conclude with what I said at the beginning: to have the sense of creative activity is the greatest happiness and the great proof of being alive, and it is not denied to criticism to have it; but then criticism must be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge.
Who is Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time:
In most cases, where honest intention and a belief in the excellence of an object exists, however out-of-date or obsolete it may have become, it is gracious and kindly to deal tenderly with it, remembering that what has stood the test of time, and carried out a high ideal, however imperfect, deserves some consideration and gratitude at the hands of all fair-minded people; and that feeling of fair play is the foundation on which so many of our most sacred and cherished institutions exist
Who is Lady Jeune, "The New Woman and the Old: A Reply to Sarah Grand"
A new Modernist style that shifts away from Victorian social realism that focused on the mind.
What is psychological Realism
And her soul died in her for fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met nor whom the fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing.
Who is DH Lawrence, "Odour of Chrysanthemums"
Mr. Obi listened with a satisfied smile on his face. "The whole purpose of our school," he said finally, "is to eradicate just such beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas."
Who is Achebe, "Dead Man's Path"
This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently judged, and handled with more caution.
Who is RL Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.