Chapter One

Although apparently focused on the role of women in upper-class turn-of-the-century society, the role of nature is a central idea in Edith Wharton’s first novel, The House of Mirth (1905). Subtly constructed, yet persistent, the relationship between women and nature permeates the text.

In this novel, Wharton emphasizes how characters understand nature and their relationship to nature. While environmental descriptions do not dominate the text, when present they reveal the cultural associations shared by many of the characters. Exploring these associations, readers can discern a basic world-view regarding the ways in which gender inflects the human-nature relationship against which to examine the details of the text. These details regarding this human-nature relationship often emerge where the language of the text suggests natural phenomena even when “nature” is not the focus of the passage, a pattern that highlights the pervasiveness of the theme.

This reading focuses primarily on what I call the flower-woman ideology. From the outset Wharton presents the reader with language that illustrates this conceptual relationship between heroine Lily Bart and nature. Although the Lily is not a farmer, woods-woman, nor a pioneer in any real sense, she is connected to nature in a way that is both symbolic and intentional. Her name is botanical and like a flower she is expected to bear a correlation to nature predicated upon beauty and passivity.
Furthermore she is, like all women of her age, intended for consumption.

Wharton’s two main characters in this novel, Lily and Selden, disclose much about Wharton’s consideration of the natural world and its relationship to culture. Through their interactions with each other and the world around them Wharton reveals a range of conflicting pressures and ideologies which ultimately destroy Lily, who I believe operates as a viable icon of the natural world in this novel, being symbolically tied to nature –through her botanical name and her “ornamental” value, and controlled / ruined by a patriarchal market-culture that idealizes even as it destroys .

In this novel Wharton evinces her dystopian vision regarding nature and “natural-identified” characters through the consumption and destruction of Lily Bart. This plot trajectory reveals the impossibility and impracticality of a woman being a perfect “lily”. The novel comments on the bitter realities of patriarchal and commercial life, but it also addresses the cultural associations that bind the identities of nature and women together, and how these associations result from a limited understanding of both on the part of those who dominate Wharton’s world.

 Cultivating and Consuming Lily
The consumption of Lily Bart as a natural aesthetic object is joined textually with the careful cultivation of her “natural” identity, which is to say that there is nothing innate about this particular identity. The wide cultural sensibility which ties femininity to nature aside, Wharton provides the reader with evidence of the ways in which the characters that populate Lily’s social sphere work to reaffirm her role by describing her in terms of naturalness.

Language of cultivation used on several occasions indicates the work Lily must do in order to make a good matrimonial match. For example, Carrie Fisher in a conversation with Selden says, “That's Lily all over, you know: she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a picnic” (147). This passage frames Lily in agricultural and botanical terms. The ambiguous phrase “her seed” allows the reader to consider these seeds as metaphorical extensions of the flower-woman herself rather than something distinct or separate. While this phrasing grants Lily some agency, it is worth noting that Carrie Fisher, like many of the other women in this text, invests herself in promoting Lily’s presence and success among the social elite. In this capacity, Fisher cultivates and exhibits Lily for consumption. While not insensible to Lily’s personhood, Fisher is aware that Lily’s value in their social set is determined not by her humanity, but by those traits most desirable to the men of their class. In the same conversation with Selden, Fisher states, “it's Lily's beauty that does it” (147). A statement that indicates the woman’s beauty is her prime asset.

The theme of Lily’s cultivation for consumption runs through the novel. Nearly every friendly female character in the text works in some way to propagate Lily . In descriptions of Miss Bart’s youth, Wharton shows the reader that this has been a life-long condition for the main character. Not only does Lily’s mother “foster her naturally lively taste for splendour” but she also becomes fixated on Lily’s beauty and the power it might have (29). Mrs. Bart straddles the line between cultivation and consumption. Although she promotes Lily in the marriage markets of Europe, she watches Lily’s beauty “jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian” (29).

Other women also consume Lily in a variety of ways, she is an ornament to enhance the parties of the rich, to draw attention to their tables while abroad, and to help the newly wealthy make connections with those in higher social positions. Of those women who cultivate and consume Lily it is interesting to note the rather complicated role played by Gerty Farish in the text. While the other women in the novel are interested in cultivating the flower-woman along the lines of beauty and sexuality through their focus on the marriage match, Farish is interested in the spiritual idealization of Lily. Wharton expresses this interest in a number of passages where Gerty presents her vision of Lily as contrary to the prevailing view. In the scene preceding the tableaux vivants for example, Gerty describes Lily as “dear” and “wonderfully kind” while telling Selden of how
Lily has visited with the Club Girls and contributed money to their cause (105).

This interest in the spiritual uplift of Lily seeks to cultivate her along the lines of beauty and purity, not unlike Selden’s idealizations although his also contain an undeniable element of sexuality . In my view, Selden is the primary consumer of Lily Bart. I contend that Wharton makes clear the dismal reality of Lily’s existence, and by extension the dismal situation faced by nature, by beginning and ending the novel with Selden. Although Selden has been often considered a sort of “spokesperson” for Wharton’s own sensibilities, I believe, as Cynthia Griffin Wolff contends, that, “Selden is the final object of [Wharton’s] sweeping social satire” (338). From beginning to end, both Lily and nature are under the gaze of a masculine culture which finds both nearly as appealing dead, as they were alive.

As it Stands

At this moment things are very bad...

1. Hard drive crash ate my thesis

2. Separated from my wife

3. Unable to focus therefore very little work is getting done

4. It's winter

5. Started smoking again

I think this summarizes all of it for those who might have wondered what happened to me... where i went and all that.

I am still alive but that's about the extent of it.

In the next week I've promised myself that I will try to work on an introduction for my thesis. This needs to be done. We'll see if any actual progress is made.

Starting Over

Since my laptop crashed I've been frantically trying to write some portions of my thesis. My notes are mostly gone, so it's like a fresh start... which is usually good, but not always. I've started with a chapter on The Fruit of the Tree

Here's a little of what's been mustered:


Like many writers of her moment, Edith Wharton was deeply concerned with questions regarding nature and artifice. Although as scholar James L. Machor, author of Pastoral Cities, suggests, this concern was not a “central configuration of her work” but rather “a part of the imaginative pattern” (205). Still, even as a few threads in a finely wrought cloth, this part of the pattern is important and persistent across many of Wharton’s novels. Manchor looks to the canonical novel The House of Mirth for his example. There he finds that both the language and plot positioning of Nettie Crane’s story exhibit Wharton’s dissatisfaction with the notion of the “the home as pastoral enclave in the city” (206). For Manchor Lily Bart’s death “constitutes perhaps Wharton’s most ironic, tragic comment on the tenuous appeal but final inadequacy of urban-pastoral projections” (206). Although I find this reading quite compelling, I am somewhat troubled by its through reliance on the symbolic for it’s portrayal of the pastoral project. Of course when dealing with humanity and its cultural products, everything has a symbolic status, nevertheless I think an equally interesting critique of the urban-pastoral can be found in Wharton’s second, and less acclaimed novel, The Fruit of the Tree. In this work the urban-pastoral project in described in both symbolic and ecologic terms.

The opening pages of her 1907 novel The Fruit of the Tree establishes the tension between nature and artifice through Wharton’s descriptions of Justine Brent and John Amherst, two of the primary characters. Wharton presents Justine Brent in the following terms: “[s]he did not use, in speaking, the soothing inflection of her trade: she seemed to disdain to cajole or trick the sufferer. Her full young voice kept its cool note of authority, her sympathy revealing itself only in the expert touch of her hands and the constant vigilance of her dark steady eyes” (4). From this beginning Wharton develops traits in Justine that remain pivotal throughout the novel. Justine, although she fades into the background of the text for several chapters is really the main character, and it is through her perceptions that the reader first glimpses John Amherst who initially seems to be the main actor in the text.

Wharton states:
The nurse, sensitive by nature and training to all physical characteristics, was struck at once by the contrast between his alert face and figure and the silent way in which he moved. She noticed, too, that the same contrast was repeated in the face itself, its spare energetic outline, with the high nose and compressed lips of the mover of men, being curiously modified by the veiled inward gaze of the grey eyes he turned on her. It was one of the interests of Justine Brent's crowded yet lonely life to attempt a rapid mental classification of the persons she met; but the contradictions in Amherst's face baffled her, and she murmured inwardly "I don't know" (5)

Although this passage will likely slip from the readers mind as the text becomes powerfully focused on Amherst, this initial presentation of him is quite meaningful. Justine’s confusion regarding Amherst is well justified by the end of the novel, and so here Wharton is giving the reader exactly what she suggests in her description of Justine Brent, a character that is perceptive, honest, “sensitive to physical characteristics” and given to “rapid mental classification of the persons she met”. Justine Brent represents a scientific mind, a naturalist of sorts, in a highly urbanized setting. The contradictions in Amherst are troubling to her, but for the reader they seem perhaps enticing, after all the many appears to possess both a physique made for action and a mind made for reflection, two traits highly valued in men by western culture. If this troubles the perceptive Brent the reader might imagine that perhaps this is only because a girl in her “lonely” circumstance has not yet met a man possessing so many fine qualities.

However, Wharton’s prose continues to favor Brent’s perceptions. Outside of the hospital in the next chapter Justine “was amused to see that he [Amherst] failed to identify the uniformed nurse with the girl in her trim dark dress, soberly complete in all its accessories, who advanced to him, smiling under her little veil” (8). Brent can identify Amherst in the dim October evening, but he cannot pick her out, the language of this passage suggests that the reason for this is that Amherst has made her a social “type”, a nurse, rather than having examined her physical traits as is Justine Brent’s method.

One Down

Today I went to PDX and took the English Literature Subject GRE. I was much dismayed to see that almost all of the questions were British Lit pre-1800... egh. This of course is a section of lit that I know almost nothing about. I answered what I could and left some blank since blank spaces don't really count against you. It was three hours of testing that I would have been happier without, and 150 bucks I would rather have spent on --well on just about anything-- but sadly the Subject GRE is needed by most of the schools I'm looking at.

I registered for the test before I decided not to apply immediately for the Ph.D. Since then, I've decided to put off applying to Ph.D. programs in hopes that the bridge position might be available and attainable. If that falls through I figure there's plenty of other things I could do for a year while I'm waiting to see who wants me as a Ph.D. candidate.

In other news I need to get cracking on my thesis... egh. I bought some Eco and more Wharton at Powells today, but really I need to stop reading, and start writing.

Pre-Terrm Madness: How to update updates...

The past few days I've been working with Sara J, Peter and Laura to orient the new TA-folk. This has been an exciting and exhausting process for me, and likely for the incoming TAs as well. I sense that many of them might be feeling a bit overwhelmed, but it can't really be helped.

When it comes to my own situation I am at the moment bewildered but indifferent to the challenges of finding the correct classes to fulfill all of my requirements. I've decided to dedicate this term to completing one chapter (and hopefully the preface) of my thesis. I've also compiled about 12 schools that I am "interested" in attending (although really only two or three are totally desirable). The next step is signing up to take and studying for the subject GRE. I am not a big fan of standardized tests, and I typically don't do that well on them, so this is a source of some minor anxiety. To remediate this anxiety (a little at least) I am dropping most of my classes this term and taking some thesis hours to round out the gaps.

My teaching plans are in order so I am happy to say there is no tension surrounding that particular issue.

Wharton, Spanish class, Writing 121 and more Wharton look like the immediate future of my academic life.

Ode to the Wharton-l

So many people on the Wharton-l have offered great responses and suggestions. It seems I am behind the times. No surprise there. Apparently others have also suggested Adams as the location for The Fruit of the Tree.  This is great news. Now I have a place to really center my eco-historical research. 

I contacted the Massachusetts historical society in hopes that they might know of people doing environmental history research on the Berkshires. My aunt has also sent me a number of good leads on information regarding Adams and North Adams. Things are taking shape, or at the very least direction.

I'm reading Hudson River Bracketed right now, and am about  half way into the novel. This novel will present some challenges I think. I am hoping that some more direct water references will be made, but if not I could use this book as an example of how nature is used as an aesthetic. Plenty of room for this reading in the title alone.

Fruit of the Hoosic?

In my efforts to get some more work done on my thesis I've been concentrating my efforts on The Fruit of the Tree. I got myself onto the Wharton-l and started asking around to see what opinions other Wharton reserchers and readers might have. I have gotten back some interesting leads, one suggesting an edition of the novel edited by Donna Campell, and another directing me to a lecture given at the Mount last year by Dr. Jennie Kassanoff. I've emailed Dr. Kassanoff since I've been unable to find a copy of her lecture, and I'm on the look out for the Campbell edition in the University library. 

My theory at the moment is that the novel may well have been based on the Hoosic River Valley. I have a few reasons for this. 

1. The novel is set in the Moosuc River Valley (old spelling of Hoosic is Hoosuc. Similarity?)

2. The city of Adams is along the Hoosic and was the site of a large cotton mill

3. Adams mills were in the news quite a bit during 1906 due to worker strikes

4. Wharton was living in Lenox about 20 miles south of Adams

Even if there is no way to prove that Hanaford is based on Adams I think that I could make a strong case that the descriptions of fictional Hanaford strongly resemble the ecological and social concerns in Adams during the time in which the novel was written. 

My next challenge is finding sufficient environmental history regarding this region. I am particularly interested in how the river was engineered and otherwise degraded to benefit the mill in the time leading up to the 1907 publication date of Wharton's text. I am also very interested in any wetland drainage that may have occured in the area. Some contemporary sources indicate that there are few wetlands in the Hoosic Watershed but several older maps (1930's) show a number of small ponds in the area. This part of the search for information has been slow going so far. I think I might need to get in touch with some history folk for better leads. 

My interest in this wetlands aspect is due to the quote at the end of the novel: 

"And do you remember how we said that it was with most of us as it was
with Faust? That the moment one wanted to hold fast to was not, in most
lives, the moment of keenest personal happiness, but the other kind--the
kind that would have seemed grey and colourless at first: the moment
when the meaning of life began to come out from the mists--when one
could look out at last over the marsh one had drained?"

A tremor ran through Justine. "It was you who said that," she said,
half-smiling.

"But didn't you feel it with me? Don't you now?"

"Yes--I do now," she murmured.

He came close to her, and taking her hands in his, kissed them one after
the other.

"Dear," he said, "let us go out and look at the marsh we have drained."

Next Phase. New Books. New PowerPoints

Today I completed my final exam in the Columbia Basin History and Ecology class. For better or worse the class is over and I am ever so glad. I feel like this has in some ways been the anti-summer, although I have had many great adventures it is as though the schooling never ended. 

I suppose I must enjoy it, this protracted intellectual exercise, I only wish I had more time to linger in Edith Wharton novels and think about my thesis as an abstract rather than a reality. Although I had hoped to write thirty pages before the term began I have exactly zero pages written so far. I'm not very concerned. Despite the fact that this coming term promises to be ever so intense, I think winter and spring will be somewhat less loaded and allow plenty of time for Whartonizing. 

Fall term, for certain, will not.

We went and got our books today in hopes of getting the best used copies. Bird found out that she had only one required text book, while Hobbit on the other hand had the worst deal with the most books and least cheap finds. My lot was in the middle with only one exorbitant book. In the world of the English major anything over 50 bucks is unholy. My Spanish text was 109...used. Eh, as if Spanish wasn't trouble enough on its own.

On top of all this I went and looked at the new WR121 packs. They're all shiny and shrink wrapped. I ran into one of my former students and we chatted about the summer. He was a hard worker. I was glad to see him and not one of my slackers. Maybe it is a good omen for the coming term. 

I've already made PowerPoint shows for the first two days of class. I've also decided on borrowing Betjemann's daily reading checks as a way to promote homework completion. The  time of new TA orientation is fast approaching, and I know in the next few days I will be working hard on that. Tonight is for resting, drinking good beer, and watching mindless TV. 

A Water What?

In the course of an instructional video I learned the depressing fact that 60% of adults polled in a survey conducted by the USFS did not know what a watershed is. 10% of those who didn't know thought that watershed is a synonym for a waterworks. Ironically 65% of people boil or filter their tap water. This means that more people are concerned about the health of their water than know where their water comes from. In a way this is a good thing because it means that these people might want to know what they can do to protect their water and themselves.

The more I learn about water issues the more passionate I become about watershed heath. Many of the Pacific Northwest natives recognize water as the first food, the most sacred gift. Without water we are going nowhere fast. 

Soon my online class will be over and I'll have a few weeks to dedicate to my thesis. This information about watersheds couldn't have come at a better time.  

Edith Wharton in talking about her character Lily Bart said: "a frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys. Its tragic implication lies in its power of debasing people and ideals". If Wharton was interested in illustrating the tragedy of how frivolity destroys I find that she was enormously successful, and the ecological implications of this are what I intend to locate in her works and describe in my thesis.

Sunday with Soil, Sustainability, and Cinema

We went to the garden center today and picked up some more seeds and soil. There was a lot to be done in the garden this weekend. First order of business involved stabbing a number of holes into the bottom of a forlorn and lidless rubbermaid tub thus transforming it into a cuke-topia! There are two fair sized cucumber plants comfortably situated in there now. I also re potted another bean plant, harvested a crop of baby carrots, re-tied the tomatoes and trimmed the fuscias, tomatoes, and strawberries (which have amazingly started flowering again).  By the end of the day there will be some newly planted peas and lettuce.

Since it is Sunday I thought I'd put my dos centavos in about sustainability. On my mind at the moment is soap. We really love the new citrus Dr. Bronners. We use it for hands, dishes, and laundry. We've even cleaned the toilet with it. We get the liquid in bulk which saves on money and plastic. We also have a few Ecocloths that we recently picked up. This link is for a similar product since at the moment my memory on the exact brand we own escapes me. Oh, another thing about cleanliness and sustainability is the issue of chemical hazards in soaps, shampoos and beauty products. The website called Skin Deep will tell the consumer what products contain potentially harmful chemicals.  (cha-ching...maybe more next Sunday)

Tonight we're watching the film version of The Age of Innocence. I'm hoping it will be as well done as Ethan Frome.

Dialouge and Commodity: an ending

Today in the grad only meeting of Women't Lit class we started discussing Linda Hutcheon's Theory of Adaptation. In the course of this discussion we read where Hutcheon states that "sequels and prequels are not really adaptations...nor is fan fiction" (9).  I found this comment somewhat bewildering. Although I realize that in some ways the three excluded modes do not substantially depart from the "original" or "adapted work", I think that they do fit the three primary criterion Hutcheon establishes earlier in the text (8). Furthermore I think that it might be interesting to pay some attention to the rather recent phenomenon of creating print spin-offs of film and television productions. For me this shift in media strongly suggests adaptation. 

I mentioned this in class by specifically referencing CSI which began as one television program, and is now three television programs which have been the source for a number of paperback novels, magazines, video games, board games etc... This topic brought us all rather quickly to the issue of commodification. Since CSI is a television show produced to make money (not "art") how does this effect the idea of the CSI novel as adaptation? Are the novels:

1) Not adaptations because they are part of a moneymaking franchisee phenomenon?

2) Not adaptations because they are like prequels, sequels and fan fiction?

3) Cross media adaptations which meet the three major criterion set out by Hutcheon regardless of her later caveat and the market forces behind CSI?

I'm voting three. There is no real point in arguing high culture v. low culture since all modes of communication and literature can be valuable sources of information, the study of which can provide the scholar with critical insights. Furthermore regardless of whether it is Dean Koontz or Edith Wharton or the Bible for that matter, market forces play a role in the availability and production of texts. 

Our little group briefly talked about how the idea of dialogue separate from commodification might benefit entry level academics (i.e. freshmen). Although I can imagine the value of such a worldview, where learning and texts are cherished and explored for no real "market" reason, I have a difficult time envisioning this. If everything is subject to the market in our time and place, then what dialogue is there that is not impinged by the market?

I like to think that I do what I do because I love literature. Ultimately this is probably about 85% true. Somewhere in there you can add in egotism and money, then you'd have a fuller picture.

Today my summer term partially ended. 

Tomorrow more Pendleton.

Topography and Thesis

I started reading another Wharton novel today, Hudson River Bracketed.  Published in 1929 it is claimed by some scholars that Wharton considered this work to be one of her best novels.  I am only about 90 pages into it, but there are already several points of interest concerning water issues.  I am not sure if this novel will end up in my thesis as a case study, but it is certainly evidence that water issues were important to Wharton since some of the same issues she was considering in 1913 appear many years later.

Aside from Wharton this day was mostly spent playing with the dogs and catching up on some Columbia Basin Ecology. This week the lessons revolve around industrial disturbances, depressing, but interesting. This class, although it is a great deal of work, and not particularly related to my thesis, has been quite inspiring. I've decided to work on developing a collection of geology/ecology-inspired poems. The tentative title is "Belated Odes to Harlan Bretz". 

The Marne

Although I had plenty to do today I opted instead for another Wharton novel (although honestly it was more like a novella). The Marne (1919) was a fast and easy read. If I ever teach high-schoolers I think it would be a fine text for people of that age.  Well another novel down just seven more to go. 

Another Apex

Well, in spite of all of the other more pressing things I need to get done over the next few days I decided to spend the last five hours finishing my eighth Wharton novel. Although I can see why so many critics think it is "her most sentimental" I am not sure that I completely agree. While there is a romantic happy ending that verges on sappy there are elements in the language that complicate the "sentimental" reading. For example, the last glimpse of the moon, the last line of the novel, is: "a few drops were already falling, the moon, labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled glory on them, and was again hidden". How this should be read is perplexing. 

For my thesis purposes this text might work nicely. It is another novel where water is a significant presence. Ironically it also has characters who hail from Apex City, which is the fictional birthplace of the Spragg fortune in The Custom of the Country. The presence of water in this text however is not strictly as a commodity but is valued more for its aesthetic beauty and emotional associations. I am not sure if this is something I want to really get into, although it is a fact that people in the business of managing natural resources now take aesthetic value very seriously in their planning. 

I suppose now I need to consider what to read next. The search is on.

In the meantime I have to revamp my Eco-Historical Reconstruction proposal for my Columbia Basin class. This is most trying since I feel as though resources are limited and instruction sorely lacking. Oh well. That is due by tomorrow night. I also have  six page paper that is due on Monday. Fortunately six pages is not all that daunting, and I have a good plan for what to write. The real wrench in the works is the fact that I have every intention of spending this weekend in Bastendorff  with Bird and confirming our handfasting vows at the ocean's edge. I suppose that means I should be writing and not blogging. 

Thesis Formation in Fluctuation

I met with Betjemann today and we discussed the progress of the thesis. I am feeling pretty good about the whole thing. He suggested the idea of three case studies which was right on target with what I was thinking. 

Three chapters, three novels, three water issues. 

I am feeling certain that the first novel I discuss will be The Custom of the Country. A history of reservoirs and drinking water with close attention to water issues in NYC should work well. Furthermore there is the Wharton family connection to a proposed drinking water project in New Jersey's Pine Barrens. 

The Fruit of the Tree will likely be the second case study with overlapping focus on the history of textile mills and water pollution in New England. I'm also intending to look into land reclamation and wetland loss in the region. 

The third novel is a mystery, but right now I'm thinking that The Glimpses of the Moon might work with regard to the recreation commodification of water. We'll see.

Review and Updates etc...

So Ethan Frome (the film version) was not a letdown. It was actually quite good.

Nella Larsen's Passing was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. If one were looking for a quick and interesting read I highly recommend it. 

Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" on the other hand is not my thing at all. We graduate students were instructed to read it for Women's Literature. We're discussing it tomorrow. Although I have a fair grasp of Freudian / Lacanian theory, at least the basics of it, I am not all that interested in it since I find myself unable or unwilling to commit to the underlying assumptions of the theories. Thus, my experience with Mulvey was tainted by my inner resistance to her premise. Nevertheless her rant regarding voyeurism and Hitchcock was fascinating.

I gave my presentation on Chopin's The Awakening in class today. It went reasonably well. The final product was a look at intoxication and archetypes as portrayed in both the novel and visual arts produced during the late 1890's. This topic will likely end up as the basis of my long paper for this class. 

Tomorrow I have a long day of meetings. Tonight I'll start another Wharton novel. 

Completion and Contemplation

Some what recovered from my first week of class I took the better part of today to finish reading The Fruit of the Tree. I was pleased to finish it and am happy to think that I have now completed six of Wharton's novels. Of course there are many more to go before I could claim to have read all of them. She completed 16 novels in her life and many other works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I was somewhat perplexed by the ending of the novel, but I am sure it will make clearer sense to me in time.

In class we have moved on from Chopin to Nella Larsen. I am excited to be reading a work I have never heard of before from the Harlem Renaissance. This is a period in American Literature which I dearly love and have had little exposure to since Steve Brown's Modernism class several years back. Part of me wants to write about Larsen for my final paper but I am concerned that such a decision would result in a massive increase in work for me, not something I particularly need at this moment. 

Tonight though I want to forget everything class related and focus only on Wharton, whom I feel deserves as much weekend attention as I can offer. Tonight we're watching Ethan Frome. Although I was grossly dismayed by how The House of Mirth was adapted to film, I have hope for Frome. We shall see.

Good Finds, Great Foods, and Garden Delights

Today I tried my best to get some work done on the thesis. I started out hearing from Betjemann (superhero lit master/thesis advisor). He essentially assured me that my original thesis idea was probably worth sticking with. We're meeting up next week to discuss it. In the meantime I've been advised to look into Italian Villas and Their Gardens in hopes of some info pertaining to water. Of course in this text I would likely find writings about fountains, ponds etc... I haven't followed this advice yet, but I did read a good essay today; Peter Hays "Undine is Us". The essay gave a good overview of how Undine (The Custom of the Country) is an embodiment of American materialism at its worst. I was also pleased to find several passages in The Fruit of the Tree which referred to swamps and marshes. I am still trying to figure out what state Westmore mills is set in so that I can better guide my historical research though I suppose it doesn't make too much of a difference if it's in New York or New England since the industrial histories of the two are quite similar.

In an effort not to let my whole day be consumed by Edith I took some time to cook world class awesome pancakes, prep a fruit salad, a garden salad, and make a pizza. Of all these I must say the pancakes, although I make them frequently, were amazingly superb. How to make such awesome pancakes?

1 cup whole wheat flour (organic of course if possible)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

1-2 tbsp raw sugar (or brown sugar)

2 tsp vanilla

1-2 tbs oil

1-1.5 cups water or soy milk

To this deliciousness I added liberal amounts of Wilt's Blueberries.

I also gave my garden some attention. We've finally run out of lettuce. I harvested the last head today and it has been consumed (yum). The tomatoes are looking good, the strawberries also look awesome and have been taken inside to avoid fruit loss to the marauding Western Scrub-Jays. The garden, small as it is and totally done in random containers, has been very productive for us. We've harvested six heads of lettuce, a large pot of salad greens, two types of peas, two types of radishes, cilantro, lavender, sage, oregeno, and strawberries. Still in the works are garlic, carrots, two tomato plants, gladiolas, beans and cukes.

Red Rose Tea, Birds and a Box Fan

It is finally heating up in the Willamette Valley. Not that I wanted it to get hot, but it had been cool and rainy from October well into June. Enjoyable, but I had wondered if there would be a summer. There is. It is overwhelmingly warm. We have the front door propped open with the dog kennel and a cheapo (though oddly made in the USA) box fan on top of it. 

We fill a giant glass jug with Red Rose and ice every morning and by the next day we need to do it all again. For some reason I love this tea and this tea alone though my current financial straits have prevented me from branching out toward some organic black tea (this will be done eventually, though by then it may not be hot enough to warrant it).

Bird and I went to EE Wilson today to prepare for her upcoming research project regarding mature forest birds in early sucessional forests. EE Wilson is run by the Fish and Wildlife folks, and has some interesting history (good overview at the attached link) .  There we saw a number of birds; osprey, herons, orange crowned warbler, bushtits, pied billed grebe... as well as some great plant life, butterflies, dragonflies, and deer. 

The rest of this day has largely been spent prostrate in front of the fan. I'm about 200 pages into Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree. Originally published in 1907 (after The House of Mirth) this book seems to have been ill received by the public and critics alike, but I am enjoying it quite a bit. It centers on a mill in the North Eastern US (I believe New England though others claim New York). I don't know how useful it will be for my attempt at ecocritical analysis of Wharton, but it is a good read.

On the topic of Wharton I am trying to assemble a list of any novel or story (or poem) of hers which contains suicide or attempted suicide. Any help is welcome. So far I have:

The House of Mirth

The Custom of the Country

Ethan Frome