Hi, ladies!!
It is Friday, October 31, 2008, today, and has been cloudy, a bit chilly.
Tomorrow is November 1, the first day of middle autumn. The trees haven’t begun to turn change color yet, and I’m looking for watching beautiful leaves.
I don’t like winter, especially here in Nagoya, because of the cold…But when I was a young girl, I didn’t care about a severe winter at all, and felt comfortable even outside the house. Now I can recall my fine memory.
Well, it’s time to say good bye.
See you, have a good holiday!
7 comments:
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hi! How are you? How do you enjoy this wonderful season?
One of our friends came from Niigata to show us her new-born baby.
We’re going to meet them tomorrow. The baby is a French-Japanese girl.
I’m interested in how she looks.
From Mary Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer
* -------------------------------------------- *
• Institutions of Social Control: Religion, Middle-Class Morality, and Property Arrangements
The two factors that helped to delimit women’s situation are, first, “the ascendance of Puritan and then Evangelical principles,” and second, “the rise to prominence of the middle classes.” (p.7)
Puritan doctrines restricted women’s life by stressing the importance of the patriarchal family system. A double standard arose from Puritan principles in which women played a significant role to integrated family. “[B]y the early decades of the eighteenth century, women could even take pride in sacrificing their sexual desires for this ‘higher’ cause” (p. 8). “By the second half of the century, women” interpreted the double standard as “proof of [women’s] own moral superiority” (p.8).
Feminine nature was idealized through evangelicalism. The social hierarchy reinforced by maintaining moral institution. While women’s position was enhanced, their social responsibility was recognized. Particularly women’s role within England’s economy should be underlined, for women held the position as “consumers and thus as indirect contributors to England’s national wealth and self-esteem,” although it was complex. (p. 11)
Land governed by strict settlement made marriage market more competitive than the previous generation especially for women. Meanwhile, the feminine ideal was established as spiritual presence.
* -------------------------------------------- *
I’m terribly sleepy.
Good night.
Have a nice weekend.
Hi, ladies!!!
How have you been enjoying the long weekend?
It is so nice to know that your friend came down all the way to Aichi from Niigata to show her newborn, half-French and half-Japanese, baby, Alice. Did you have a fabulous time with your friends?
Saturday afternoon I got a phone call from my daughter in Sydney, saying that something was different and her contractions might have started though she was on the beach with her family enjoying the sunshine. What? You’ve got to be kidding. You are supposed to give birth by Cesarean on 17th of this month, aren’t you?
Very early in the morning on Sunday, which is today, I got another phone call from her, and this time she quickly said that her waters broke and she would dash to the hospital, and hung up. Another call from her in the hospital, saying she was on the way to the operating theater. Then, a call from her husband’ mother in Mie Prefecture, perhaps at around 11 in the morning, saying that the baby was born and she was leaving for Sydney tomorrow. Really? Wow… She planned to go on 15th, but she had to change her plan and hurry up because my daughter’s son, who is one year and three months old, needed someone to look after while his father working, so badly. I wish I could go…
Then, probably, early this afternoon, my daughter called me, sounding she was still under the effects of the anesthetic, and said that when her labor contractions came at intervals of 5 minutes her operation was performed and her baby was in the cot next to her bed. She was still in pain, she added. I am so sorry for you, my daughter. I just cannot do anything for you, since you are so far away. But, marvelous!!! Good for you. Now I have 3 grandkids.
It was so hectic today, but anyway everything was done better than I expected, and so I am very happy about it.
Goodnight to you all, my lovely friends. Sweet dreams.
Hello!! Cherry and everyone
Long time no see.
I am sorry that I have hibernated or lived in nearly vegetative life. I went to Guam island. Its size is equivalent to Awaji island in Kobe. It takes 3 and half hours from Japan to Guam by plane. We left for it at night and arrived there at mid night. Next morning it was very beautiful day, now Guam is in the rainy season though. we went to Cocos island. We enjoyed schnorcheling. Compared with the seas of Hawaii and Saipan, there were less fishes. I supposed they hid in the coral with camouflage.
After the lunch, I seacretly brought some of the lunch in the sea. I had a hand of rice and one piece of fried chicken. First of all, I fed fishes with a pinch of rice. I could not draw attentions from some of fishes. I guessed they were carnivores or predators. I crumbled the fried chicken, I had some pieces of it at the tip of my fingers. First of all, wedge picassofish came. Last year, I was bitten by this kind of fish in the sea in Saipan. I learned how to cope with them. Next moment, A sword could been seen in front of me. I was very surprised with it. What was it? It was one of barracuda. It swiftly swam. It picked my feed quickly and very well. The next time, it failed in picking. Exactly, it successfully caught the food but it sank its teeth into my fingers. The wounds of the fingers in the side of palm seems they were cut. In the sea, this fish and its movement look very sword. The scar still remains but very small injuries. I had a lesson from this. Never feed them anything but vegetable food. Meat? Terrible.
On the beach, I found many small holes. What were they. I inserted a slip leaf of palm into a hole, a crab outrageously came out and nimbly backed to the hole. I tried again and again, it came out of the hole and hid over and over again, it sometimes took the slip.
I identified crabs as the owners of the holes
When I came back to Japan, I found the sigh which wrote if you are bitten by an animal, you are expected to daclare it. I wondered I should declare it although, I declined it.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello. How are you?
Wow! Congratulations, Plum.
The hospital in Sydney sounds very reliable. You must be looking forward to seeing the baby and your daughter.
Welcome back, Azalea. Were you bitten by the barracuda? Are you ok, now?
It was a nice day, wasn’t it?
I had lunch with some of my friends today. As I told you yesterday, I met the beautiful 3-month-old baby girl. She was happy while we were chatting over lunch.
After lunch, one of the friends whose house was near the restaurant invited us for tea. I had to go home by 3, so I said good-bye to them after having a cup of cold mugi tea.
I needed to read a part of an article written by a classmate and write a report. I am one of the students who give presentations on Tuesday. We call the class “Comment Session.” Five or six people are supposed to submit one chapter of their theses online a week ago and 2 commentators assigned for each writer give presentations. The woman for whom I chose to write comments could not finish writing a chapter by last Tuesday and told us she would send it by Sunday morning, which was today. We only have one day and a half. Somebody told us this is not as bad as last year. According to her, one student submitted his or hers in the morning on the day that was supposed to be commented.
The chapter I got was not so long. I am currently musing on it. But before writing the report, I wanted to post a comment here.
From Mary Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer
* -------------------------------------------- *
• The Paradoxes of Propriety
The late eighteenth-century moralists insisted that “feminine virtues needed constant cultivation.” (p. 15) Since 1740s, conduct material whose readership was middle-class women had increasingly emphasized on domestic education. Although femininity was described as innate by moralists, female nature had paradoxically been configured culturally and ideologically. Here, Poovey introduces two companion periodicals to show some examples: the Lady’s Magazine and the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Each periodical reported the death of France’s Louis XVI differently. Not mentioning French victory, the former “present[ed] a reassuring picture of stability and continuity” (p. 17). On the other hand, the latter “claim[ed] to offer a specific response to a specific historical situation” (p. 17). By further comparing them, Poovey argues “the appeal to men is explicit and direct because the assumption is that men’s passions as well as their reason are subject to individual consciousness and control. The appeal to women, on the other hand, is indirect; it is couched in sensual rather than intellectual terms” (p. 18).
Fundamental female characteristics were also described by moralists like Adam Smith.
Smith implied women needed to “habitually practice self-denial” (p. 19). Otherwise, it was considered that women’s disobedient nature or female sympathy stimulates women’s passions. In the extension of this logic, female sexuality was assumed as women’s nature. While women’s “appetite” was attacked, their chastity was defended. According to Poovey, “even modesty perpetuates the paradoxical formulation of female sexuality.” (p. 21) Being proclaimed to be “the most reliable guardian of woman’s chastity,” modesty was “declared to be an advertisement for” their sexuality. (p. 21)
The paradox of modesty controlled women’s self definition of their gender. “A woman might well consider chastity her ‘greatest glory and ornament’ because to do so enhanced her social value and promised her the eventual gratification of the very desires that modesty was supposed to deny.” (p. 23)
* -------------------------------------------- *
Good night.
Hi, ladies!!!
It is Monday, November 3, 2008, today, and it has been a cloudy day typical to late autumn, although we are in mid-autumn, hasn’t it?
On Saturday I bumped into Madam N., who was, yes, that French culture teacher, at the nearby supermarket. (She lives perhaps a few minute walk away.) Not her noticing me, I tried to attract her attention, just saying hello to her. She turned back, opening her hands and fingers, nearly to embrace me, like a lot of French women do, which surprised and embarrassed me.
Madam N. said that her daughter was now working for the Ministry of Education and Technology at Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. She used to work at the Japanese Embassy in Paris, and her present work seems likely much less hard and demanding than her previous one, which is relieving to me, since she remarked that she did not even have time to get a hair cut in Paris because on Sundays, which were her only holidays, no hair dressers’ shop in her neighborhood was opened. Her life in Paris appeared to be glorious and splendid ostensively, but in fact she confined herself inside the embassy building, in which all the staff was Japanese and everything was processed in the Japanese way, and seldom saw the French or heard French, she confessed. What a life!!!
Soon after getting home, I received a fax message, madam N. inviting me to a French music concert on Monday, 17th. Well, it’s not so bad, or rather excellent!!! So I decided to enjoy the concert on Monday evening. Never expected to attend a music event this month. What a life!!!
I am still thinking whether I should go to see my hand surgeon or not tomorrow. It is almost the time to see him, although I hate his surgical treatment. His injection is so painful, but there is no other way to save my life so I have to go. What a life!!!
Well, goodnight to you all, my precious friends. Sleep well and have sweet dreams.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Good evening. How did you spend this long weekend?
After working on the report for tomorrow’s seminar, I read Poovey’s book.
We are now in the midst of autumn, the season for people like Plum enjoy listening to music, has come. It’s also the season for those who enjoy eating.
The other day, while eating a Japanese sweet made from persimmon, a woman working with us said, “We don’t buy persimmons, don’t we?” We agreed. In Toyohashi, some farmers grow persimmons many of which are distributed for free. A few days ago, we found a bag of persimmons left at the door by a friend of my mother’s. She has a persimmon tree. Next day, my sister brought some that she was given by her neighbor. It’s true we don’t have to buy them.
Talking about autumn, the season for sports, we sometimes talk about the TBW. The TBW means the Toyogawa Big Walk, which is an event, held by the PTA of the junior high school in my area. Students walk 30 km along the Toyogawa River. It has been held for more than 25 years. As a student, I walked that long course three times. I noticed that there were many persimmon trees while walking north. Every year before the event, teachers told us not to pick up fruits on the way. I always wondered who did such a stupid thing.
From Mary Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer
* -------------------------------------------- *
In the first half of this section titled The Paradoxes of Propriety , paradox concerning women’s sexuality along with modesty was discussed. Two critical problems about women’s incentives and rewards for chastity were that it “required a woman to suppress or sublimate her sexual and emotional appetites; it also required her to signal her virtue by a physical intactness that is by definition invisible.” (p. 23) Modesty was to be proved in her countenance.
Although it was considered a woman’s expressive countenance and her “situation,” like a social position, told what she was, her character was dramatically misrepresented in novels. Some heroines who were assumed to have “genuine desire” did not behave as they liked to do. Such a behavior was even a required one that could “actually make a woman into a Proper Lady.” (p. 23)
Another paradox was “dilemma for real women trying to formulate and interpret their own behavior.” (p. 26) The rise of individualism, which promised the “self-made man” future success, did not encourage middle-class women “to think of themselves as part of this” ideology, “despite their obvious incorporation into” it. (p. 27)
By looking into the work done by Wollstonecraft and Austen, “this paradox could prove significant for women in variety of ways.” (p. 27)
Although “the virtue of endurance and the rewards of self-denial” was praised, “eighteenth-century women did find ways to communicate and even satisfy their desires.” Yet one should notice that “the forms that female self-expression typically assumed are characterized indirection.” (p. 28)
* -------------------------------------------- *
Well, that’s all for today.
Good night.
Hi, everyone.
Plum, congratulations on successfully having the third grandkid. May I have a question? Which sex was born?
Yesterday, I made a lot of errors on my blog message. For example in Kobe. Awaji island is not located in Kobe, but in Hyogo Pref. And less fish etc.
Today, I planted onion sprouts in my yard. Most of them were done by my husband. I scattered rice bran on the line of raddish as organic fertilizer. It was a fiasco. Before scattering it, I should have cracked down on trespassing of insects such as green catarpillars. After dispersion, it is difficult to search for them.
I never use agricultural chemicals.
So, I presume my yard must be a paradise for insects. Geckos living in my house are expected to exert their instinct. I hope it will soon get cold. Insects appetite was reduced low. But gecko is reptile. It can't be active in the cold atomosphere . It is my contradiction.
Post a Comment