First Post

Hi everyone!  I'm Emily, a sophomore Economics major planning on minoring in English.  I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I've always used books to try and explore the world and people outside this area.  I'm currently the Resident Writing Tutor in FroSoCo and am happy to finally be writing again after two quarters of pset classes; I was starting to feel like a total hypocrite for helping people with their writing but not doing any myself!

I've always been fascinated with stories that allow me to leave my bubble; history let me explore another time, and literature puts me into situations and emotions that I wouldn't have otherwise experienced in my rather sheltered life.  Part of that fascination with stories led me to become involved with the Rams Head Theatrical Society, where I help put stories up on stage and create them through sound or production.  This class is my opportunity to similarly go "backstage" in literature as well.

My role model from a website that fuses history, literature, and humor: www.harkavagrant.com

 I think that stories always share certain elements, but as human experience continues to grow and change, stories will evolve and show the new perspectives we have on these age-old tropes.  Old issues of love, hate, war, peace, death, and taxes are constant, but we see them differently as our societies, views of the world, and even simply the authors themselves change.  Stories then evolve to examine new views on old themes.

Take, for example, the contrast between Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’s Diary. (Spoilers abound; skip this post if you haven’t read at least one of these books!) In terms of plot, they are completely identical: our young, single, female protagonist is initially intrigued by one man while furious at another for a perceived slight but quickly realizes that the first man is a cad and the second exactly who she needs, all while dogged by her airheaded mother and the romantic issues of her friends.  However, the protagonists themselves are vastly different.  Elizabeth is calm, funny, collected; she is, in a lot of ways, the ideal woman.  Her humor and intelligence are what get her her man; a man, it’s worth noting, that she doesn’t entirely fall for until she sees his estate.  This, in Austen’s time, was a logical and necessary element to a successful marriage; it is worth noting that none of her heroines marry a poorer man.  Bridget Jones, on the other hand, is a total mess; always trying to lose weight, get a job, and deal with her completely bizarre life and crazy friends.  As a character, she could not have been the protagonist of an Austen novel; she is more scatterbrained and shallow than even Austen’s most oddball protagonist.  Additionally, her relationship with Mark Darcy is in fact impeded by his success, as her view of his work as a lawyer defines him as far too dully stable.  This shift entirely changes the tone and perspective of the story; Elizabeth’s love story is meant to make us laugh at the follies of those around us, since we identify with the superior Elizabeth, while Bridget makes us laugh at our own mistakes.  The two books thus offer entirely different feelings, and thus stories, to the reader.  Pride and Prejudice offers a world we wish we lived in with a heroine we wish we were (though with a cooling dash of era-appropriate practicality); Bridget Jones’s Diary makes us laugh at our own troubles but presents a modern storybook romance, unaffected by material considerations. 

A story is a product of its time and place.  As the world shrinks and changes, our stories examine the new perspectives that appear.  Additionally, as new authors are born, they bring fresh perspectives to age-old issues and emotions.  New stories, even though they revolve around old themes, are everywhere.