Success!

Occasionally I feel like a proper teacher - today was one of those days. Although there were the usual ones who didn't say a word or hadn't read the book (Sage's Bad Blood - read the first chapter here), we had a really interesting and enjoyable discussion in which I learned some things and gained perspectives which hadn't occurred to me, and I think I added something to their understanding. We talked for most of the 2 hours allotted without it feeling like any more than an hour to me, which is a really good sign.

Even better, some of them spontaneously started talking about how much they're enjoying next week's text (Niall Griffiths' wonderful Wreckage): one said she was almost late for today's class because she didn't want to stop reading. Whether next week's seminar is good or not, I think that's a sign that I'm getting something right. Mind you, the student who complained about naughty words in Freshers and Beauty hasn't bought a copy yet. I think I can safely say that Wreckage's dialogue makes Trainspotting look like the minutes of a League Against Swearing meeting.

Do men make passes at women in glasses?

In one passage of Sage's Bad Blood, having quoted some very apt Wordsworth, she rails against the way women in the 1950s-1960s are restricted to the irrational/earthly/physical/anti-intellectual realm, whereas men are meant to be the doers and thinkers (this is in part the subject of my PhD).

Intellectual women are categorised, she says

'unfeminine, unfulfilled, sexless by nature or, the next-worst thing, lesbian, and in any case were only compensating for the fact that no one ever fancied them. Give them half a chance and they'd melt down like those dragon career women in the movies, who purred when our hero took off their spectacles and loosened their scraped-back hair.

This struck a chord. I'm no fan of career women because I'm not keen on capitalism, but it always annoyed me when the spectacles were taken off, as though circles of glass and frames could ever hide beauty. More importantly, the symbolism is disgraceful: you shouldn't read, and you shouldn't look. The gaze is for the searching man, not the woman, who should blink and bask in adoration. You shouldn't think - you should just be, which is what Sage is getting at.

I rarely step into the realms of emotion (other than hatred) on Plashing Vole, but I'll say this: intellect does it for me, and spectacles are - somehow - the symbol for it rather than a sign of failing eyesight. (I don't need spectacles, by the way). Glasses represent nerdiness or unworldiness in male characters anyway. See Clark Kent.

Unfortunately, while my brain is playing me lots of scenes of bespectacled women and men, it's not giving me any credits. Suggest a few movies in which it happens and I'll post some clips if they're available.

Depressingly, if you type 'intellectual woman' into Google and hit images, you immediately get a woman in glasses, from an article on how to date intellectual women. Which tells you all you need to know about men. And the internet.

Welcome to marking hell

Morning all. I've been here since 8 again, marking first-year essays (competent, but mostly displaying total a total lack interest in literature: it's not just about plot description, kids) and reading Lorna Sage's Bad Blood for this afternoon's class. It's really very good: an academic's tale of growing up in a deeply dysfunctional family on the Welsh border, with a repeated acting motif. Highly recommended.

Right, back to the marking.