Don Quixote and Perception

When I was a younger adult, I reread all of George MacDonald's tales, and I must admit that my head was a little turned by them. I began to run around, grasping people by their hands in my attempt to determine whether they were evil beasts or not. Deep down, I knew I was being fanciful and didn't believe I could actually feel the inner man with a handshake or by holding hands. Despite that, there was some truth in my fancy: I actually discovered my true love this way. And if that isn't fanciful, I don't know the meaning of the word! It's true, though. I held a number of hands that year, and they felt all wrong to me, as if I were holding dummy or plaster-cast hands. When I finally held my true love's hand, it was different--warm and perfect.

It's my opinion that worldly wisdom is often folly, and those whom the world calls crazy are often wise in ways we might not expect. Yes, I've been slowly reading through Don Quixote, savoring the delicious bits and pausing to laugh at the estimable wit. Clearly, the man has windmills in his brains. He sees giants and discovers kidnappers in monks. He literally, or literarily, believes he's living in story land. But like my MacDonald fits, there is truth to be found in el Don. Do you remember when Arabella, in The Female Quixote, mistakes the whore in the park for a beautiful lady in distress, and thereby in need of her help? Well, our Don mistakenly believes the same of the whores who are standing outside the inn where he stops after his first day of adventuring. In his scrambled brains, he believes they are ladies awaiting a knight such as himself, and that they are outside their castle.

The world likes to categorize. It's part of the scientific mindset. Certain women are whores and always will be; the evidence might even verify the charges. If we change our perceptions, though, we might view the world in a renewed way. In my opinion, Arabella was right to care for a beautiful lady whose plight in life was to drink and fight and have men take advantage of her, even if she was mistaken in understanding what the wretch's true problems were. Quixote's ladies almost certainly did need a knight to rescue them from a life that would offer them no security and very little hope.

Of course, Don Quixote and his female counterpart, Arabella, caused a deal of mischief. We would have to examine the texts a little further to decide whether the mischief was justified. As Henry Tilney tells Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, even if she falsely accused Henry's fathers of all manner of ill actions, she was correct in her perceptions of him. The crazy imagination might just lead to certain truth.

And what of my true love? Well, he's just wonderful, and the others really were evil beasts! No, I don't mean that. They weren't right for me, though, and their hands gave them away.

Dearest Readers,

I need some entertainment. Do you have a hankering for writing a letter to a famous enlightenment figure? Or, perhaps, you would like to try your hand at flash historical fiction? Please send me something exciting! Yes, I'll do my best to contribute to my own idea of fun, but . . . if you have something that will make me giggle, send it to jill@scriblerian.com. Here are the rules: no erotica, and keep it under 1,000 words. Paste your entertainment in the body of the e-mail, rather than in an attachment, and label it in the subject line with something like historical flash fiction or letter to Pope. You get the idea.

And then, go visit the Ideas in Abundance blog that you see on the blog roll. Finally, a Darcy and Beer lady has begun a blog. Her name is Alex, and she is a grad student in 18th C British lit. She also happens to be one of the most brilliant people I've ever met, and I'm not bestowing senseless flattery. It's true. Better yet, she is trying something new--writing her own fiction.

xoxoxo, Arabella, aka Jill

Beer and Darcy, Darcy and Beer: it all started with Jane

Do you enjoy a pint of beer? Do you ardently believe that Mr. Darcy is waiting for you somewhere in England? If so, you might be a candidate for the highly exclusive Beer and Darcy club.

Well, all right, so it's not highly exclusive. It all began when I felt that, as an older and wiser college student, that I ought to give advice to my younger friends, advice that was something akin to, when I was your age, I didn't quite understand the importance of a lovely stout combined with romance in my life (yes, romance is a euphemism). When I was their age, I believed that what I was really seeking was more profound, more philosophic. They were, sadly, single at the time and quickly replaced romance with cinematic images of Mr. Darcy. Hence, the Beer and Darcy club was born. However, I've noticed a propensity for all of them to exchange the words and call it the Darcy and Beer club. I guess it goes to show where my priorities are, as compared to theirs.

I am older yet, and I still don't doubt that both romance and alcohol are gifts from God, to be taken by his prescription and with his instructions: have one shot and call me in the morning. Otherwise, we all might end up drunks with repeated cases of gonorrhea.

All that aside, these days, the ladies of the club are scattered around in the scholarly world. Just the other day, one of them sent an e-mail around with a link to pepysdiary.com. That got me thinking about how it all really did begin with Jane. Before I registered for Professor Woodward's Austen and theater course, I had no especial interest in 18th C studies. At the end of the course, though, the professor passed out a leaflet advertising her overview of the British Enlightenment class. I had to take it. I had to know what history and literature had influenced and created Jane Austen. Then I studied later British Enlightenment, and then Restoration and early British Enlightenment, and then I discovered that I couldn't stop. I had to take them all.

And for everybody's true enrichment, I've added a link on my sidebar to the Pepys site. Samuel Pepys, in case you're not aware, wrote his diary in the 17th C, right about the time of the restoration of the British crown to Charles II. I don't know what is most fascinating about the diary: the way it was written, or the historical events recorded therein (last big wave of the bubonic plague, great fire of London, and so much more). Click on the link, and try out the daily read. It's anything but boring, I assure you.

Art, England, and New Mexico

Thank you to The Romantic Query Letter for posting this painting by John Constable. It inspired me to finally finish this little segment on art that I started some time ago.

I had asked this question in an earlier post: if you had to attach one major art movement with England, what would it be? Not receiving any answers to my rather polite and sincere question, I asked my dad. In typical fashion, he told me that the English were known for the art of novel writing. Yes, of course, I told him--but painting? Ah, yes, nothing major, was his reply. But if he had to give an answer, it would be the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

I could have guessed he would say that. Personally, I prefer the English landscape painters of the 18th C. Don't misunderstand me; there will always be a place in my heart for John William Waterhouse. Ironically, even with the mythical elements present in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, landscapes capture my imagination in a way that other paintings do not.

What fascinates me are the dueling elements of peace and drama, of light and dark, of ordinary and extraordinary. Although I realize that John Constable was attempting to create a different aesthetic in his landscapes--different from the picturesque and its combination of beauty and the sublime--I can still see these contrasts in the above painting. The clouds are stormy, but a rainbow stretches across the sky. A mysterious church rises up from beyond the shadowy trees, while an ordinary carriage driver attempts to cross the placid stream, where various waterbirds are dipping their beaks in the water. Or is he an ordinary carriage driver? I wonder.

You understand that I can't have an art discussion without posting one of my dad's paintings (A. Leon Miler is his name). Study the painting below and notice his dramatic sky over an ancient mission that is further dramatized by its red roof (I'm not certain why paintings from the picturesque tradition almost always have splashes of red color here and there, but they do. See the saddles on Constable's horses. There also appears to be a red-shirted person behind the carriage in the stream.) What is decidedly missing from my dad's painting is the landscape, but then, it isn't really of that style. The contrasting elements of stillness and storminess still inspire my imagination.

I sorely wish this were a bigger and better image. It is a lovely painting. The church, San Miguel, is the oldest mission in New Mexico and, therefore, ancient by American standards. Oh, there is so much mystery in pondering the bones of dead saints buried long ago below the floor of the church, so much mystery beyond the large wooden doors and locked within the shadowy interior . . .

If it wasn't the rat king's demise that made me cry, then what?

I took my children to see The Nutcracker today; it was a school performance and, therefore, a shortened version of the usual ballet. It was so lovely, though. Just as soon as the lights went down and the stage lit up--just as soon as the first actors entered the stage with their costumes swirling about them, I had to choke back tears. I don't know why this happens to me. I guess I'm peculiarly susceptible to the magic of theater. At the same time, I often wish that I were the one on stage wearing a fancy wig and ballgown.

Does anyone else experience this? Am I crazy? Do others get all choked up before the story even starts?

The Wilted Princess with the Remote Expression on her Face

Have you ever run across blogs that saddened you because they had been started and then abandoned with all the good intentions of the blog author? And that's what they are--the last vestiges of good intentions and happy designs. They remind me of a girl who gets dressed to the nines for a date, emerges down a dusky hallway and into the light, as radiant as can be and with great expectations. Then her date doesn't go well for whatever reason, and the next time you see her, she is dragging herself home with make-up streaming down her face and hair straggling from her fancy French twist. Her dress is wilted, and so is she. I don't want to be that girl, or the author of that kind of blog.

I've been losing myself in self-pity lately, and all for what I see as a common problem amongst mothers--the loss of identity. I've felt that lately. I've been engrossed in the lives of my children and hosting my brother in law and, frankly, there are too many people in my small house. I feel that I've been lost in all of it. And so I pity myself. And, sadly, I still have the image of the wilted princess in my head. That's what I feel like--a wilted princess who never was one to begin with. Think of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady: she glided to the ballroom with that remote expression on her lovely face, and they were all fooled by her! They thought she was royalty, instead of the poor, uneducated street rat she really was.

Later, though--later, we see her wilted, her night spoiled by Henry Higgins. We see her grovelling through the ashes for her diamonds, determined to grasp at an identity that doesn't belong to her. Unfortunately, there isn't an identity for Eliza Doolittle any longer.

Last night, I found myself attempting to do the same thing. This might all sound a bit dramatic, and it probably is. No, I didn't grovel in the dead hearth for diamonds and, thereby, soil my gloves. I searched for my favorite music that has been all but eradicated from the house and played it, very loudly, I might add. The sounds of Ramon Ayala's accordion is magical to me, and I soon imagined that I had Audrey's remote expression on my face, and I glided into my bedroom, where I picked up a copy of Don Quixote and began reading it. From the very first page I knew; I knew why I had started this blog. Blame Cervantes, if you will, but I realized that it is for lines like these that I ever began: "the high heavens which, with your divinity, divinely fortify you with the stars and make you the deserver of the desert that is deserved by your greatness'" (16)*. Ah, so, if Mr. Quixote can dwell in story land, then I can too! Because I've been divinely fortified with the wit of many that makes me the deserver of the beauty that is deserved by their greatness. Or something like that.

*from Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and translated by Walter Starkie (St. Martins Press, 1957)

Is she dead, Jim? No, her breath fogs the mirror . . .