Alright, Mina (wink wink) had brought this up earlier, but I didn't get the full impact of the relation until I had read chapter 4. In Dorian Gray, no one believed that his evil deeds were true because his face showed no trace of them. In The Turn of the Screw, this behavior is seen again when the narrator dismisses Miles's expulsion. "He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been chastised. If he has been wicked he would have "caught" it, and I should have caught it by the rebound--I should have foudn the trac, should have felt the wound and dishonor. I could reconstitue nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel." (137). She claimed that she felt no evil being omitted from him, but did she not feel it or not see it? It seems that people are naturally more trusting of pretty people, rather than homely ones. Where do you guys think this predjudice come from? Angels are always painted as beautiful human figures, so subconsciously pretty=angelic?
What I think is ironic is that I find that for the most part you can't trust pretty people as much as you can the homely ones...that sounds like such a douchebag statement now that I think about it. But its true right? Pretty people get away with more, therefore they can be more deceitful right? Bell....not finished but oh well.
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Uhhh, I honestly don't know what to post about, so I'm going to add to this! (Or, as I originally typed, I'm going to ass to this! ... sorry, Mrs. Schreffler, I had to mention that. Really.)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think this idea that appearances really effect how we view people has been appearing in a lot of the books we've read lately... In A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen is almost completely ignored by some people, except for the fact that his voice is AMAZING. In Othello, Othello is judged for being a moor... and that may contribute to Iago's hatred for him. (Is Iago really just a racist?) (I'd like to add that in the copy I had of Othello, the student who had it before me had underlined every mention of "eyes" or vision in the play as if s/he had automatically recognized that that was a theme... and there were a lot of underlined.) In Metamorphosis, Gregor is immediately found to be disgusting after his transformation... which is understandable, but at the same time he is so despised for his yucky buggy-ness that nobody bothers to take the killing apple from his side!
And, of course, we have the gothic novels we've been studying... ... Really, this idea applies most to Dorian Gray, and that's obvious, but I've also been thinking a lot about the fact that villians seem to continually be portrayed as either really disgustingly ugly or as gorgeous and seductive... If they are ugly, they are jealous and disreputable, but if they are beautiful, the heroes usually start out with false ideas about the villian's character...
But let's go back to Owen Meany... it's not like /everyone/ gave him credit for being an amazing little kid, and what really got the people who did was his aura, not his voice. Why are we such visual people? Why do we rely so heavily on our sight? Yes, we can formulate opinions on our other senses... smell and hearing, for instance, both play a part in our judgement making... but...
What is it?
That's an interesting point. I honestly do not know why we are so visual. Maybe it is because it is always the first impression we get of things and you know what they say...That is why the narrator loves the children from the moment that she sees them. She sees no trace of evil on them from what the eye can see. BUT the important thing is that a lot of the time, people change their opinon as they begin to see the person more in depth. You can take Owen Meany for example: As he became a teenager, he was never without a date because of his charsima. The same can be said for the narrator. Once she begins to experience the children's weird behavior first hand, she knows that they are more deviant than she first thought. I guess its like what we were talking about in class. People expect beautiful things to be innocent and good because beauty has always be seen as perfection and perfect can't be evil, that would make it imperfect...which a totally annoying paradox. You could relate it back to what we have been talking about in sociology actually...
ReplyDeleteYes, I actually laughed a little at your use of the word "deviate." Damn that test! Damn it!
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, actually, at some point the narrator is looking at Flora and she no longer seems to be beautiful! She seems ugly and corrupt...
"Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It's a game," I went on; "it's a policy and a fraud!"
ReplyDeleteFrom chapter 12--the narrator speaking to Ms. Grose