American	
  Literature,	
  1865–1910
Gertrude	
  Stein,	
  Three	
  Lives	
  (written	
  1905–06;	
  published	
  1909)
Purpose: To organize the results of your research, to articulate your main
argument regarding a topic of your choice, to receive feedback from your
instructor, to get ready to write the research paper.
Content: A preliminary version of your main argument (Abstract), three
research questions + a list of the primary as well as (at least four) secondary
sources.
Form: Title, a full paragraph or a detailed outline (200–300 words), an
annotated list of sources using a recognised style guide (MLA, Chicago,
MHRA [the last available here: http://www.mhra.org.uk/pdf/MHRA-Style-
Guide-3rd-Edn.pdf.])
Bring this to our last class. Check access to Homework Vault on our course
page on is.muni.cz.
Submission deadline: 31 January
Submit online in Homework Vault
Length: 2,000 words
Paper proposal and annotated bibliography
Abstract
Samuel Beckett's Catastrophe (1982) is protest writing, but not
as we know it. It is the only Beckett play dedicated to a
political prisoner, thus going against the grain of his efforts
both as writer and director to avoid “explicitation" of his
work. Because of this, the play remains at the centre of
critical debate on the politics of his writing. This article
examines the context of Catastrophe's composition and early
productions, drawing on evidence from manuscripts as well
as correspondence between Beckett and Havel, while also
considering Havel's dramatic response to Beckett's play,
Chyba [Mistake] (1983), as the kind of representational
account of prison brutality that Beckett's writing avoids.
In the spring of 1983, Samuel Beckett received a handwritten letter from
playwright Václav Havel, whose prison sentence for “subversive activities”
against the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic had ended earlier that year:
Dear Samuel Beckett,
During the dark fifties when I was 16 or 18 of age, in a country where there
were virtually no cultural or other contacts with the outside world, luckily I
had the opportunity to read “Waiting for Godot.”
Beckett had been a key figure in inspiring Havel to start writing for the
theatre. In one of his prison letters, Havel names Beckett and Eugène
Ionesco as two of the playwrights “who stimulated me to try to
communicate everything I wanted to say through drama.” Havel had
worked as unofficial dramaturge on the 1964 national premiere of Godot
in Prague’s Divadlo Na zábradlí [The Theatre on the Balustrade] and the
association of Beckett’s drama with dissidents like Havel had led to the
suppression of the Irishman’s work by the communist authorities.
Therefore, Beckett’s positive response to a request from the International
Association for the Defence of Artists that he write a play for
performance in Avignon at “Une nuit pour Vaclav Havel” was both
artistically and politically important to the future Czechoslovak president.
First Paragraph
Secondary sources
Havel to Beckett, 17 April 1983, Václav Havel Library, Prague, ID
5852.
‘Folder entitled Havel, Vaclav’, Reading University Library, UoR
MS JEK A/2/123
James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996;
London: Bloomsbury, 1997) 680-81.
Václav Havel, Letters to Olga: June 1979-September 1982, trans. Paul
Wilson (London: Faber, 1988).
Ondřej Pilný, “Irish Drama in the Czech Lands, c. 1900-2013,”
Ireland and the Czech Lands: Contacts and Comparisons in History and
Culture, eds Gerald Power and Ondřej Pilný (2013; Bern: Peter
Lang, 2014).
Discuss class and nationality in Daisy
Miller.
Discuss nationality in Daisy Miller.
What are the conflicts between different
nationalities in the text?
What modes of nationality were relevant
at the time?
What was James’s own experience of
modes of nationality?
Interview with Gertrude Stein (1934)
• ‘Tied and untied and that is all there is
about it. And as tied and as beside, and as
tied and as beside. Tied and untied and
beside and as beside and as untied and as
tied and as untied and as beside. As beside
as by and as beside.’
• ‘Van or Twenty Years After: A Second
Portrait of Carl Van Vechten’ (1923)
Interview with Gertrude Stein (1934)
• Look here. Being intelligible is not what it
seems. You mean by understanding that
you can talk about it in the way that you
have a habit of talking, putting it in other
words. But I mean by understanding,
enjoyment. If you enjoy it you understand
it. And lots of people have enjoyed it so
lots of people have understood it. […] But
after all you must enjoy my writing and if
you enjoy it you understand it. If you do
not enjoy it why do you make a fuss about
it. There is the real answer.
Free Indirect Discourse
whereby an apparently objective narrative voice is
shaped and coloured by the world view and diction of
the character being talked about. (Barry McCrea)
‘She’d leave here tomorrow’
vs.
‘She decided to leave that place the next day’
The tradesmen of Bridgepoint learned to dread the sound of
"Miss Mathilda", for with that name the good Anna always
conquered.
Herman Kreder was very well content now and he always
lived very regular and peaceful, and with every day just like
the next one, always alone now with his three good, gentle
children.
• Melanctha Herbert who was Rose Johnson's friend, did
everything that any woman could. She tended Rose, and she
was patient, submissive, soothing, and untiring, while the
sullen, childish, cowardly, black Rosie grumbled and fussed
and howled and made herself to be an abomination and like
a simple beast.
• Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german.
Some of the boarders were hearty good south german fellows and Anna
always made them go to mass. One boarder was a lusty german student who
was studying in Bridgepoint to be a doctor. He was Anna's special favourite
and she scolded him as she used to her old doctor so that he always would
be good. Then, too, this cheery fellow always sang when he was washing,
and that was what Miss Mathilda always used to do. Anna's heart grew
warm again with this young fellow who seemed to bring back to her
everything she needed.
Rose was hard headed, she was decent, and she always knew what it was she
needed. Rose needed Melanctha to be with her, she liked to have her help
her, the quick, good Melanctha to do for the slow, lazy, selfish, black girl, but
Rose could have Melanctha to do for her and she did not need her to live
with her.
And so they began all four to live in the Kreder house together, and Lena
began soon with it to look careless and a little dirty, and to be more lifeless
with it, and nobody ever noticed much what Lena wanted, and she never
really knew herself what she needed.
‘Melanctha’
Melanctha Herbert had always been old in all her ways and
she knew very early how to use her power as a woman, and
yet Melanctha with all her inborn intense wisdom was really
very ignorant of evil. Melanctha had not yet come to
understand what they meant, the things she so often heard
around her, and which were just beginning to stir strongly in
her.
[…] When the excitement was all over, Melanctha began to
know her power, the power she had so often felt stirring
within her and which she now knew she could use to make
her stronger.
Often she was alone, sometimes she was with a fellow seeker, and she strayed
and stood, sometimes by railroad yards, sometimes on the docks or around
new buildings where many men were working. Then when the darkness
covered everything all over, she would begin to learn to know this man or that.
She would advance, they would respond, and then she would withdraw a little,
dimly, and always she did not know what it was that really held her. Sometimes
she would almost go over, and then the strength in her of not really knowing,
would stop the average man in his endeavor. It was a strange experience of
ignorance and power and desire. Melanctha did not know what it was that she
so badly wanted. She was afraid, and yet she did not understand that here she
really was a coward.
Jeff Campbell had never talked to any one of what had been going on inside
him. Jeff Campbell liked to talk and he was honest, but it never came out from
him, anything he was ever really feeling, it only came out from him, what it
was that he was always thinking. Jeff Campbell always was very proud to hide
what he was really feeling. Always he blushed hot to think things he had been
feeling. Only to Melanctha Herbert, had it ever come to him, to tell what it was
that he was feeling.
Melanctha Herbert was sixteen when she first met Jane
Harden. Jane was a negress, but she was so white that hardly
any one could guess it. Jane had had a good deal of
education. She had been two years at a colored college. She
had had to leave because of her bad conduct. She taught
Melanctha many things. She taught her how to go the ways
that lead to wisdom.
Dr. Campbell had taken care of Jane Harden in some of her bad trouble. Jane
sometimes had abused Melanctha to him. What right had that Melanctha
Herbert who owed everything to her, Jane Harden, what right had a girl like
that to go away to other men and leave her, but Melanctha Herbert never had
any sense of how to act to anybody. Melanctha had a good mind, Jane never
denied her that, but she never used it to do anything decent with it. But what
could you expect when Melanctha had such a brute of a black nigger father,
and Melanctha was always abusing her father and yet she was just like him,
and really she admired him so much and he never had any sense of what he
owed to anybody, and Melanctha was just like him and she was proud of it too,
and it made Jane so tired to hear Melanctha talk all the time as if she wasn't.
Jane Harden hated people who had good minds and didn't use them, and
Melanctha always had that weakness, and wanting to keep in with people, and
never really saying that she wanted to be like her father, and it was so silly of
Melanctha to abuse her father, when she was so much like him and she really
liked it. No, Jane Harden had no use for Melanctha. Oh yes, Melanctha always
came around to be good to her. Melanctha was always sure to do that. She
never really went away and left one. She didn't use her mind enough to do
things straight out like that. Melanctha Herbert had a good mind, Jane never
denied that to her, but she never wanted to see or hear about Melanctha
Herbert any more, and she wished Melanctha wouldn't come in any more to
see her. She didn't hate her, but she didn't want to hear about her father and all
that talk Melanctha always made, and that just meant nothing to her. Jane
Harden was very tired of all that now. She didn't have any use now any more
for Melanctha, and if Dr. Campbell saw her he better tell her Jane didn't want
to see her, and she could take her talk to somebody else, who was ready to
believe her. And then Jane Harden would drop away and forget Melanctha and
all her life before, and then she would begin to drink and so she would cover
everything all over.
"Yes I certainly do see that very clear Dr. Campbell," said
Melanctha, "I see that's certainly what it is always made me not
know right about you and that's certainly what it is that makes you
really mean what you was always saying. You certainly are just too
scared Dr. Campbell to really feel things way down in you. All you
are always wanting Dr. Campbell, is just to talk about being good,
and to play with people just to have a good time, and yet always to
certainly keep yourself out of trouble. It don't seem to me Dr.
Campbell that I admire that way to do things very much. It
certainly ain't really to me being very good. It certainly ain't any
more to me Dr. Campbell, but that you certainly are awful scared
about really feeling things way down in you, and that's certainly the
only way Dr. Campbell I can see that you can mean, by what it is
that you are always saying to me."
What was it that now really happened to them? What was it
that Melanctha did, that made everything get all ugly for
them? What was it that Melanctha felt then, that made Jeff
remember all the feeling he had had in him when Jane
Harden told him how Melanctha had learned to be so very
understanding? Jeff did not know how it was that it had
happened to him. It was all green, and warm, and very lovely
to him, and now Melanctha somehow had made it all so ugly
for him. What was it Melanctha was now doing with him?
What was it he used to be thinking was the right way for him
and all the colored people to be always trying to make it
right, the way they should be always living? Why was
Melanctha Herbert now all so ugly for him?
Always now he liked it better when he was detained when he
had to go and see her. Always now he never liked to go to be
with her, although he never wanted really, not to be always
with her. Always now he never felt really at ease with her,
even when they were good friends together. Always now he
felt, with her, he could not be really honest to her. And Jeff
never could be happy with her when he could not feel strong
to tell all his feeling to her. Always now every day he found it
harder to make the time pass, with her, and not let his feeling
come so that he would quarrel with her.
Melanctha Herbert was beginning now to come less and less to the house to be with
Rose Johnson. This was because Rose seemed always less and less now to want her,
and Rose would not let Melanctha now do things for her. Melanctha was always
humble to her and Melanctha always wanted in every way she could to do things for
her. Rose said no, she guessed she do that herself like she likes to have it better.
Melanctha is real good to stay so long to help her, but Rose guessed perhaps
Melanctha better go home now, Rose don't need nobody to help her now, she is feeling
real strong, not like just after she had all that trouble with the baby, and then Sam,
when he comes home for his dinner he likes it when Rose is all alone there just to give
him his dinner. Sam always is so tired now, like he always is in the summer, so many
people always on the steamer, and they make so much work so Sam is real tired now,
and he likes just to eat his dinner and never have people in the house to be a trouble to
him.
Mathilda Haydon, the simple, fat, blonde, older daughter felt very
badly that she had to say that this was her cousin Lena, this Lena
who was little better for her than a nigger. Mathilda was an
overgrown, slow, flabby, blonde, stupid, fat girl, just beginning as a
woman; thick in her speech and dull and simple in her mind, and
very jealous of all her family and of other girls, and proud that she
could have good dresses and new hats and learn music, and hating
very badly to have a cousin who was a common servant. And then
Mathilda remembered very strongly that dirty nasty place that Lena
came from and that Mathilda had so turned up her nose at, and
where she had been made so angry because her mother scolded her
and liked all those rough cow-smelly people.
Lena did not care much to get married. She
liked her life very well where she was
working. She did not think much about
Herman Kreder. She thought he was a good
man and she always found him very quiet.
Neither of them ever spoke much to the
other. Lena did not care much just then
about getting married. […]
Herman Kreder knew more what it meant to
be married and he did not like it very well.
He did not like to see girls and he did not
want to have to have one always near him.
Herman always did everything that his father
and his mother wanted and now they wanted
that he should be married.
Herman hadn't ought to really give his father
so much trouble and make him pay out all
that money, to come all the way to New York
just to find him, and they both lose all that
time from their working, when all Herman
had to do was just to stand up, for an hour,
and then he would be all right married, and it
would be all over for him, and then
everything at home would never be any
different to him.
It was a new feeling Herman now had inside
him that made him feel he was strong to
make a struggle. It was new for Herman
Kreder really to be wanting something, but
Herman wanted strongly now to be a father,
and he wanted badly that his baby should be
a boy and healthy, Herman never had cared
really very much about his father and his
mother, though always, all his life, he had
done everything just as they wanted, and he
had never really cared much about his wife,
Lena, though he always had been very good
to her, and had always tried to keep his
mother off her, with the awful way she
always scolded, but to be really a father of a
little baby, that feeling took hold of Herman
very deeply. He was almost ready, so as to
save his baby from all trouble, to really make
a strong struggle with his mother and with
his father, too, if he would not help him to
control his mother.
What is the importance of narrative perspective in Three
Lives?
What is the role of desire in one or more of the stories?
Write on a topic of your choice.