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redrayray · 7 years

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My Lazy Sister and Her Tea

It’s a chill Sunday afternoon and both my mum and I are having a nap while my dad mows the lawn. I’m awoken from my deep slumber by the sound of the phone ringing. At this point I’m not aware my mum is napping too so as the phone rings off I think ‘oh well, mum’ll get it.’ The ringing ends prematurely so my thinking is ‘yup she picked it up downstairs all good.’

I start to drift back off to sleep when the ringing starts again. Thinking ‘oh ok so Mum mustn’t have picked it up’ I get up to answer. As I walk to the phone I see my Mum grouchily sitting up in bed having been woken up by the phone as well. I apologise for not picking it up the first time and answer it to reveal the caller is my sister.

“Hey, where are you?” She asks in lieu of greetings.

Still grumpy from Unconcious Interruptus my reply is “Home... obviously.”

She huffs, “Yeah, but upstairs or downstairs?”

“Upstairs” I sigh. “Mum and I were both napping that’s why we didn’t pick up the first time.”

“Oh sorry,” she says genuinely apologetic. “I was hoping you were downstairs so you could put the kettle on for me.”

My sister is an avid tea drinker so this is not a rare occurrence. There are often times when she will call home on the drive back from work or school so that she can have a cuppa ready for when she returns. She was home last I checked but it’s been at least an hour since I drifted off and she could’ve quickly popped out on an errand or to walk the dog since then.

I concede to get the tea ready for her.

As I stumble towards the stairs I decide to make conversation while I do so: “So, what’cha doing?”

“Studying.” She replies.

“Cool. Where at?”

“In my room.”

“In your-?”

...

You see my sister (who was sitting 5 metres and 1 door away from me) wanted her tea while studying and her thought process seemed to be:

I don’t want to get up. I’ll have someone else do it.

I don’t want to get up to ask. I’ll call the Home Phone.

No one picked up the first time. I’ll call again.

I boiled the tea for her anyway because dammit I can’t help but admire the dedication to both her immovability and her tea.

TL:DR My sister loves her tea more than us and is lucky we love her.

#tea #family #funny #lol #lazy #humour #im tired #my whole family is tired #the entire world is tired #can we just sleep #pls

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ba2akbm · 6 years

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Research: Stevenson the Feminist: Flipped Gender Roles in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [Critical Analysis]

I found a critical analysis essay online based on the flipped gender roles that Stevenson displays in Jekyll and Hyde, and found some parts of it interesting. Below are some of the excerpts, here is the link.

“women are not completely void from the text. In a way, in regards to the maid that watches Hyde’s gruesome murder, they do play a small role. Without that maid watching, the hunt for Hyde would not have begun, or would Dr. Jekyll be forced into choosing between his two sides. As Charles Campbell says, women are the “key to a reading of the novel as it concerns the suppression of sexuality” (310). He suggests that: “The men of the novel are the city incorporated as lawyers, doctors, scientists, and sadists; they are associated with fog, lights and interiors. The women are the city as sexuality, innocence, sentiment, and victims; they are associated with street life, the outside of buildings and doors” (316) and this critic is not incorrect, but he misses a bigger point throughout the text. The maid did not necessarily have to be a maid. It really could have been any passerby, male or female, but more likely male since the women were constantly off performing their duties. This shows that women in the text, though seeming to have a role, are still unnecessary.“

“The Victorian period was the starting point for many new discussions regarding sex, as showcased by Antonio Sanna’s work: “The late nineteenth century saw an explosion of discourses on sex and sexuality” (Sanna 21). Sex became a part of conversation; it was not totally accepted, but it was a curious subject and earned its place in discussion. Furthermore, “the attacks and campaigns against sexual excesses such as masturbation and coitus interruptus, which had lasted for the whole nineteenth century and were a commonplace in medical literature, now focused on homosexuality” (22). Perhaps sex became a familiar subject because homosexuality became a more familiar action, which is why many critics see “The all-male pattern [in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]…[suggests] a twist of thought that Jekyll’s secret adventures were homosexual practices so common in London behind the Victorian veil” (Nabokov 187) and these critics are not incorrect. They see Jekyll’s “secret pleasures” as a “strong argument” for the exclusion of women in the text (Linhan). Suppose that Jekyll’s secret pleasures and need for Hyde is because of his undisclosed homosexuality, this is a further point that women are unnecessary. Men are able to find love and release from their needs with other men, therefore taking on a “feminine” role as the second partner in certain erotic escapades.“

“The reader is constantly drawn to Hyde’s physical appearance. Mr. Enfield attempts to describe Hyde to Mr. Utterson in the first chapter: “There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable…He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity…He’s an extraordinary looking man” (Stevenson 11-12). Immediately the reader, alongside Utterson, contemplates how atrocious this man must be, therefore transforming Hyde into the “looked at” and the reader into the “gazer”. The descriptions continue: “Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to [Utterson] with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice” (17). I understand men to lack such eloquent vocabulary especially when describing another man, at least today, but the speaker spends ample time lingering and reporting on what Hyde looks like more than once. The speaker goes into such detail, narrowing down to the way he talks and smiles, not just his physical stature–crossing the line to the erotic and forcing the reader to tag along. This further exemplifies Hyde as the feminine object, and the speaker–and therefore the reader too–as the looker, willingly crossing the line into eroticizing Hyde.

Though the descriptions of Hyde are not as pleasing as a woman would be described, when contrasted with Dr. Jekyll, the gaze turns even more erotic. Jekyll is described as “handsome” whereas Hyde is distasteful (20). The speaker enjoys focusing on the hands of both men, showcasing Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde through his hands. Jekyll recounts a morning when we woke up to realize he was actually Hyde.”

“More so, the few female characters are the ones performing the gazing and looking, as exampled by the maid servant who witnesses the gruesome murder of Sir Danvers Carew: “It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of musing” (21). The maid servant happened to sit down next to her window and watched as an older man, Carew, approach Hyde to enquire about something, but instead of answering, Hyde simply beats Carew to death with his cane before running away–all witnessed by the maid. While she watched Carew down on the ground, she contemplates his appearance: “the girl was pleased to watch [his face], it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content” (21). This is an obvious example of a woman taking on the role of the gazer, and the object of the gaze is a well-off gentleman. This maid servant’s only scene in the novella is this one, where she slightly objectifies Carew and serves as witness to Hyde’s murder. After this scene, she is never brought up or mentioned again.”

“Continuing with women’s lack of agency, Jekyll himself embodies the characteristics of a female by, in a way, giving birth to Hyde. By finding a way around traditional birth, Dr. Jekyll proves that women are unnecessary to the final extent–now men can create a different life without the use of a woman. Obviously Jekyll does not physically go through pregnancy, but he does bring life to a different form from his own body, much like how a woman gives life to something created from her body. In fact, the first transformation into Hyde resembles that of labor: “The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death” (50). Though I have never given birth, from other descriptions and images, the process seems horribly painful and not too dissimilar to Jekyll’s transformation. Additionally, in a way, when a person has a child, they are no longer a singular person but instead two: constantly watching out for another human being, feeding, caring, and loving a small person. Jekyll has created, to some extent, another person to now watch out for and care for, and when he realizes that Hyde became too much for him to handle, and he tries to subdue Hyde’s power, Hyde only forces himself farther into Jekyll’s life.

A man has taken over not only the basic tasks like running errands and caring for a household, but now reproduction as well, showcasing that women are completely unnecessary. Many “[Suspect] that Hyde is Jekyll’s illegitimate son” (Nabokov 187), but he is much more than that. Jekyll disavows what he has done by taking on the role of a father figure of Mr. Hyde: “[I] had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference” (Stevenson 55). Hyde certainly is a son, a teenager even, but in reality, Jekyll has taken on the motherly role by creating and caring for this extra being. Mothers are the caregivers of their children, rearing them while the father attends to the other more masculine tasks, and in some scenes, Jekyll deals with an unruly teenager and has to raise him a certain way–therefore taking on both roles of the mother and father. Even further, “Hyde was ‘knit’ to him, he writes ‘closer than a wife,’” (Linehan 204). Jekyll does not want to admit that his creation forces him to a maternal role, however the evidence is apparent–a mother to child bond is certainly closer than that of a wife and husband, nothing can oppose the link between the mother and her newborn baby. Therefore, nothing can oppose the bond between Jekyll and his Hyde.”

#narrative strategies

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