Julia's Coming-of-Age

One of my absolute favorite characters in Black Swan Green is Julia. Now that we are wrapping up this novel, I have gotten a chance to truly reflect on how Julia has changed and admire her remarkable personality. She goes through a less acknowledged, yet just as important, coming-of-age.

Now, I know that not all of us enjoyed Julia as a character in the beginning. Her teasing and acknowledgement of Jason overstepped certain sibling bounds. Referring to Jason as 'Thing' especially produced a sort of distaste among us. And rightfully so. However, many of her other mannerisms exuded a typical sibling relationship, most notably this one:

Julia said nothing for long enough to tell me she knew I was bullshitting. “Who said you could borrow Abbey Road? Her L.P. was by my crappy record player. “You hardly listen to it.” “Even if that were true, it wouldn’t make it your property. You never wear Granddad’s watch. Does that make it my property?” (36)

I am incredibly guilty of this tactic. I am sad to say that my sister has often been in the path of this wrath. I am sure that not many of us would be proud to be Julia at the beginning of Black Swan Green. However, as the novel progresses, she changes and slowly becomes a character that I began to admire. She begins exude a certain warmth and kindness in the midst of her parent's tense conflict. At the end of the novel, she still gets in the last word (typical of an older sister), but what she says is considerably more meaningful. Her coming-of-age is something that I would like to see for myself and my relationship with my siblings.

Now that I think more about it, this is a good topic for a reflective response paper...

Semester Project

I will be traveling back in time a little bit in this blog post and looking at The Bell Jar again. I don't know if I'm allowed to do this, but I had a huge moment of inspiration during class on Thursday while we were discussing the upcoming semester project. The Bell Jar was most definitely my favorite book of the semester. The topic, the writing style, and the plot line was interesting and remarkably relatable. One of my favorite scenes comes from the end of the novel when Esther is speaking to Dr. Nolan. Actually, just the character of Dr. Nolan and the ideas she stands by adds a beautiful and satisfying end to the novel. So while we were discussing the semester project I instantly thought of writing in the point of view of Dr. Nolan. Her impact on Esther was so profound and her opinions were so unconventional for the time that think it would be worthwhile to explore what Dr. Nolan really thinks about her patients, society, and the hospital.

The first idea that came to mind was to write Dr. Nolan's point of view during a session with Esther. Not only would this offer a look into Dr. Nolan's mind, but it would also paint a picture of Esther from an outside perspective. As my imagination continued to wonder, I realized that Dr. Nolan would be interesting to explore both as a psychotherapist and as a woman living in the society of the 1950's. Her career, outlook on life, and perhaps just her day to day life could be explored in the style of journals. I once saw, probably on a TV show or something, that psychotherapist often keep journals or audio recordings of their sessions with patients. For my semester project, I think I'd like to write a series of Dr. Nolan's professional and personal journal entries. I'm just hoping that my limited fiction writing skills will be able to do justice to the masterful work of Sylvia Plath.

Sylvie's Effect

I wrote part of this blog post during Spring Break when we were more than half way through Housekeeping. At this point we began to broach the topic of coming-of-age, but the most important developments of the story had not happened yet. Now having read the entire novel, I am able to form a complete opinion on Sylvie and her role in Lucille and Ruth's coming-of-age.

When Sylvie first appeared in Ruth and Lucille's life, I felt a sense of calmness and fresh air. It was as if she was offering a fresh, nurturing start after the unfortunate and brutal deaths of family members. Sylvie instead offers a very unusual twist on the typical coming-of-age scenarios we have encountered thus far. In all of the novels we have read this semester, no one person influences another character as much as Sylvie influenced Ruth. One starts to question whether or not Ruth actually comes-of-age. Is practically blindly following a role model finding your true identity? Stephen Dedalus, Holden Caulfield, and Esther Greenwood all become more worldy-wise and self aware after a personal revelation and the influence of the collective.

While finishing Housekeeping, the idea of transience and coming-of-age continued to boil. As many of us have said, the idea of leading a transient lifestyle is practically foreign. This leads to the question of right and wrong. We discussed at the beginning of the semester the definition of coming-of-age, particularly who and what determines when we have officially become adults. When each of us applies our own personal definitions of coming-of-age to the development of Ruth in Housekeeping I'm sure we will all have different levels of satisfaction with the ending of the novel. Personally, I think that Sylvie does a terrible job in nurturing Ruth and Lucille. Yes, she has moments of motherly concern, but she creates chaos within Ruth and Lucille's already painful and chaotic life.