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RMST 202 Literatures and Cultures of the Romance World II: Modern to Post-Modern
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Week 7, Rodoreda, “The Time of the Doves”

I was passionately engaged while reading The Time of the Doves, mainly for two reasons. First of all, I really enjoyed the narrative of the novel. I felt like the first-person narration of Natalia made the narrative more credible. Normally, first-person narratives are less credible than a “neutral” third-person view, but since this story was […]

Posted in Blogs, Rodoreda | Tagged with Bricolage, Construction, family, gender, literature, narrative, Recovery, Relationship, temporality, war

Week 7 – On Rodoreda’s “The Time of the Doves”

Mercè Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves presents processes of multifaceted change during the Spanish Civil War through the lens of the life of an ordinary Catalan woman named Natalia. Setting in Barcelona, this is the first Catalan novel I have read. It is particularly noteworthy to consider the relevant background of the work. From […]

Posted in Blogs, Rodoreda | Tagged with gender, politics, power, urbanism

blog#6 – taming Chaos

blog#6 – taming Chaos — The Duality of Cécile was by far the most captivating aspect of Bonjour Tristesse. Françoise Sagan’s ability to portray both a wild, cunning jealousy and guilt-ridden empathy and sorrow is what makes the book such an interesting read. The raw honesty and (at times, hesitant yet inevitable) introspection of Cécile’s own […]

Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with adolscent, chaos, daddy issues?, Drama, Envy, family, fate, french, funeral, gender, hindsight, mommy:mother, mother, Paris, spontaneity, stubbornness, teenage, wild child, Womanhood

The Shrouded Woman – How dead is dead?

 The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal has been my favourite of the books we have read so far. I certainly found it the most compelling, and recognised many of the themes that were going on.

I think the theme that most stood out to me was that of realisation. We as people tend to be our most sober around death, and you often hear people talking about their realisations of what really matters in life and how they want to live each passing day only after being confronted with mortality; be it their own or someone dear to them. Bombal manages to take this theme and subvert it by showing that while those who live are faced with hard-hitting realisations, so are the dead. 

The regret of wasted time is one that we have all felt (I reckon it’s one of the most universal regrets), including Ana Maria. She is struck by this realisation when she is reunited with her first love, only to realise that they both loved each other despite all the years they’d been apart. Her cry of “Oh God, dear God! Must we die in order to know?” (p176) really hit home for me. At the time of writing, I have been fortunate enough to not have felt the impact of a death close to me. However, I have seen people I love be devastated by grief and the loss of someone dear. Death is a very taboo subject in many societies, which makes it difficult to talk about openly. This often causes it to be an “out of mind, out of sight” situation where people aren’t exposed to it until it happens, and the shock of it all can be very disorientating.

Beside death, a theme that is worth talking about is that of beauty. In this book, beauty can be lumped in with jealousy, insecurity, and the male gaze. Maria Griselda, the character known for being astonishingly beautiful. She reminds me a bit of Remedios the Beauty in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude in that her beauty supposedly causes men to make bad decisions, and then she’s held accountable for things that she has no control over. 

Maria Griselda’s beauty is also a source of suffering for the women in the novel, with Silvia eventually resorting to suicide because she was so jealous of this woman for sTeaLiNg hEr HusBanD; “I thought I was lovely until I met Maria Griselda. Maria Griselda is a hundred times more beautiful than I!” (p193). However, her beauty can never be held in isolation from other perspectives. All the suffering and emotions that are felt as a result of her appearance come from the male gaze. Be it men’s disloyalty to their wives, or women’s jealousy as a result of their inherent value as women being threatened, it all comes down to what men think. It is what it is I guess. Bombal puts it more eloquently than I do: “Why oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (p226).

There’s so much more to discuss about this novel, since there are many rich themes. However, the question I pose is: Are emotions a good “reason to be”? If so, is hatred a bad one?

Posted in Blogs, Bombal | Tagged with beauty, death, gender, jealousy, male gaze, perspective, realisation, regret, taboo

The Shrouded Woman – How dead is dead?

 The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal has been my favourite of the books we have read so far. I certainly found it the most compelling, and recognised many of the themes that were going on.

I think the theme that most stood out to me was that of realisation. We as people tend to be our most sober around death, and you often hear people talking about their realisations of what really matters in life and how they want to live each passing day only after being confronted with mortality; be it their own or someone dear to them. Bombal manages to take this theme and subvert it by showing that while those who live are faced with hard-hitting realisations, so are the dead. 

The regret of wasted time is one that we have all felt (I reckon it’s one of the most universal regrets), including Ana Maria. She is struck by this realisation when she is reunited with her first love, only to realise that they both loved each other despite all the years they’d been apart. Her cry of “Oh God, dear God! Must we die in order to know?” (p176) really hit home for me. At the time of writing, I have been fortunate enough to not have felt the impact of a death close to me. However, I have seen people I love be devastated by grief and the loss of someone dear. Death is a very taboo subject in many societies, which makes it difficult to talk about openly. This often causes it to be an “out of mind, out of sight” situation where people aren’t exposed to it until it happens, and the shock of it all can be very disorientating.

Beside death, a theme that is worth talking about is that of beauty. In this book, beauty can be lumped in with jealousy, insecurity, and the male gaze. Maria Griselda, the character known for being astonishingly beautiful. She reminds me a bit of Remedios the Beauty in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude in that her beauty supposedly causes men to make bad decisions, and then she’s held accountable for things that she has no control over. 

Maria Griselda’s beauty is also a source of suffering for the women in the novel, with Silvia eventually resorting to suicide because she was so jealous of this woman for sTeaLiNg hEr HusBanD; “I thought I was lovely until I met Maria Griselda. Maria Griselda is a hundred times more beautiful than I!” (p193). However, her beauty can never be held in isolation from other perspectives. All the suffering and emotions that are felt as a result of her appearance come from the male gaze. Be it men’s disloyalty to their wives, or women’s jealousy as a result of their inherent value as women being threatened, it all comes down to what men think. It is what it is I guess. Bombal puts it more eloquently than I do: “Why oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (p226).

There’s so much more to discuss about this novel, since there are many rich themes. However, the question I pose is: Are emotions a good “reason to be”? If so, is hatred a bad one?

Posted in Blogs, Bombal | Tagged with beauty, death, gender, jealousy, male gaze, perspective, realisation, regret, taboo

The Shrouded Woman (Week 4)

I’m not sure that I “enjoyed” The Shrouded Woman, as I found it to be quite sad; however, it certainly struck me as unique, and it made me consider gender and society from a perspective that I wouldn’t normally entertain: the perspective of a woman who has not only “lost,” but died. When I describe Ana Maria […]

Posted in Blogs, Bombal | Tagged with gender, modernism

Paris Peasant – A novel that is not a novel? How novel!

Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant was certainly an easier read for me than Proust’s Swann’s Way was. I imagine it is to do with the translation, though of course the writing style of the original author. In fact, I found myself thinking about translation a lot while reading this book. There were parts that had very interesting metaphors and jokes that I would love to see in the original language. I especially noticed this in the F.M.R. section where even the translator made a note that the original pun worked so much better. I suppose this is one of the weaknesses of translation; you can never conserve all the layers of meaning within a word or a phrase because you always have to choose one. If you can find a way to make it work with more than one meaning then you’re lucky.

Before starting the book, I knew that Aragon was part of the surrealist, avant-garde movement and you can tell. Paris Peasant has been described as a “novel-that-[is]-not-a-novel” and I agree with that description because there isn’t really a story that I could pick up on. Truthfully, it felt more like Aragon’s personal musings than a novel, but it was interesting nonetheless. 
That said, some of his musings aren’t particularly savoury, especially those about women. The way he describes women struck me as being a bit… weird… to say the least. Numerous paragraphs on women’s hair, their bodies, how much he likes blondes… let’s just say that he wouldn’t pass the 2022 vibe check. But we kind of knew that already, and I think he did too. After all, he did say that it “matters very little to me whether or not I have reason on my side. I do not seek to be right. I seek the concrete.” 
So I don’t think he’d be particularly bothered about our opinions. Or anyone’s opinions. Because he said some things about religion that would be controversial today, let alone the 1920s. As a communist, you can see the threads of Karl Marx’s ideas in his writing, especially in the parts about religion. He comments that religion is a sign of “mental laziness” and notices that religion is becoming replaced with a sense of human morality. Certainly, we can see that religiosity has declined over the past century or so, so his prediction wasn’t completely inaccurate.
In fact, some of his predictions were funnily accurate. One of the first quotes that really caught my attention was about how young people will eschew work, marriage, and children (or something along those lines, unfortunately I can’t find the exact quote anymore, try as I might). I thought it was a very interesting observation, especially since nowadays the “Child-free by choice” and “I don’t dream of labour” movements are increasing in popularity, especially among young adults.
In all, I’m not entirely sure that I managed to glean every message from the book and I think I’d have to read it a second time to better understand it, but what I did pick up was definitely thought-provoking. The question I’d like to present is; What makes a novel a novel, if this is a “novel-that-is-not-a-novel”?

Posted in Aragon, Blogs | Tagged with avant-garde, communism, gender, Louis Aragon, opinion, paris peasant, perspective, religion, Surrealism, translation

Paris Peasant – A novel that is not a novel? How novel!

Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant was certainly an easier read for me than Proust’s Swann’s Way was. I imagine it is to do with the translation, though of course the writing style of the original author. In fact, I found myself thinking about translation a lot while reading this book. There were parts that had very interesting metaphors and jokes that I would love to see in the original language. I especially noticed this in the F.M.R. section where even the translator made a note that the original pun worked so much better. I suppose this is one of the weaknesses of translation; you can never conserve all the layers of meaning within a word or a phrase because you always have to choose one. If you can find a way to make it work with more than one meaning then you’re lucky.

Before starting the book, I knew that Aragon was part of the surrealist, avant-garde movement and you can tell. Paris Peasant has been described as a “novel-that-[is]-not-a-novel” and I agree with that description because there isn’t really a story that I could pick up on. Truthfully, it felt more like Aragon’s personal musings than a novel, but it was interesting nonetheless. 
That said, some of his musings aren’t particularly savoury, especially those about women. The way he describes women struck me as being a bit… weird… to say the least. Numerous paragraphs on women’s hair, their bodies, how much he likes blondes… let’s just say that he wouldn’t pass the 2022 vibe check. But we kind of knew that already, and I think he did too. After all, he did say that it “matters very little to me whether or not I have reason on my side. I do not seek to be right. I seek the concrete.” 
So I don’t think he’d be particularly bothered about our opinions. Or anyone’s opinions. Because he said some things about religion that would be controversial today, let alone the 1920s. As a communist, you can see the threads of Karl Marx’s ideas in his writing, especially in the parts about religion. He comments that religion is a sign of “mental laziness” and notices that religion is becoming replaced with a sense of human morality. Certainly, we can see that religiosity has declined over the past century or so, so his prediction wasn’t completely inaccurate.
In fact, some of his predictions were funnily accurate. One of the first quotes that really caught my attention was about how young people will eschew work, marriage, and children (or something along those lines, unfortunately I can’t find the exact quote anymore, try as I might). I thought it was a very interesting observation, especially since nowadays the “Child-free by choice” and “I don’t dream of labour” movements are increasing in popularity, especially among young adults.
In all, I’m not entirely sure that I managed to glean every message from the book and I think I’d have to read it a second time to better understand it, but what I did pick up was definitely thought-provoking. The question I’d like to present is; What makes a novel a novel, if this is a “novel-that-is-not-a-novel”?

Posted in Aragon, Blogs | Tagged with avant-garde, communism, gender, Louis Aragon, opinion, paris peasant, perspective, religion, Surrealism, translation

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