Hi Alphas,
Welcome to Alphaday 7, Season XVIII. I wish you all a happy, fruitful writerly year 2022 … without forgetting your good health. Let’s hope they’ll put a lid on the pandemic and banish it to the darkest realms of the past where it belongs.
We’ve had a little break to make room for the traditional festivities. We’re now ready to continue our writerly exploits and make the most of exploring our favourite activity in the pleasant company of like-minded scribblers.
We haven’t been idle since last year and the Alpha team has been busy collecting your many contributions and preparing the way ahead. What more can we want? The agenda for today looks as follows:
Alphaday 7, Season XVIII agenda:
- This bulletin from me
- A call for entries for the 2nd edition of The Open Page, season XVIII, from Christine
- The collated entries for the dialogue challenge from Francesca
- The feedback for the Aristotle challenge from Stephen
- A call for contributions to the Alpha Log, issue 4, from Phil
This will be delivered to your in-boxes in the course of the day. Enjoy!
I have no particular Alpha news to report and I hope you’re all well and coping with the ups and downs of ‘life generally’.
General news. We’re well aware that certain types of literature, incl. films, can damage vulnerable and sensitive souls. There is a need to protect such persons from exposure to excessive violence and pornography. One English university decided to issue warnings about the dangerous contents of certain novels that were on the reading list of English Literature undergraduates. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens were flagged by the university authorities for scenes that some students might find disturbing. (One might suspect that the warnings were issued to ensure that the novels were read from beginning to end without skipping a single page. But that’s a somewhat cynical attitude.)
The scene in the red room in Jane Eyre (Ch.2)describes child abuse and is certainly disturbing. The opening chapter of Great Expectations also describes child abuse, threats and harassment of poor little Pip. There are many dramatic scenes in both novels, but: are they likely to damage the psychological health of the average 18-year-old? Compared to the level of violence and scenes of torture in your standard spy thriller, war novel etc I doubt it comes across as shocking or disturbing. As for sexual content of these Victorian novels, it seems to me that things have evolved drastically since then and your average 18-year-old is aware of this.
A far more truly horrific scene of blood-curdling atrocities that it would be advisable to warn the vulnerable reader about can be found in King Lear, Act III, sc.7. That scene is not easily forgotten once witnessed, whether on the page, on the stage or on TV. This is where the Duke of Cornwall utters the words ‘Out vile jelly’ as he gouges out Gloucester’s second eye moments after Regan has plunged a sword into a servant’s back because he objected to what was going on. This takes place centre stage, in front of the audience (or the reader) and it reeks of pure evil. Personally I think it’s easily as terrifying as that that other – modern – horrific atrocity in the film The Accused where Jodi Foster plays a waitress who’s gang-raped. If the undergraduates did King Lear for A-level and perhaps watched The Accused at some stage, I wonder what the effect on their mental health may have been. They’re unlikely to be shocked by Jane Eyre or Great Expectations. With the warning attached they might, however, read them in full instead of relying on internet SparkNotes and the like … and a jolly good job that’d be, too!
Christine