Scared students: a fitting title for Halloween.

"So, how are your classes going", asks the Creative Writing tutor with whom I share an office. I only really see her on the day she has an office hour, and she isn't usually this chatty. I was worried she felt left out of the 'early modernist faction' that is the rest of our shared office, and I'm really pleased that she doesn't seem to be quite as cut off as I thought.

I say mine are going really well: chatty students (not always on the right topic, but easily steered back on track), good attendance, reasonable amount of preparation (although we'll see - so far they haven't had a vast amount of prep to do...). All in all, I'm quite pleased with how they're doing. "How about you?", I ask.

"Well, not too bad. Although they aren't coping very well with the virtual learning environment - and when I look at other tutors' folders there, their students seem to be coping much better". I point out that this might not actually be the case - the other tutors might just be tidying up their folders. "And," she says, "they've taken a vote and decided they are scared of me, and that wasn't the sort of atmosphere I was going for."

"Well, no.... Taken a vote? How did they tell you this?"

"Just that they'd taken a vote and were scared of me. Are yours scared of you?"

I'm fairly sure my students aren't scared of me. If they are, they really don't show it. Maybe I'm just not a scary person - not that Creative Writing tutor is. Maybe I just have more confident students. Maybe I'm not scary enough. I guess time will tell - will they read the novels for later classes / hand in their work on time / continue with the good attendance...?

But I think that if your students are prepared to tell you that they have taken a vote and decided that they are scared of you, then they can't be that scared. My advice would probably be to find a way to make them laugh; a shared giggle goes a long way.

Any other suggestions?

A post of sad news.

Yesterday my family had to say goodbye to a much loved pet: our collie, Rosie, who had been ill for some time. It is always difficult to lose such a clever and affectionate member of the family, but it is comforting to know that she is no longer in pain, or struggling with a rare doggy disorder (an extraordinary dog like Rosie wouldn't settle for a common-or-garden illness).

I'm sending extra hugs to Sees Through the Eyes of Children and The Artist to whom she 'officially' belonged, although really Rosie was always in charge.

Rosie taught my Little Dog a lot of things - some good habits, some bad. And we will all miss her very much indeed.

Taming the Shrew

*** Spoiler warning if you intend to see the RSC Taming of the Shrew ***

Yesterday I went to see the RSC production of The Taming of the Shrew with a group of students. I had been told it was a controvertial Shrew (you can read reviews here and here) but didn't know much else about it.

It is a particularly brutal production. There is a lot of physical violence throughout, and Petruchio's 'taming' of Katherina is shown deliberately and overtly as acts of mental and physical cruelty.

The production was not without comedy, particularly in the scenes with Bianca and her suitors, with Tranio and Biondello, but the comedy was rarely with Petruchio and Katherina. I think this is what has caused such controversy. Petruchio's scenes of 'taming' have, in other productions, been played comically. And, I think, some audiences do not want their Shakespeare - particularly their Shakespearean comedy - to be so harsh / brutal / condemnatory of patriarchal values. But the RSC did not show anything in their Petruchio / Kate scenes that Shakespeare did not write. It was only their interpretation in performance that seemed to be shocking.

Despite his brutality on stage, Petruchio's speech in Act IV still provoked some laughter:

Thus have I politicly begun my reign,
And 'tis my hope to end successfully.
...
She ate no meat today, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not.
As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I'll find about the making of the bed,
And here I'll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets.
Ay, and amid this hurly, I intend
That all is done in reverend care of her.
And in conclusion she shall watch all night,
And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl,
And with the clamour keep her still awake.
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,
And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.
He that knows better how to tame a shrew,
Now let him speak: 'tis charity to show. (4.1.175-198)


I wonder whether it is an audience's need to find comedy here that provoked the laughter, or whether it is related to a modern, western understanding that the idea of an husbandly 'reign' or 'shrew taming' should be absurd. But there was nothing comic in the delivery of this speech, or in the scene that preceded it. And the emphasis put on killing his wife with kindness, even metaphorically, was deeply disturbing. The most painful scene, for me, was one in which Katherina was shown to offer sexual favours to Petruchio's downtrodden servant Grumio - who himself had been shown, up to this point, to be the very lowest of the characters in the play - if he would give her food. He both humiliates her and denies her the food he has shown to her. Although Katherina delivers her final speech of wifely obedience with dignity, her subsequent on stage almost lifeless submission to Petruchio's sexual appetite leaves no doubt in this production that Kate is a defeated woman, however much scope for ambiguity the play itself might allow. It is a very dark production.

But that said, I thought it was an extremely good and thought provoking production. And I wish my class of Shakespeare students from last year had seen it. It might have made one or two of them think more critically about their uncritical, 'un-scare-quoted' use of the word 'taming' in their essays. Their unquestioning acceptance of it as a term was slightly concerning to me, and my suggestions in seminars that this was not necessarily presented as a good thing in the play went unheard in several cases.

They would not have been able to dismiss this production's interpretation quite so readily.

Dear administrators of various departments and offices.

I was distressed to receive your recent email informing me that due to a number of factors causing a delay in various processes (which means that I cannot pinpoint a nameable person whose fault this is) my contract will not be through all of the necessary administrative hoops in time to pay me this month.

If I were not at the very bottom of the academic ladder, it's unlikely that I would be in this position (either with my personal finances, or dealing with the consequences of your delays). It seems that Big Named Academic brought to the University using the Magic Money Pots has signed his contract, which is, I have no doubt at all, going to be processed in time to pay this Big Named Academic as they agreed. Big Named Academic would create a bigger stink about this than I am able to do.

I understand that I will be paid for two months at the end of the following month, but by that point I will have been teaching for 7-8 weeks, and marked a quiz, an exercise and a batch of essays. I will also have had to pay two months' rent, bills, and travel to work expenses, none of which will accept a note that says 'I promise to pay you as soon as my employer, with whom I have not yet signed a contract and thus have no enforceable way of making them give me any money, actually pay me'.

I know my bills are not your responsibility. But processing my contract on time IS.

And it strikes me as slightly unfair that I will have done my job this month and I will not get paid. You will get paid in full, whether this part of your job is completed or not.

In the dark

Because I liked it, today I'm sharing with you a short passage from Jo Baker's novel The Telling that I'm reading - and thoroughly enjoying - at the moment. (No spoilers in the comments, please. I haven't finished it yet...):

"Sally and I made our bed up on the rug, and lay down. She fell instantly and deeply asleep, and began to snore.

A light continued on upstairs; it filtered down between the floorboards. I lay awake, looking up at it, my eyes gritty with fatigue. Dad knew, and Mam knew, and Sally knew, and Thomas knew, and everybody knew what was going on, everybody but me. It was not a pleasant feeling, to be alone in the dark."

Tempting...

This year, at the beginning of the academic year, I thought I'd try to stamp out my problem with student abbreviations of my name very early on. So, in the very first class when I introduced myself (sorry, the pseudonym makes this hard, but bear with me...), I said: "Welcome to First-Year English Lit. I am [Dr. Autumn Song]. I'd like these seminars to be quite informal so please call me [Autumn]. If I get you to call me [Dr. Song] you won't talk to me. Please don't call me [Aut], though, I'm not a big fan."

They seemed to accept this in the first group. In the second a very bright young man said "Can we call you [Dr. Song] if we want to? It sounds really cool."

I'm not supposed to say, "Yes it does!" at this point, am I...?