L-21-05-05-2014

1. L-21-05-05-2014 Papers: Get them in by tomorrow. Formatting: get it right, all particulars, to get it evaluated. If I sent it back, fix the problem and resubmit asap through the catalyst drop box. 252_14 Headers: what is the problem? 45% evidently unable to get it done. Autonomy & self-sufficiency: do you need someone else to do your work for you?

2. Critique: Isabel emerges, as others watch—what she looks for. Gilbert Osmond Lord Warburton Lydia Touchett Ralph Touchett Daniel Isabel Madame SerenaMerle Florence Pansy Caspar Goodwood Henrietta Stackpole Caspar Goodwood Rosier / Pansy /Countess Gemeni Trying “to make out if she is happy.” p. 416

3. Osmond • The care of introducing him: there is almost no direct irony: see next slide esp. • Exceedingly clever, No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please--paints in water-colours; like me, only better than I. • Madame Merle: the cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself” Ralph knows. (p. 154-5) Irony seeps from this. • Ralph foresees Isabel’s reaction. Consider what he thinks when she sees Osmond.

4. 171-72: first mention • 171-2 • He's exceedingly clever, a man made to be distinguished; but, as I tell you, you exhaust the description when you say he's Mr. Osmond who lives tout bêtement in Italy. No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please--paints in water-colours; like me, only better than I. His painting's pretty bad; on the whole I'm rather glad of that. Fortunately he's very indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a sort of position. He can say, 'Oh, I do nothing; I'm too deadly lazy. You can do nothing to-day unless you get up at five o'clock in the morning.' In that way he becomes a sort of exception; you feel he might do something if he'd only rise early. He never speaks of his painting to people at large; he's too clever for that. But he has a little girl--a dear little girl; he does speak of her. He's devoted to her, and if it were a career to be an excellent father he'd be very distinguished.

5. The process • Isabel, aiming high, overshoots the mark disastrously. • What looks “fine” to her? • Does she have any basis for it other than what she imagines? • Madame Merle: a miracle of candor and self possession, free and unconstrained, autonomous, clever, always appears at her best. (consider disguises) • Gilbert Osmond: self effacement, no aggrandizement, no empty pride, no obvious self-deceptions. • But he really is exactly as he was first described, and far, far worse.