vswpaper's Diaryland Diary

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Three at one blow

It took a while, but I've made it through the last three books--To the Lighthouse (pretty much as expected), Orlando (a trial, but I ended up with one excellent item), and A Room of One's Own (a pleasure to read, and more useful than I thought it might be). The exciting part of the latter two was realizing that rather than being sort of anomalies in the series, in fact they're where VSW is shaping the ideas of androgyny that flower in the person of Bernard (and so figure more centrally in my paper, praise be).

A couple days ago, I took a stab at my thesis statement--or rather my thesis paragraph. I'm taking it for granted that needing a set of sentences, rather than a single one, to explain my idea is a function of doing a 20-page rather than a 5-page paper. My thesis wasn't bad, and was certainly a useful exercise. And after a day or so an important point occurred to me. I'd framed the thesis along my original lines--just saying that the books were a recognized series, and here's an interesting thing that happens--and then I realized that in fact the series was coherant because VSW was exploring how to present character through it, and of course a key part of that is the differences between men and women, and my point about incorporating feminine characteristics into a male character is a not just co-incident with this path she took but a key part of walking it. VERY pleased with that, I was.

So now I'm fumbling a bit on what to do. I think really I need to organize my quotes. Just culling the useful ones and putting them in order will probably do half the work of writing the paper. And writing is what I really need to get down to, particularly to meet my deadline of December 31.

11:07 p.m. - 2006-12-27

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