Thoughts and Such

This week we had to read both Boy Meets Girl and a selection from A Room of One's Own. I liked both readings and I'm happy to report that I may have actually understood them as opposed to the previous readings for our class.

First: Boy Meets Girl. The discussion in yesterday's class about whether Anthea becomes involved with Robin as a result of seeing her tag and misunderstanding the word Iphisol was interesting. When I initially read the book I thought the big moment for Anthea was when she decided to continue her streak of rebellion, leave the meeting, and go down to see what is going on with the Pure sign. This was the moment, in my opinion, that set in motion her relationship with Robin but I can't say that I attribute Anthea's decision to her curiosity about the word Iphisol. There is no evidence in the novel that suggests that Anthea knew what Robin was doing to the sign; that she knew ahead of time that Robin was the artist of the graffiti she had seen earlier in the day. In fact, she thinks that she's doing "some kind of maintenance on the sign" (42). To me it seems that the meeting between Robin and Anthea is coincidence.

Another thing that has stuck with me since I initially read the book was that Anthea's name means "a blooming of flowers" (82). We find this out right after Midge recalls that Robin adorned the letter L-E-Z with little flowerheads, "like the letters are the branches of the tree and they've all just come into bloom" (73). I'm not entirely sure whether Smith intended there to be a connection here or if I'm just reading too much into it. I'd like to think that it shows that both Anthea and Robin have had to find a positive meaning in words. Lez could be taken as derogatory but Robin chooses to make it something beautiful and Anthea thinks she's named after a character on TV when in actuality her name means so much more. I'm not sure if that really makes any sense. I'm still kind of spinning my wheels on it. Thoughts?

Finally, we didn't get to really discuss A Room of One's Own but I really liked how empowering it is for women. I loved when Woolf quotes John Langdon Davies. He said "'that when children cease to be altogether desirable, women cease to be altogether necessary'" (120). And then she uses this quote to encourage other women to go out and be something more than childbearers because they have more to offer than that. I'm definitely looking forward to discussing this reading more on Thursday.