Reading Response – The Good Corn
CLB322 Reading Response
The Good Corn
From my first reading of The Good Corn I noticed that this text privileges patriarchal values, however as I re-read the text and participated in class discussions I discovered that this text is in fact completely embedded with representations of gender roles. The more I read the text the more I felt as though I was being positioned to frame the world from H.E Bates’ ideology regarding the organisation of society. H.E Bates has clearly constructed his narrative and characters to uphold the patriarchal values which he himself possesses and that which was the dominant ideology of the time it was written. Brian Moon speaks about this in his book Literary Terms and he states that, “All texts have numerous indirect sources, and their meanings come not only from individuals but from social practices, traditions and institutions” (Moon 2001, 1). H.E Bates wrote The Good Corn in 1951 a period where the media was bombarded with images urging women to become housewives and there was a heavy disapproval of feminism. Authors of the time went on to assert that feminists were “neurotically disturbed women afflicted with…penis envy” and argued that a healthy woman was one who followed her biological destiny and procreated on a regular basis.
I felt from my re-reading of the text that these 1950s ideologies clearly exist within the text and this ideal that a woman’s sole duty is to reproduce is certainly privileged. The construction of the character Mrs Mortimer personifies this belief regarding gender roles. In a class activity our tutor instructed us to come up with adjectives to describe Mrs Mortimer, words such as “grieving”, “maternal”, “confined” and “unfulfilled” were all discussed. The fact that Mrs Mortimer’s sterility destroys her life and her strong belief that ‘not to bear children was failure at living’ all reflects the violent damage the 1950s ethos had on women’s minds and bodies. My own cultural understanding of what the 1950s was like in terms of social classification assisted me in my interpretation of the text as I live in a time which encourages women to be educated. My culture values equal opportunities for men and women and frowns upon the ‘women belong in the kitchen’ ideology. Therefore, I see Mrs Mortimer as oppressed and as I read the text I constructed a reading of sympathy towards her. I discussed my feelings of sympathy towards Mrs Mortimer with my peers and they agreed with me that they also sympathised for her. I think the reason why we all read this character the same was because we all live in a society which regards women as more than their biological function to reproduce. We felt sad for Mrs Mortimer because she was raised in a society which manipulated her to belief that her inability to reproduce meant her existence was worthless. However, all texts are polysemes so perhaps people from other cultural backgrounds and experiences may read Mrs Mortimer differently. The fact that my whole class agreed on this reading of Mrs Mortimer makes me think that this is the invited reading and that all other readings would be classified as either alternate or resistant.
Before reading The Good Corn I was given the information that this story consisted of a married middle-aged couple and a younger woman who has come to work on the farm. Immediately, I began to form my own expectations about the events that would unfold in the story. Intertextuality played a major role in leading me to my expectations. I was able to predict the affair between Mr Mortimer and Elsie because of my exposure to many other existing texts where men become sexually tempted in such circumstances. Not so much to my surprise I was correct in my assumptions however in my mind I thought the affair would have been solely instigated by Mr Mortimer. I thought Elsie would be scarred by the event. This once again is due to my own cultural experiences as sexual predators that I’ve heard or read about are almost always men. Young girls always seem to be represented as naive and vulnerable victims. However, my assumptions here were wrong as Elsie welcomed Mr Mortimer’s sexual passes. The first time I read the text I read Elsie as an innocent victim even though I was aware that she welcomed Mr Mortimer’s sexual offers. This view of Elsie was challenged as I heard my peers’ opinions on the character. Partaking in class discussions which involved analysing a character enlightened me as to how I personally form assumptions and how my cultural background influences the way I read texts.
This is a highly useful task to run in the classroom as it assists one’s understanding of how all texts are polysemes and how readers construct their own meanings from texts based on their own cultural attitudes, values and beliefs. This activity will also awaken in students a sense of awareness when reading texts that authors are embedding their own cultural beliefs into the texts they write.
Reading Response – The Scarlatti Tilt
CLB322 Reading Response
The Scarlatti Tilt
The short story The Scarlatti Tilt gives true meaning to the term ‘short story’ as the text is constructed with as few as thirty-four words. My initial response to this text was that I found it odd. I wondered why we were given this text to read when we had previously been looking at short stories with conventional narratives consisting of a complication, climax and ending with a conclusion. Unlike the other texts I had been looking at this text did not have any of those functions and its unconventional form did not meet my expectations. Its open nature made me question the author’s intended reading as it didn’t provide me with answers. I could not identify the dominant reading as easily as I could with the other closed texts. It made me re-read the story to look for clues within the text that could help me piece together and formulate my own meaning.
From my first glance at the size of the text I immediately came to the assumption that this text would be filled with gaps and silences. It is obvious that a text so short is incapable of going into detail. This fact alone is what led me to assume that this story would rely on common sense assumptions by the reader to fill in the gaps and go places where the author has purposely not bothered to go. My first reading of the text solidified this assumption as whilst I was reading I unconsciously filled in the gaps of the text with my own ideals of what has happened.
As I re-read the text a few times I was convinced that my assumptions of the text were the desired or dominant reading which the author obviously intended. I came to the conclusion that what has happened in this text is a husband and wife were living together in their studio apartment in San Jose, the wife could no longer put up with her husband’s awful violin playing so she simply pulled out the revolver and shot him. Although, The Scarlatti Tilt is quite short my reading of the plot, setting and characters was quite detailed. I pictured their studio apartment to be small, cluttered, hot and claustrophobic. I envisioned the characters to be a newly married couple, who are financially struggling because the husband believed that practising his art was more important than working for a regular income. My immediate reaction to this text was a giggle – I read it as a humorous piece, a sort of parody of what newly wedded life is like. I did not at all read the text as a piece of realism rather I read at as a stretch of reality and therefore seeing it as comedic in style. I found it funny because it challenges the dominant ideology of the culture which I am from. In the society I live in violence against women is considered wrong as women are seen to be inferior and weak in comparison to men. Therefore a woman murdering her husband to me seems odd and challenges the dominant ideology of hegemonic masculinity. It was not until I discussed my detailed reading with other students in my class that I realised that my reading was not exactly the same as theirs.
The fact that all texts are polysemes was reinforced in my mind whilst listening to my peers speak about how they read the text. I realised that intertextuality influenced the way in which I filled in the gaps. I subconsciously related my reading of the text to one of my favourite musicals Chicago. Chicago has similarities to The Scarlatti Tilt as both stories have a woman murdering a male companion. Intertextuality also influenced the way some of my peers read the text as they related it to an episode of CSI and therefore read the text as a crime scene investigation. Through class discussion it was agreed that the main way we as readers constructed our readings of The Scarlatti Tilt was by filling in the gaps with already available texts with similar themes or conventions. This text would be useful to teach in the classroom as it can demonstrate the conventions of open texts to students. Role playing with this text would be a productive exercise as students could come up with many differing scenes due to the text’s scope for many different readings.
Reading Response – Stolen Car
CLB322 Reading Response
Stolen Car 
The only knowledge I was given upon reading the short story Stolen Car was that it was written by Archie Weller who is an Australian writer with an Aboriginal heritage. My initial prediction of this text was that this narrative would present the Indigenous discourse. I came to this prediction solely on my knowledge that texts contain cultural codes and therefore the author’s own cultural beliefs would be drawn upon in the text. As I was reading the text I saw my predictions come into fruition as this text is rooted with attitudes, values and beliefs of both Indigenous Australians as well as the cultural beliefs of White Australians of the time.
My personal response to this text was rather distressing. I cannot understand the chauvinistic cruelty which the Aboriginal people suffered from many White Australians. For me this text opened my eyes once again to the injustice of our actions against Indigenous Australians. In class we began to verbalise our personal response to this text and similar to my response my peers also felt saddened by Australia’s history and treatment of Aboriginals. A general consensus was that this text positioned us to feel great sympathy towards the protagonist of the text. The way in which I drew a reading of sympathy towards Aboriginals from this narrative is a result of my own cultural and social experiences. Being a Greek Australian I am lucky to have never directly suffered from racial discrimination myself. However, I know my father did a lot as a Greek growing up in Australia. This makes me very sensitive to racism and therefore I feel greatly for those Indigenous Australian’s who still receive unwarranted racist remarks. My own personal attitudes towards racism caused me to sympathise for the character Johnny.
This reading of sympathy was created through the way in which the author foregrounds many similes and metaphors to describe Johnny’s overwhelming sense of not belonging in the city of Perth. My reading of sympathy for Johnny was reinforced through the negative descriptions of the city and the images constructed of the White Australian Police force. The malicious language used by the police further impacted upon my reading of sympathy and presented a whole range of cultural attitudes which the White Australians upheld. The horrible actions of the police men reveal the ideology of the White Australians. The text represents the social system of the time and it is clearly evident through the construction of power that the dominant race were the White Australians. Even the language of the Aboriginal characters denotes that they are the oppressed group as Wallaby mentions to Johnny that “Ya won’t get a lift ‘ere mate, unless a Nyoongah comes along. Them white bastards to good for us,” (Weller, p.129).
In class we discussed how young Aboriginal character’s like Johnny believed that going to jail was a rite of passage. This is largely due to their lack of access to basic social resources. This ideology is evident in the text as the character Wallaby takes pride in his crimes and his involvement with the police. Weller describes Wallaby’s point of view as “Empty bragging. A pitiful attempt to prove a manhood that doesn’t exist. Stamped out of existence by generations of white men” (Weller, p.135). Weller’s inclusion of this comment is a technique of narrator point of view. Moon states that this technique is a powerful instrument for producing narrative effects and it has powerful effects on our reading of a text (Moon, p.94). This comment positioned me as a reader to feel sympathy for Wallaby who is no doubt a criminal, however I read him as a victim rather than a perpetrator of crime.
I think a text like this is an ideal short story for senior English teachers to analyse with students. Stolen Car has numerous conventions which reveal how all texts are underpinned with certain discourses and positions its readers to frame the world from a certain point of view. This text deals with issues of power which come with race and ethnicity and by dissecting this text with a class students will be able to recognise how closely power is linked to cultural identity. Although, a teacher must take into account that this text should only be studied with mature students due to the texts use of course language and violent themes.
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