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At the encouragement of @edriguez, I'm going to reflect a bit today (and hopefully at the end of each week going forward) on the progress of the course that I'm teaching!
A brief note on the first week. Our first two classes were meant to introduce themes in the course via a discussion of the legend of La Llorona and the first film to feature her, La Llorona (dir. Ramon Peon, Mexico, 1933)
The discussion of La Llorona was really fruitful. The legend is so versatile and has appeared in so many different versions that it has a little bit of everything: gender relations, race/indigeneity, maternity, monstrosity, expectations for women as lovers and mothers, madness
We also read the introduction to The Feminist Reader to get a brief overview of the history of feminist literary criticism, the many different possible feminist approaches, and ongoing debates in the field.
When it comes to my teaching practice for this first week, I felt pretty challenged--it's tough to balance getting to know the students, introducing the basics of the course, Zoom technology issues, and not really knowing if Zoom silence is understanding or confusion
Now, on to the second week. I was feeling a lot more comfortable on Tuesday because students had their first week of discussion board posts, so it gave me a way to register what they were interested in about the texts, where their understanding was, etc.
The posts were very good quality, really engaging with some key aspects of the texts. I think the texts were also pretty well selected for this week: Horacio Quiroga's El almohadon de plumas, and Maria Luisa Bombal's La amortajada. We also read the intro to Writing on the Body.
The goal for this week was to talk about how the category "woman" is (unevenly, based on race, class, sexuality, etc.) constructed, and particularly how it's mediated through the body. To talk about what makes or unmakes an "ideal woman."
In the primary texts, we looked at how the female protagonists were represented, where they did or didn't fit into the ideal, their relationships to race, class, and sexuality, their positions in the bourgeois family order.
I felt like the students were particularly engaged with these texts. They had a ton to say about Quiroga on Tuesday, and had some incredible insights about the origins of suspense and horror in that story, the formal way that it builds in such a short text.
Particularly notable is the way that Alicia's petite, feminine body becomes weaker, and how her prescribed bedrest--a commonly suggested medical remedy for ill women--is ultimately what kills her. And this is a horror of class as well: working women can't take bedrest...
or necessarily afford luxurious feather pillows. A student also noted how much Alicia's symptoms correspond with the concept of hysteria: her illness is a particularly feminine one.
Our discussion of La amortajada was similarly fruitful. Here, we have another dead woman, but she's narrating her own story, her own life, from her corpse as she lies through her wake and funeral. She's also high-class, also beautiful, also in a cold and disappointing marriage.
Formally, this novella is quite complicated, since it shifts perspective multiple times and also follows a stream of consciousness. The students had a bit more trouble sorting out the action here, but ultimately said it wasn't too difficult. We talked about these formal choices.
Key for our discussion so far of La amortajada has been, again, the representation of the protagonist's body and her relationships with men (lovers) and family members. Particularly interesting was the eroticism of her descriptions, and the way she frames her experiences with...
her first lover in pretty violent terms of possession and ownership. Her first pregnancy and abortion/miscarriage is ultimately completely unrelated to maternity, and entirely about feeling marked, physically changed, by her lover.
Her later motherhood is rather disappointing. She has a favorite child; poor relationships with her other children; a family friend/potential lover who wants to possess her but whom she rejects and keeps at a distance.
We talked a lot about those other relationships and the contrasts that the narrative sets up between expectations for women and the protagonist's views on gender relations.
In terms of teaching practice for Thursday, I had a bit more of a difficult time. The students were a bit quieter, but I think I'm improving in asking questions that open up their thinking and drawing their attention to key passages for us to unpack together.
Sitting in silence and waiting for students to speak up is incredibly difficult for me, personally. I use two techniques to prevent myself from interrupting the silence and talking too much: one, I remember the words of a former therapist, which were that people hate silence and
if you just wait long enough, they will fill it. It feels longer than it actually is. Two, I make a cup of tea before class and take a long, leisurely drink whenever I'm waiting for someone to speak up.
Goals for next week: We're finishing La amortajada Tuesday. I'd like to give them a chance in breakout rooms to talk just to a few people, so they can gain a bit of confidence in talking in front of the class and dig into the text a bit on their own.
I'd also like to return to the feminist approaches we discussed and speak more deliberately about the different ways to read a text--so maybe each breakout group will get a question about the text that allows them to use one of those approaches.
Finally, I want to reflect a bit on our first "unit" about the ideal woman. What do the texts we've seen so far have in common in terms of their representations of women? Why do these texts use horror to convey women's negotiations of domestic, sexual, and maternal relationships?
What about women's bodies is/could be horrifying? For/to whom?
