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Feminism in Goblin Market: the Economics of the Victorian Woman

October 11, 2021

academia, capitalism, criticism, economy, feminism, Gothic, literature, poetry, society, Victorian

I’ve been going through a… Goblin Market phase recently, as you might recall. So, I decided to write a brief, accessible post on feminism in Goblin Market. Christina Rossetti’s poem is rich in symbolism, and an interpretation related to feminism and economics couldn’t be absent.

Academic criticism has explored feminism in Goblin Market – a lot – so I’m certainly not breaking any new ground here. After all, this post is based on my BA thesis and therefore isn’t exceptionally deep or analytic to begin with. However, I still think there are intriguing viewpoints in it, with important repercussions for our times, too.

Is feminism in Goblin Market about sex? Is it about control? It’s about these and more. Nonetheless, my focus is mostly on economic independence: how the Victorian woman (and, by association any woman) is as free as her ability to provide for herself and set the rules of the (economic) game. The lessons from the Victorian era are still applicable today, and feminism in Goblin Market is, I’d argue, pertinent to many of our contemporary discussions.

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Tell Me, Mariner – a Collection of Transcendent Short Stories

October 4, 2021

Fiction

creativity, imagination, literary fiction, literature, short story

Tell Me, Mariner is a collection of short stories I’ve recently put together. More still, it’s a collection of what I refer to as transcendent short stories. If you remember “1992”, that I recently published here, it’s part of this very collection.

This collection features The Mariner, a character who is very special in my work, for reasons that become clearer to readers of this volume. In a nutshell, The Mariner is a character that is, quite literally, central in many of my novels. He’s not a main character in any of them, and he’s not even literally present in all of them – though he is figuratively present. Recall what we’ve said about style and authorial trademarks.

If all this sounds abstract, remember that this is a collection of transcendent short stories. Part metaphorical, part magical-realism, part Kafkaesque.

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What Is Cargo Cult Writing and Why It’s Damaging

September 27, 2021

Society, Writing

fallacy, ignorance, post hoc, society, writing

A cargo cult is a belief system in which a group of people – typically indigenous tribes in contact with a technologically advanced culture – perform imitative rituals expecting a deity to offer them, too, the same technology. So far so good. But what about cargo cult writing?

Allow me first to talk a bit more about cargo cults, because the essence is important in understanding what is cargo cult writing and why it’s damaging to you as an author.

As Wikipedia informs us, although the phenomenon is older, it began to be noticeable in Pacific islands after WW2, when isolated cultures came in contact with American and Japanese expeditionary forces that arrived (by air) in great numbers and with advanced logistical support :

After the war, the soldiers departed. Cargo cults arose, attempting to imitate the behaviors of the soldiers, thinking that this would cause the soldiers and their cargo to return. […] Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles. The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.

The concept of a cargo cult is often used as a metaphor to describe any activity where one imitates something without understanding it, expecting the same result. In some vague sense, it’s a post-hoc fallacy. “I saw a black cat and then I tripped and fell. It’s the black cat’s fault, so I better avoid black cats”.

As for cargo cult writing, you might have already guessed it: It’s when an author imitates what others do without realizing why or how, expecting similar results. Let’s see the various ways this can happen, and how to avoid it.

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