Everyday Delussions or why - I AM BILL

Everyday delusions

How we see ourselves and see others are the most common everyday delusions. I know a lot of people that think of themselves as complex when they appear to be almost stereotypes for certain social groups. I suspect this is a defence mechanism because there is a degree of self loathing in the personality of a lot of people. “I can’t be a Jock, all jocks are self centered dorks.”

My personal self loathing is nerdiness. To me a nerd is someone that dresses up as Worf to go to a star trek convention, or can talk for hours about the merits of “the spice.” Aside from Scifi a nerd also can be a bookworm or a fan of Cher who makes model cars at age 41. However, I have a library in my apartment; I still occasionally build models (ships planes etc…) Somewhere in my library I have the plans for the starship Enterprise, and I wear a tie to work even though my director doesn’t. I watch star trek (any of them)am I a nerd? Maybe.

So is it really important what boxes we put ourselves into or what boxes other people put us into? The answer is simple , NO. Putting yourself in or out of a box is simplifying yourself or defining yourself by standards that will inevitably limit who you are. I may be a nerd by my own definition or by the definition of others but does that make me a better or worse person? No. To think of people outside of these boxes improves us and can better our lives. How? I have a friend who has a treky licence plate but no one would call him a nerd because he is also a foremost authority on Classical studies. If I met him at a trek conference would I think of him as a great thinker, or would I put him in the nerd box? I have a friend that plays in a punk band, but is one of the best government policy analysts in Canada. If I was to place either of these individuals in stereotype boxes before I got to know them would I actually have taken the time to get to know them? If punks tend to be anarchists and as my associate is a punk do I want to associate with anarchists?


My actions do not define me, my words are not all of me, and my clothes do not make me. I am many things and none should be abhorrent to me. I am a nerd in some ways, I am simple at times and complex at others, I have jock tendencies I am a feminist male, who has some sexist tendencies. All these things are part of me they are not me.

In truth “I AM BILL”

God is a Whip-poor-will

Ever get that odd feeling something is calling you. I know its probably my subconscious mind reminding me that I did not visit my Grandpa often enough before he died and that my uncle Vern is not getting any younger, but the oddest combination of things came together today.

I was driving home and I thought I heard a Whip-poor-will, it turned out to be a sound coming from the music in the next car. My mind wandered again as it does on the dull urban shuffle home, and I thought I hadn't heard a whip-poor-will in years and would have to look and see if their range had changed as urban sprawl had taken over their nesting grounds (dried leaves on edges of fields).

At lunch I did some websurfing and ran across another Blog run by an Arends family, that was totally unrelated to me, but it got me thinking about Uncle Vern and Tanta Inga who I used to visit when I stayed at my grandparents in Fort Erie.

So when I got home tonight I began by googling whip-poor-wills and found that the range had, as I thought, moved to northern Ontario and not one bird had been seen in Southern Ontario in years. I miss the evening cry of the whip-poor-will it reminded me of my childhood. Then as I looked to see if there were any sightings at all in Southern Ontario I discovered one birders report, that mentioned hearing a whip-poor-will off Gilmore road in Fort Erie, the same road my Grandparents had lived on for years. I couldn't help but think that the bird must have been on the edge of the country club golf course that my grandmother worked at for years.

So was it a coincidence, my conscience telling me to visit Uncle Vern or the still quiet voice I so often ignore. Well God I'm listening I think I will go visit Vern and Inga sometime this spring.

Don't Sit Up Straight

Aching back? Don't sit up straight, study says

Updated Mon. Nov. 27 2006 1:03 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

A new study is making it easier to ignore your mother's sage advice on sitting up straight.

In fact, the stick-straight posture is bad for your back, researchers say.

The best posture is actually a 135-degree angle, which would mean one would sit at their desk leaning backwards slightly, according to new research presented Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

This position takes the pressure off the spinal disks in the lower back, researchers say.

"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal," said Waseem Amir Bashir, author and clinical fellow in the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital.

more . . .

Pneumonia Sucks

Photoshop Van Gogh

Things are simply impressions
before my morning coffee.















Including
----Me----

Bill The Hooker

Bet you didn't know I was a Hooker in Vermont?











Michelle and I came across a Shaker (almost defunct Christian sect) heritage site in Vermont and there was a display of Shaker crafts going on that day. Who knew I would make a good Hooker. Rug Hooker that is. :-)

The Marginalized Contribution of Amerindians to The Society of New France.

The Marginalized Contribution of Amerindians to The Society of New France.
By Wilhelm (Bill) Arends


Amerindians in the History of New France were to a large degree marginalized. Their history has been at times treated as a side issue to the overall history. Past histories of the period have made more of the French and English impact on the continents history with only a passing mention of the Amerindian contribution. They were only mentioned if they participated in European progress. The marginalization of Amerindian history is a by product of the non-Amerindian authors that wrote the History of New France.
An entirely Eurocentric approach to Indian Policy does not supply a thoroughly equitable history of Amerindians in New France. Historian J.M. Bumsted in his introduction to Cornelius Jaenen’s article on The Meeting of the French and Amerindians in the seventeenth Century points out that this Eurocentric history is now changing. Bumsted states that “while it was once common to deal with the history of European settlement as if the native people scarcely existed and hardly mattered, most modern scholarship now recognizes the importance of those who lived in North America before the intrusion of Europeans.” A close look at the Indian Policy of New France and Amerindian actions shows how Amerindian interaction shaped France’s policy toward Amerindians. Religious issues also helped to shape European and Amerindian relations In New France to a large degree.
While Historians have argued that Amerindians were pawns in the competition between European nations over the continent of North America, new social historians have attempted to show that The interaction between Amerindians and the French colonist was a more symbiotic one. This relationship produced marked effects on New France’s Indian Policy.
Historian Bruce Trigger points out in his work The Indians and The Heroic Age of New France, “historians have been anxious to trace the origins of New France and because they view the Indians as a lost cause , have tended to dismiss or underrate the role played by the Indians in the early historic period.” Trigger states that historians have treated Amerindians as “having no history of their own.” He utilizes social science studies and in particular anthropological and Ethnological study to show that “ contrary to conventional interpretation, the history of New France prior to 1665 was overwhelmingly shaped by the Indians throughout.”
Though to say that New France did nothing to shape Indian culture, would be to dismiss the interactions of a materialistic versus a partially-materialistic culture. Trigger argues that as materialism gained a foot hold in North America, “A growing demand for furs led to warfare between different Indian groups which enhanced the power of chiefs who were successful traders.” This growth of trade was actively participated in by the Amerindians. They were not simply passive participants as Trigger points out “they were not unknown to manipulate factors of supply and demand in their own favour.” To say that this was totally a European development though would negate that Amerindians had no idea of material value. One aspect of Amerindian culture that demonstrates a concept of value is their approach to murder and compensation. While as Trigger points out that murder was the cause of many “blood Feuds or . . . intertribal warfare. . . there was a strong desire to avoid the destructive consequences of such behavior.”” Therefore as he states there was “an effort made to replace blood feud with compensation paid by the group to whom the murderer belonged to that of his victim.” The material nature of compensation in this context demonstrates that the Amerindians had a sense of value and the fur trade was not a far leap from their traditional way of life. The interaction between the Amerindians and the French was so great that Trigger concludes that “Their wishes had to be taken account of by any Europeans hoping to have successful dealings in the region [and] this suggests that the central focus of Canadian history prior to 1665 ought not to be its European colonizers but its native peoples.”
In another book more focused on the social aspects of Amerindian life and specifically the life of the Hurons Trigger expands on this Amerindian focused history. In The children of Aataentsic : A history of the Huron People to 1660, Trigger argues that a “reassessment” of Amerindian history is required. He states that this reassesment should be one “in which events are interpreted from a Huron [or Amerindian] perspective rather than from a French or Dutch one.” Trigger believes that “relations between Indians and Europeans in early Canada were very different from those farther south.” In the south the Europeans were more concerned with separating the Indian from his land. The acquisition of land was of far less importance in the North as Canadian Geography would help to make the land far less valuable. As Trigger notes ‘ It is clear, however that for a long time relations between Amerindians and whites in the territory on and bordering the Canadian Shield, were very different from what they were in the United States.” The fur trade played a greater role in French Amerindian relations and helped to shape France’s Indian policy. Trigger demonstrates this position by stating that:
“it was far easier for the white man to buy these furs from experienced Indian trappers than to hunt for them himself: hence as long as furs remained abundant and fetched a good price on European markets, a symbiotic relationship linked the indian hunter and the European trader.

Trigger believes that this relationship is best studied using ethnohistory and Anthropology. Recording aboriginal ways of life altered by European contact helps to bridge the gap between the “prehistory period studied by archaeologists [and the] recent period.” Because of the diminished nature of Indian cultures such as the Hurons. Anthropological studies of existing Iroquois helps us to understand the Hurons. As Trigger states “Iroquois culture can be used with caution, to gain better insight into the total configuration of Huron culture and hence to understand Huron behavior as it [was] reported by the French.”
Historian William J Eccles in his book France in America, like other historians tends to treat Amerindian history as a part of French history in America, but includes a much more detailed account of Amerindians thus giving their role a greater importance. Eccles includes Amerindians as a part of the economic and religious history of New France, outlining their contribution in his chapter on Merchants and Missionaries1632-1663. He examines the interaction between Amerindian and missionaries, in a more detailed fashion to show how this interaction led to a more humane Indian policy. What he accomplishes that other historians do not, is to link religion to Indian policy and show the logic behind its development.
Eccles states the importance of religion during the period was on the rise as there was a “religious revival that swept over France during the first half of the century” The Amerindians would both benefit and suffer from this religious fervor. As John Halkett In 1826 wrote in his work , Historical Notes respecting the Indians of North America with remarks on the Attempts made to Convert and Civilize Them, notes that:
In Canada, the French missionary entered upon his task with the fervour of a zealot, and often closed it by suffering the fate of a martyr. But after all, what was the result? Did the missionaries of New France, after one hundred and fifty years of zeal and exertion, leave behind them a single Indian tribe whom they had actually converted to Christianity? . . .as far as improvement of the Indian race was concerned the labour was thrown away.

Eccles cites the growth of religious orders during the period as contributing to positive Indian relations. New orders such as the Sulpicians, the Oratorians, and the Compagnie de St. Sacrement, were established in this wave of religious fervor. One of the prime goals of these orders was as Eccles states to “convert the pagan in all parts of the world,” and he notes that “Canada was one of the chief beneficiaries of the movement.” The main purpose of missionaries in New France thus became the conversion of the “pagan Indians,” to Christianity. The missionaries and the church helped to include the Amerindians more fully in the society of New France. The charter of the original Company of New France that was responsible for the colonization of New France, included a very specific clause respecting the rights of Amerindians in the society of New France. As Eccles points out:
Clause XVII declared that any Indians who embraced Christianity and became practicing members of the Roman Church were, without any further formality, to be accepted as French subjects with all the rights and privileges appertaining, including the right to settle in France, whenever they wished and acquire and dispose of property there as would a subject born in the Kingdom.

While Eccles notes that no Amerindian would take advantage of this privilege, he praises French Indian policy on the grounds that “no other European colonizing power advanced such a civilized concept.” This civilizing quest of the missionary orders was as the Journals des Jesuites, states to establish “a new Jerusalem blessed by God and made up of citizens destined for heaven.” This new Jerusalem on the banks of the St. Lawrence as Eccles states was “to further the great work: the conversion of the Indians nations to Christianity.”
Eccles like Trigger shows how Amerindians already had a materialistic based culture. Eccles states that the Hurons “Long before the French appeared on the scene . . . . had been a trading nation exchanging their surplus corn for Tobacco, dried meat, native copper and other goods from surrounding tribes.” While supporting the idea that the Amerindians were pawns in the European quest to control the resources and economy of North America Eccles believes that Europeans simply used Amerindian rivalries to their own benefit. He states that “although the enmity of the Iroquois and Huron Confederacies antedated the arrival of Europeans on the scene, the economic rivalry for control of the beaver trade between the French on the St. Lawrence and the Dutch on the Hudson certainly intensified it.”
Another conventional historian is George F.G. Stanley. Stanley in his book New France The Last Phase 1744-1760, like most authors treats Amerindians as a side to the History of New France. Stanley attempts to show how Amerindians were used as pawns in the struggle between the French and English in the seventeenth century. Stanley points out that as the war progressed an active policy of Amerindian involvement was encouraged. Stanley states that:
The Canadian Commander at Detroit, Longueuil, [complained] . . . bitterly of the activities of American traders who were, he said, telling the Indians that the French would soon be driven from the country and that only the English would be able to supply them with the goods they required.

This was propaganda that Stanley believed had some effect, as Governor Chevalier Claude de Beauharnois noted in his dispatches that areas in contact with American influence showed a “lack of enthusiasm . . . to takeup the hatchet against the Americans when war broke out.”
While Stanley argues that the intrigues of the warring parties were more significant than the economic factors there is a strong argument to be made for both approaches. He contributes to the social history of Amerindians during the period by highlighting the importance of material trade and how it was effected or used to control Amerindians during the French English conflict. The outbreak of war in 1744, place constraints on Amerindian and French Trade as Stanley notes “the interference with French shipping at sea made it harder for them [the French] to obtain the trade goods upon which their influence over the Indians so largely depended.”
Cornelius Jaenen in his work, Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, outlines new approaches to Amerindian history. He states that :
Several new approaches to the initial contacts between Europeans and Amerindians and to the Amerindian background to Canadian history have been suggested . . . The contributions of a variety social scientists - anthropologists, Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, psychologists - and other specialists - linguists, medical doctors, geographers, psychiatrists - are shedding new light on old problems for historians.

In examining Amerindian culture at the time of contact with Europeans he finds that not all contact experiences were identical as he notes “did not the French become more dependent upon the native population than the English settlers to the south.” The French were as Jaenen states, first introduced to Amerindians through the writings of Gonzalo Oviedo y Valdez in 1555 and 1568. Oviedo portrayed the Amerindians as a savage people with “Ni Foi, Ni Roi, Ni Loi” (no faith no King No law) in all accounts truly pagan. The reaction that the French had though was to treat them as human rather than sub human as other colonizing powers had. This belief can be seen as an outcrop of their faith. Pope Paul III in his bull Sublimus Deus affirmed that Amerindians were “truly men . . . capable of Understanding the Catholic Faith.”
Therefore the missionaries as Jaenen points out would “accept, in general the common humanity of the natives and in some cases this view gave them an important advantage in propagating their doctrines.” As an example Jaenen cites that it was reported in 1683 by Father Allouez that “among the Miamis and Illinois . . . the natives preferred the French to other Europeans. Alluoez writing about the English opinion of natives states that:
I think that these are the English, from whom They receive no tokens of friendship, and who take no trouble to instruct them. In fact, those heretics pay no heed to their salvation, saying that they took upon Them only As beasts; and that Paradise is not for that sort of people. [Alluoez believes that] The father did not fail to show them that he was animated with very different sentiments toward them; that he looked upon them as men, in Whom he recognized The image of a God who had created them, who had died for them, and who destined them to the same happiness as the Europeans.

Even though the Hurons, New France’s chosen Amerindian allies would be exterminated by the Iroquois of the six nations to the south, the missionaries in their own estimation accomplished their goals. It might appear that the missionaries were not be able to save the Hurons as we see it, but from a Jesuits perspective because of their strong belief in the next life they did. As Eccles says “the missionaries succeeded in their aim of saving the souls of at least half of the Huron Nation and were satisfied that although the victims had been lost to this world, they had been saved for eternity in the next.”
Contrary to the traditional view of Amerindian history social historians have been examining more closely the history of New France from a Amerindian perspective. Cornelius J. Janen in his article The Meeting of the French and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, argues that people in the seventeenth century misunderstood the Amerindians because they looked at them from a eurocentric perspective. Jaenen writes that “Few aspects of French Colonization in North America have been more commented on and less understood than the meeting of Europeans and Amerindians.” Jaenen does not accept that Amerindian relations where based on the fact that the French “embraced and cherished the Amerindians” as noble savages. Jaenen sees that :
When lofty objectives were translated into political directives, such as the orders given the Vice-Regent, the duc de Montmorency, ‘to seek to lead the natives therefore to the profession of the Christian faith, to civilization of manners, an ordered life, practice, and intercourse with the French for the gain of their commerce . . .’, the economic motivation emerged.

Jaenen questions the motivation of missionary zeal without actually criticizing the missionaries themselves. He believes that “the religious activities should be seen within the larger framework of cooperation between church and state in the New World to build a new society and to incorporate the Amerindians in that well ordered, institutionalized, hierarchical, French and Christian Society.” This assimilation was for economic and social means as much as for the saving of Indian souls. Jaenen sets forth the for example the Veritables Motifs of the founders of Montreal that state:
. . . and if once reason obtains the advantage over their old customs, with the example of the French, which they esteem and respect, inciting them ti work, it seems that they will set themselves straight, withdrawing from a life so full of poverty and affliction, and that they will take their place beside the Frenchmen and Christian savages . .. “

He criticizes this statement though as it “indicates two fundamental errors: firstly that the aborigines admired and wished to imitate the European way of life; secondly, that Amerindians were vagabonds and Idlers.” Jaenen sees this as exemplary of “lack of understanding involved in the meeting of two culturse.” The Jesuits while attempting to make french men out of the natives though did not lose sight of the superiority of their position. One such Jesuit father as Jaenen noted stated that “these savages were indeed given to understand that the French did not resemble them, and were not so base as they . . .” While clause XVII of the Charter of the company of New France had given The Amerindians certain basic rights of land ownership and citizenship as Jaenen points out this was not totally an equitable situation. He states that “Amerindians were not truly given the same rights and privileges as Europeans,”There were separate seigneuries and villages(known as reserves since their inauguration in 1637) for Amerindians, separate military treaties, separate churches for converts, separate wards in hospitals, and separate schools for their children.” This separation though did not effect the gradual interweaving of Amerindian and French Culture as Jaenen notes :
The process of accommodation was one of Americanization or Barbarization, not of Frenchification and civilization. The french traders adapted to the Amerindian way of life; the militiamen learned to fight in native fashion; the colonist adopted native foods, clothing and transport; the missionaries continued to learn the Amerindian dialects . . .[but] the French, possessing insufficient men, money, and materials to create an irreversible impact, were unable to assimilate the Amerindians and build a stable new society.

We can see by the writings of current historians that the perception of Amerindian history has changed Amerindians in the History of New France are no longer being marginalized. Their history is therefore not treated as a side issue to the overall history. Even though there are more works on the French and English’s impact on the continents history more than simply a passing mention of the Amerindian contribution is included in modern scholarship. They participated in European progress and at times shaped it to meet their economic requirements. The religious influence of the missionaries has been scrutinized and reinterpreted. The result of this revision of Amerindian history in New France has been the production of a much more equitable but still tragic history of the Amerindian people.

Social Historian and Maternal Feminist ?

L. M. Montgomery A Product of Her Time,
Social Historian and Maternal Feminist
By Wilhelm (Bill) Arends

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, is the defining novel of Prince Edward Island. The novel may produce a somewhat sugar-coated version of the truth but none-the-less produces an accurate image of life in turn of the century rural Prince Edward Island, with its good points and bad. Montgomery did not attempt to make the Island a total paradise, but does not dwell on the negative, because after all this is a novel for primarily aimed at young women of the time. Montgomery though was a very good observer of human behavior. The characters she created were a product of their times, with all the aspects of that societies’ social behavior, both good and bad. Even though most of the issues that predominated history at the time are only superficially dealt within the novel the connection to the culture of the time is clear. While Montgomery would go on to write a whole series of interesting and influential works, this novel is the one that best describes turn of the century Prince Edward Island. The novel while often described as a “simple but delightful book” has great insights into Island culture if examined carefully. Montgomery a product of turn of the century Prince Edward Island, in the novel Anne of Green Gables has not only produced a work of literature but, an interesting social history of rural Prince Edward Island.
Montgomery was definitely a product of Prince Edward Island she was born to Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner MacNeill on November 30th 1874 in the rural town of Clifton Corner. In Montgomery’s day the academic careers of women were limited and Montgomery who loved writing chose a profession that would allow her to develop this academic nature and in June of 1894 she obtained her teachers’ license. Anne of Green Gables was written in 1908 as Prince Edward Island was on the verge of great changes. The legislature was obviously worried that the age of machines would negatively effect the island. As They passed laws to prohibit the use of machines in the countryside, Montgomery was capturing this delightful rural nature of Cavendish county Prince Edward Island that the province was attempting to preserve. Forbes and Muise point out in their text The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, Montgomery’s Novel “depicts the traditionalism of the church and family in rural Prince Edward Island.” Montgomery though was not totally approving of all the aspects of Rural Prince Edward Island.
She was concerned with depicting reality within her novel while not offending anyone, as she says in her diary “” I cast ‘moral’ and ‘Sunday school’ ideals to the winds and made my ‘Anne’ a real human girl.” In Montgomery’s world asylums were still used to house orphans, women were restricted to the home, temperance was seen as the way to improve society and Maternal feminism was becoming a force to be reckoned with. All these aspects of life were included in Anne’s story. To say that Montgomery was free of social ills though would be naive and even some aspects of her own social failings can be seen in the novel.
Montgomery in her diary defines herself as having the “misfortune to be a born conservative, hater of change and to live my life in a period when everything has been, or is being turned topsy turvey” Like all conservatives Montgomery was susceptible to prejudices of her day. In the beginning of the novel Marilla Cuthbert is discussing with Mrs. Lynde the choice that Matthew and her have made to foster an orphan that is a “born Canadian” This section of the novel not only shows the racist tendency of her class but also connects the novel concretely to the period. When choosing a boy Matthew and Marilla have an in-depth discussion which Marilla relates to Mrs. Lynde, she says:
There’s never anybody to be had but those stupid, half grown little French boys; and as soon as you get one broke into your ways and taught something he’s up and off to the lobster canneries in the States. At first Matthew suggested getting a Bernado [sic] boy. But I said ‘no’ flat to that. ‘They may be all right - I’m not saying they’re not - but no London street Arabs for me, ‘Give me a native born at least. There’ll be a risk, no matter who we get. But I’ll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born Canadian.

While Laura M. Robinson in her book L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture argues that this is a means of creating “Canadian Identity” within the novel, it would be more likely that the Cuthbert’s reserve was more a product of prejudice on the part of Montgomery. If it were simply for reasons of Canadian identity then why would the Cuthbert’s not have wanted a French boy. It is important also to note that Matthew suggested a Bernardo Boy as an option. Bernardo Boys or, Home Boys were part of a scheme to find better lives for urban children from the crowded city streets of Europe, by bringing them to North America. The scheme though did little more than provide cheap labour for the rural areas of Canada. This can be seen even in this novel as the whole point of the Cuthbert’s getting a boy was to help the aging Matthew around the farm. Even this can be seen as a type of class oriented prejudice. As Owen Dudley Edwards and Jennifer H Litster state in their article “the End of Canadian Innocence: L.M. Montgomery and the first World War” the Cuthbert’s decision was not a preference to establish Canadian identity in the novel but a “prejudice against Bernardo boys.” If as Adreinne Clarkson has claimed “Avonlea . . . opens it arms to welcome the newcomer.” then the newcomer had better be a natural born Canadian like Montgomery’s Anne.
Also Anne’s world suffered from a degree of Misogyny that becomes evident in the novel.The reaction to this misogyny though was one that would have egalitarian problems of it’s own. According to Erika Rothwell in her article “L.M. Montgomery and Maternal Feminism” Montgomery through the character Anne“identifies herself with maternal feminism, a powerful branch of the women’s movement in turn-of-the-century Canada.” Maternal Feminism advocated the nurturing nature of women not an egalitarian feminism that promoted equality. They saw themselves as playing much more of a role in society than women were allowed, but not an equal role to men. As Historian Veronica Strong-Boag states “women themselves, like virtually everyone else in Canadian society, identified their sex with a maternal role.” This “natural occupation” could thus serve as a barrier to the “destabilizing elements in Canada,” whatever these may be.
One of these destabilizing elements that appears in the novel is the devil of alcohol. Alcohol by the standards of maternal feminists was one of the main causes of family strife. Maternal Feminists saw it as one of their responsibilities as the nurturing element of society to protest, and attempt to eradicate the evils of alcohol. While Marilla is, a brewer of Current wine, the dangers of this become apparent as Anne inadvertently intoxicates Diana. More importantly though in the novel, Montgomery shows the danger of alcohol through the character of Mr. Thomas. Montgomery does not recount the sordid details of family abuse, as that would not be appropriate for a child’s novel. Anne uses the hateful experience of the alcoholic Mr. Thomas as a yard stick of bad experiences. She claims that the insults of Mrs. Lynde hurt her more than “Mrs. Thomas’ intoxicated husband” ever did. The dangers of alcohol as maternal feminist see it is its resulting effect on the family, this is expressed in Mr. Thomas demise as he falls in front of a train thus depriving the family of a bread winner.
Maternal feminist stressed the importance of the nurturing nature of women. Women were responsible for the family unit and anything that fell within that realm was theirs to protect. The decisions that Anne makes seem to follow this pattern. While it may seem that Anne is independent in many ways, the constraints of being a woman in maternal feminists view limits her actions. Anne is therefore subject to the nurturing role of women. Carole Gerson points out in her article “Dragged at Anne’s Chariot Wheels:’ The Triangle of Author, Publisher, and Fictional Character” that Anne had to make the “mature choice to assume responsibility and conform to community norms with regard to both class and gender.” One of the most important figures in the Maternal feminist movement was Lady Aberdeen head of the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC) who promoted the nurturing nature of women and spoke of mothering as the “Grand woman’s mission.” Therefore the natural role of women as mothers forced Anne to stay home and take care of Marilla rather than take a university scholarship. Gerson argues that Montgomery was not a totally dyed-in-the-wool maternal feminist as she does not totally follow what would have been the norm in women’s literature at the time and, “resisted the conventional closure of Marriage.” at the end of the novel. As Rothwell notes “Montgomery’s vision of maternal feminism is steeped in realism. Not all the mother figures in Green Gables are ideals.” and “undermines the political vision of maternal women as centers of . . . pure reformist motives [and]. . . traditional moral values.” This realism as Rothwell points out was what made Montgomery :
an astute Social Historian and Maternal feminist who kept her finger upon the pulse of Canadian women’s experiences. She powerfully knit into her fiction the events, circumstances, beliefs, experiences, and realizations that were of moment in the living history of Canadian women. [ thus creating] . . . The tapestry of maternal feminism in Canada.”

L. M. Montgomery even in her personal writings seems to be a complex character as Roberta Buchanan shows in her article “Reflection piece- ‘ I wrote Two Hours This Morning and Put Up Grape Juice in the Afternoon’: The conflict between Woman and Writer in L. M. Montgomery’s Journals.” She sees that Montgomery was torn by the “conflict between woman as writer and homemaker; and her desire to conform to social expectations of femininity.”
While Montgomery does attempt to be as accurate as possible her historian skills may have been a bit lacking. In the episode where Anne attempts to dye her hair she describes the man who sells the dye to her as a “German Jew ... Who was working hard to make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany.” The problem with this may be in a social misconception of identity , as many Lebanese peddlers were mistaken as Jews. David Weale in his book A Stream Out of Lebanon: An Introduction to the Coming of Syrian/Lebanese Emigrants to Prince Edward Island, recounts the tale of one who was tired of explaining the difference between jews and Assyrians to one customer that he would tell the children to “tell your mother the old Jew is here.”
This discrepancy only proves that Lucy Maud Montgomery was simply a product of turn of the century Prince Edward Island and even Weale admits that this misconception of Ethnic identity was common. Lucy Maud Montgomery through the novel Anne of Green Gables, has shown herself to be an accurate witness to the social condition of Islanders. She has portrayed the rural islanders with both their strengths and weaknesses as fairly as possible. The novel while being predominantly a work of fiction is an interesting and accurate social history of rural Prince Edward Island. The aspects of Maternal feminism, Racial misconceptions and even prejudices that find their way into the novel give us interesting insights into Montgomery’s world.

Bibliography

Buchanan, Roberta .“Reflection piece- ‘ I wrote Two Hours This Morning and Put Up
Grape Juice in the Afternoon’: The conflict between Woman and Writer in L. M.
Montgomery’s Journals.” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed. Irene Gammel
and Elizabeth Epperly Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999

Callbeck,Lorne C. The Cradle of Confederation Unipress: Fredericton 1964.

Clarkson Adrienne. In Laura M. Robinson, “ ‘ A Born Canadian’: The Bonds of Communal
Identity in Anne of Green Gables and A Tangled Web,” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian
Culture, ed. Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1999

Edwards, Owen Dudley. and Jennifer H. Litster, “The End of Canadian Innocence: L.M.
Montgomery and the First World War,” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed.
Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999

Forbes E. R. and D. A. Muise, The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation Fredericton: Acadiensis
Press 1997

Gerson, Carole. “Dragged at Anne’s Chariot Wheels:’ The Triangle of Author, Publisher,
and Fictional Character,” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed. Irene Gammel
and Elizabeth Epperly Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999

Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly, “L .M. Montgomery and the Shaping of Canadian
Culture,” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed. Irene Gammel and Elizabeth
Epperly. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999

Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne of Green Gables, Toronto:McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited, 1968

Robinson,Laura M. “ ‘ A Born Canadian’: The Bonds of Communal Identity in Anne of Green
Gables and A Tangled Web,” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed. Irene
Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999

Rothwell, Erika. “Knitting Up the World: L. M. Montgomery and Maternal Feminism in
Canada” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed. Irene Gammel and Elizabeth
Epperly Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999

Weale,David. A Stream Out of Lebanon: An Introduction to the Coming of Syrian/Lebanese
Emigrants to Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown: Charlottetown Institute of Island
Studies, 1988

Brave New World?

Once upon a time I could actually write things that interest me. That is before I became a cog in the great governmental machine. Here is an old essay I dug up and it surprises me that it is better than I remembered it..







Machines and Stability:
In a ‘Brave New World’
by Bill Arends


The slogan of Huxley’s Brave New World is “Community, Identity [and] stability” (Huxley 1). On the eve of World War Two, Huxley saw the growth of German totalitarianism, and the growth of science. With science and control being the prime movers of society, Huxley made a logical connection between the two. He thus created a world where to create stability, science served control, and man became its victim. Ford is the embodiment of the machine, the pseudo-God of Huxley’s Brave New World, and the symbol of science in action. The machine is the only civilizing aspect of society, as the character Bernard says “these people have never heard of Our Ford, and they aren’t civilized” (Huxley 98).
Nell Eurich in Science in Utopia, analyses the role and position of Science in utopian and dystopian literature. According to Eurich, Huxley believes “science and technology should be used and controlled by man: Man should not be enslaved by them” (259). Science in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is the back bone of society. As Huxley states in his Foreword to the novel, the theme of Brave New World is “The advancement of science as it effects human individuals” (Huxley IV). The science of social control is, the means to which society has turned to create a stable state. Social control is applied in a mechanical way, to create a mechanical world. While other writers have interpreted Huxley’s Brave New World as showing the “absurdity of utopian dreams’(La Bossiere 290) it is possible that Huxley did not create his Brave New World as an example of “absurdity,” but more as a warning about the dangers of enslavement by science and control. Therefore an exploration of aspects of social stability, through the science of mechanical social control will prove that Huxley, was more concerned with science’s threat than the absurdity of its abuses.
It is also viable to argue, that the savage reservation offered a kind of stability based on the acceptance of life, death, and a recognized social order. While society on the reservation creates a sense of stability through voluntary acceptance, society off the reservation creates stability by enforced acceptance. The world is programmed like a machine and functions in a mechanical way. The machine like nature of life is enforced, even sometimes violently as Mustapha Mond proudly tells his students “eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at Golders Green”(Huxley 44). The individual life becomes unimportant to the machine like whole.
The simple life idea, where man lives in a natural state is easy to villainize in a society of manufactured humans that never grow old, and die only to be recycled as a source of phosphorus. The human simply becomes an element in a social machine, and the human corpse as part of this machine is, “socially useful even after [death]” (Huxley 65), in fertilizer plants making plants grow. In essence the body truly feeds the machine in Huxley’s distopic society. While Huxley’s society is highly stratified, each part is only valued by its usefulness, and in the end “All men are Physico-chemically equal ” (Huxley 65). Like cogs in the machine as Lenina remembers from her hypnopaedic programing “Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone”(Huxley 66). As much as a cog is a slave to the machine, so are the people in Huxley’s Brave New World. In turning man into an element in a machine, the machine has turned man into a slave to itself
The world governed society, attempts to overcome worrisome aspects of life through science, and removes the fear of them, creating a false stability. Thus stability is created by removing fear as much as possible, and not by simply accepting that fear is inevitable. The attractiveness of the character John Savage, to the citizens of this brave new world, shows how Stability is marginal in the society. The Factor that science can’t fully control is man himself. Even with the removal of difference, difference still attracts society, as the citizens descend on Savage in a living “Swarm of helicopters” (Huxley 236) as moths to a flame.
One question that still arises is, why Mustapha Mond allows Savage to remain in society as long as he did. Savage’s suicide at the end of the novel leaves one to assume that little has changed or will change, society has become too great to be influenced by the individual. Stability is linked in Huxley’s Brave New World to science which attempts to create maximum efficiency, by reducing society to a type of social functioning machine. In the face of this massive and growing machine the individual has been eliminated, even if man’s innate nature shows some signs of life.

Huxley also saw the machine as becoming the replacement for God, and not the tool it was meant to be. In his personal letters we find that this view was not only an interpretation of his work, but his real intent. Writing to Simon Blumenfeld, Huxley states that he was “ greatly struck recently by a Russian film [called] ‘Earth’” (Huxley in Begnoche p 52) in which was the anti-religion slogan “there is no God. Alas, there is always a tractor or something else to take his place.”(Huxley in Begnoche p 52) In the Russian film Huxley observes how the tractor is worshiped as a God. In His Brave New World Huxley is not simply placing Ford as a god, but the Idea of the machine as the god. The assembly line that was characteristic of Fords means of production is seen in Huxley’s Hatcheries and Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms. The machine is the product of science in Huxley’s mind, and the machine is the tool that science uses to make man in its own image.
The development of a religion of science and the machine, in Huxley’s opinion dehumanized society. His work was not simply a novel of what could happen if we let the absurdity of unlimited scientific progress continue, but a warning of what he saw as possible. As Krishan Kumar points out in his book Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times, the period in which Huxley was writing was the “classic era of the Utopia in the negative”(Kumar 224). He describes the times as the “devil’s decades”(Kumar 224). As brutal dictatorships, and the rise of state social control appeared on the European continent, it would be hard to imagine that Huxley would not be influenced by this depressing trend. The rhetoric of the rising German totalitarian state can be seen in the first pages of Brave New World, as Huxley refers to his conditioned children as, not all “pink and Aryan”(Huxley 16). As Frederick Turner points out in his article “Future Shocks,” “there is no better guide to worried regard of the future than Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” (Turner 21) As science was finding greater and greater ways of eliminating mankind, and better ways of controlling him and conditioning him, as Pavlov was suggesting that programing could improve a species there was obviously need to worry as Huxley believed.
Again in Huxley’s personal writings we see that this uncontrolled scientific progress, was of grave concern if not morbid interest to him. In his letters to Author E.M. Forster we find one account of his unique awareness of the frightening progress of science in a somewhat amoral world:
Bertie Russell, whom I’ve have just been lunching with, says one oughtn’t to mind about the superficial things like ideas, manners, politics, even wars - that the really important things, conditioned by scientific technique, go steadily on and up . . . in a straight un-undulating trajectory. It’s nice to think so; but meanwhile there the superficial undulations are, and one lives superficially; and who knows if that straight trajectory isn’t aiming directly for some fantastic denial of humanity?
Aldous Huxley to E.M. Forster, 17 February 1935. (Kumar 224)

The denial of humanity and deference to the machine are aspects that would be hard to avoid in Brave New World. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, this flattery can be seen in Huxley’s society which sounds and behaves like a machine. In the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center, life imitates the rhythmic nature of the machine as “ The Dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up and down. On all the eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time” (Huxley 132). It is interesting to note that Huxley’s society, the glorious machine like world, is also programed like a machine, a computer that is continuously instructed in the betterment of itself. Every evening the youth of the society are given repetition after repetition, of words of wisdom designed to make them function better in society. It would have been hard to imagine that Huxley foresaw computers, when he was writing but it would seem he could see the nature of the machine age as it developed along this path.
Even with this development though, Huxley saw the superficially undulations personified in mankind. These undulations are arguably personified in the person of John Savage. This is not to say that Huxley believed that a ‘brave new world’ was not possible but, simply that undulations such as John Savage where not a bad thing.
Aspects of a mix of science and control can also be seen in the Central London Hatchery, with its science of eugenics, the Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning rooms, and the solidarity services that replace religion in this machine like world (Huxley 16). This machine world, uses science as Sybil Bedford points out to, “dominate people by social, educational and pharmaceutical methods” (Bedford, 249). The drug Soma the universal instiller of happiness in the world feeds the machine. In this new world it is Happiness rather than truth and beauty that matter[s] (Huxley 208) It is “universal happiness [in Huxley’s distopia that] keeps the wheels steadily turning”(Huxley 208).
Not all writers of Huxley’s time agreed with his negative view of the world. The progress of science was not universally viewed as a bad thing and in truth some saw it as beneficial. H.G. Wells while he was apprehensive about the future as his Novel The Time Machine would attest to, was not wholly convinced that it was science that was the problem. Kingsley Martin, recalls Well’s reaction to Huxley’s Brave New World, in which he states;
I remember his talking to me about Aldous Huxley, whom he regarded as the degenerate descendant of a noble grandfather. He spoke with bitterness of Brave New World; it was blasphemy against the religion of science. It suggested that knowledge might be the path, not to the modern Utopia, but to a new kind of servile Hell. (Kumar 224)

This servile hell was obviously not something that Well’s saw as the progress of science. To writers like Wells science was as he stated the path to a “modern Utopia”(Kumar 224) not the evil distopia of Huxley’s Brave new World.
Other writers of the day had impressions of just how science was going to save civilization. This religion of science, this worship of the machine, was not simply something that Huxley created within his own mind. J.D. Bernal in his book, The World, The Flesh, And The Devil, published in 1929 had already foreseen the things that Huxley was writing about, but saw them in a much more positive light. For Bernal science was the savior and saw that “scientists would have a dual function: to keep the world going as an efficient food and comfort machine, and to worry out the secrets of nature for themselves”(Kumar 238). Huxley, with his conditioned and programed society would hardly argue with this fact, but did not see it as positive, as we have seen he saw it as dehumanizing and in the novel he shows it as destructive.
Huxley goes one step farther in saying that science its self becomes self defeating, as control grows in a society. While to Huxley’s programmed citizens, “Science is everything”(Huxley 205), as Mustapha Mond points out, science is “dangerous; [in society] we have to keep most carefully chained and muzzled”(Huxley 205). If science solves all problems and frees mankind to live in a utopic condition, what is mankind to do. Mond states, and with a degree of truth, that labour saving devices are not entirely good, “For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure”(Huxley 205). A science that can’t solve the problem of the human element (and never will) is as Mond points out as “dangerous as it’s been beneficent”(Huxley 207).

With Science as the means, stability as the end, and happiness as the path it would appear that Huxley’s Brave New World, is putting the cart before the horse. He thus creates a world nightmare in which ignorance and drug induced happiness create a stable world, that neither degenerates nor progresses. This condition is kind of like a car in neutral, stable but somewhat useless, and entirely pointless. Humanity in this Brave New World achieves nothing, feels nothing, and in essence does nothing. The product of this society is the total dehumanization of mankind.

Huxley’s Brave New World may be an ‘absurdity’ but it is more a warning about the dangers of enslavement by science and control. Social stability through the science of mechanical social control is as we have seen more of a social nightmare than a Utopia. If Wells was truly thinking that a religion of science, was something to be praised , then Huxley has created a successful argument in defense of the opposite. Once truth was eliminated it would seem in Huxley’s Brave New World so was humanity, and all that remains is the machine.

Bibliography

Bedford, Sybill. Aldous Huxley. New York: Harper and Row. 1974.

Eurich, Nell. Science in Utopia. London: Oxford University Press. 1967.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Flamingo. 1994.

La Bossiere C. R. “Sunken Atlantis and the Utopian Question.” Science-Fiction Studies. 4
(1974): 290-297.

Begnoche, Suzanne R. “Aldous Huxley’s Soviet Source Material: An Unpublished Letter.”
English Language Notes. 34.3 (1997) 51-57.

Varricchio, Mario. “Power of Images/Images of Power in Brave New World and Nineteen
Eighty-Four.” Utopian Studies. 10 (1999) 98

Turner, Frederick. “Future Shocks.” Reason. 31 (1999) 20-27

Kumar, Krishan . Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
1987.

2005 Mount Washington Collage

We took the hard trail.