Cheers and Tears by Nella Last- Notes and Analysis

 

Cheers and Tears by Nella Last- Notes 

In September 1939 Nella Last began a diary that was to continue for nearly 30 years. She was a volunteer with the Mass Observation Archive, which was set up in 1937 by Charles Madge and Tom Harrison.

They wanted to record the views of ordinary British people and recruited volunteers to observe British life, and diarists to record a day-to-day account of their lives. These archives now give a unique insight into the lives of British civilians who found themselves going through a period when their country was at war.

In these extracts, Nella writes of moments in her family life during the war. She reveals her feelings towards her husband, her sons, her past life and her anger at the limitations that society imposed on women at this time.

Tuesday, 21 August

In the initial part of her writing, Nella Last comments about the lingering fear of war in Japan and China. Then she talks of the little household chores which are dear to her. She tells that clinging close to these things can be foolish in the long run. But for her, these little things seemed real in a world of shadows and doubts. The post-war feelings stretched her mind to such an extent that it made her mind tired. Her husband Arthur also shared the same feelings. She decides to take one day at a time and do her best. Sometimes she feels dead tired but her mind rebukes her to do the unfinished work. She also says that the stars make her feel trivial and unimportant because they are stable in their work. 

Wednesday, 22 August

Nella Last talks about the blackouts that will be no more that winter. It was there during the time of war. She then mentions her son Cliff who had joined the army and when he returned from war, he was entirely a changed man being apprehensive about life and living it as a constant strain. He was a charming headstrong boy who had gone through the vagaries of war. She then thinks of the soldiers who returned from war disabled and injured and she was thankful that her son returned unharmed. She also thinks of the ordinary people who crave simple luxuries of life and pray for lasting peace to achieve all their simple dreams. She tells that she is still dissatisfied with the scenario even after the war. She talks of the article written by an American armaments man who urged America to go underground. She also recalls an article by Naylor the astrologist who predicted underground shelters, factories and buildings which are deep down and air-conditioned. It makes her feel terrible because she was a lover of fresh winds and air. 

The author tells us about the constant shadow of fear that the nations are now living with. With easily made and handled weapons every nation lives with constant fear. Only by a change of thought and heart can civilization be saved. She then comments that we shouldn’t place our trust in Princes or any sons of man. She feels that the world of ours has blundered into wickedness and unrest. It has become a dark planet like Uranus and some evil force has affected it. It is full of bitter hatred, chaos, broken faith and lost ideals. She still feels sadness and grief even after the war has ended. 

Wednesday, 29 August

Nella Last in this letter talks about the war that has ended but still she waits for the arrival of the Brave New World. People are still apprehensive about their livelihood. Women have not settled down after the war. Little children have learnt to live without the support of their parents. Returned soldiers are finding it hard to settle down after living apart for a long time. After the slump caused by the war, a lot of people in Barrow who had secure jobs in Vikers got sacked. Women were apprehensive about their husbands losing jobs. The stocks were empty. They could withstand the onslaught somehow due to Sir Charles Craven’s efforts. But he is no more and the troubles have returned. The prices have gone high and people don't have enough money to spend on shops. 

Nella thinks about Granny’s attitude when things go wrong for her. She had a funny little way of rising to her toes and saying that they must do their best and pass on. At times Nella feels that this simple creed of Granny could work wonders for her. But she feels like a grain of sand on the seashore unable to do anything. She feels that she has limitations and cant do anything if she loses her job as well. She strives to move forward however hard things are.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf | Summary and Analysis | Christy Clement

                                         A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own is a milestone of twentieth-century feminist study. It explores the history of women in literature through an unconventional and largely instigating inquiry of the social and material conditions needed for the writing of literature. These conditions — rest time, seclusion, and financial independence — capitalize all learned output, but they're particularly applicable to understanding the situation of women in the literary tradition because women, historically, have been slightly deprived of those fundamental prerequisites.

  In her investigation of this idea, Woolf launches several stimulating sociological and aesthetic reviews. She reviews not only the state of women's literature but also the state of education, both theoretical and literal, concerning women. She also elaborates an aesthetics grounded on the principle of" incandescence, “the ideal state in which everything that's simply particular is consumed in the intensity and truth of one's art.

Woolf, giving a lecture on women and fiction, tells her audience she isn't sure if the content should be what women are like; the fiction women write; the fiction written about women or a combination of the three. Rather, she has come up with “one minor point-- a woman must have money and a room of her own if she's to write fiction. “She says she'll use a fictional narrator whom she calls Mary Beton as her alter ego to relate how her studies on the lecture mingled with her day-to-day life.

  A week ago, the narrator crosses a field at the fictional Oxbridge university, tries to enter the library, and passes by the church. She's intercepted at each station and reminded that women aren't allowed to do similar things without accompanying men. She goes to lunch, where the excellent food and comforting atmosphere make for good discussion. Back at Fernham, the women's college where she's staying as a guest, she has a medium banquet. She latterly talks with a friend of hers, Mary Seton, about how men's colleges were funded by kings and independently affluent men, and how finances were raised with difficulty for the women's college. She and Seton denounce their mothers, and their sex, for being so impoverished and leaving their daughters so little. Had they been independently affluent, maybe they could have established fellowships and secured similar luxuries for women. Still, the narrator realizes the obstacles they faced.  Entrepreneurship is at odds with child-rearing, and only for the last 48 years have women indeed been allowed to keep the money they earned. The narrator thinks about the effects of wealth and poverty on the mind, about the abundance of males and the poverty of ladies, and the effects of tradition or lack of tradition on the author.

Searching for answers, the narrator explores the British Museum in London. She finds there are innumerous books written about women by men, while there are hardly any books by women on men. She selects a dozen books to try and come up with an answer for why women are poor. Rather, she locates a multitude of other contents and a contradictory collection of men's opinions on women. One male professor who writes about the inferiority of women angers her, and it occurs to her that she has become angry because the professor has written angrily. Had he written"dispassionately," she'd have paid further attention to his argument, and not to him. After her outrage dissipates, she wonders why men are so angry if England is a patriarchal society in which they've all the power and money. Maybe holding power produces wrathfulness out of fear that others will take one's power. She posits that when men express the inferiority of women, they're claiming their superiority. The narrator believes self-confidence, a demand to get through life, is frequently attained by considering other people inferior about oneself. Throughout history, women have served as models of inferiority who enlarge the superiority of men.

  The narrator is thankful for the heritage left her by her aunt. Before that, she had gotten by on loathsome, slavish odd jobs available to women before 1918. Now, she reasons that since nothing can take down her money and security, she need not detest or enslave herself to any man. She now feels free to" think of things in themselves", she can judge art, for example, with greater detachment.

The narrator investigates women in Elizabethan England, puzzled why there were no women authors in that rich literary period. She believes there's a deep connection between living conditions and creative works. She reads a history book, learns that women had many rights in the period, and finds no material about middle-class women. She imagines what would have occurred had Shakespeare had an equally blessed sister named Judith. She outlines the possible course of Shakespeare's life grammar school, marriage, and work at a theatre in London. His sister, still, wasn't equal to attending school and her family discouraged her from independent study. She was married against her will as a teenager and ran off to London. The men at a theatre denied her the chance to work and learn the craft. Impregnated by a theatrical man, she committed suicide.

  The narrator believes that no woman of the time would have had a similar genius, "For genius like Shakespeare's isn't born among labouring, uninstructed, base people." Nonetheless, some kind of genius must have existed among women also, as it exists among the working class, although it never translated to paper. The narrator argues that the difficulties of writing-- especially the disregard of the world to one's art-- are compounded for women, who are laboriously disrespected by the male establishment. She says the mind of the artist must be" incandescent" like Shakespeare's, without any obstacles. She argues that the reason we know so little about Shakespeare's mind is that his work filters out his personal" grievances and spites and aversions. “His absence of particular complaint makes his work" free and unhampered."

The narrator reviews the poetry of several Elizabethan aristocratic ladies and finds that outrage toward men and insecurity mar their writing and prevent intellect from shining through. The writer Aphra Behn marks a turning point for a middle-class woman whose hubby's death forced her to earn her living.  Behn's triumph over circumstances surpasses indeed her excellent writing. Behn is the first female writer to have" freedom of the mind." Innumerous 18th-century middle-class female writers and beyond owe a great debt to Behn's breakthrough. The narrator wonders why the four celebrated and divergent 19th-century female novelists George Eliot, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Jane Austen-- all wrote novels; as middle-class women, they would have had less privacy and a lesser leaning toward writing poetry or plays, which demand smaller attention. Still, the 19th-century middle-class woman was trained in the art of social observation, and the novel was a natural fit for her aptitudes.

  The narrator argues that traditionally male values and contents in novels similar to war are valued more than feminine ones, similar to drawing-room character studies. Female authors, again, are frequently forced to condition their writing to meet the necessary criticism that their work was insubstantial. Indeed, if they did so without outrage, they turned off from their original fancies and their books suffered. The early 19th-century female novelist also had no real tradition from which to work; they lacked indeed a prose style fit for a woman. The narrator argues that the novel was the chosen form for these women since it was a fairly new and pliable medium.

The narrator takes down a recent debut novel called Life's Adventure by Mary Carmichael. Viewing Carmichael as a successor of the female writers she has reflected on, the narrator dissects her book. She finds the prose style uneven, maybe as a rebellion against the" flowery" character of women's writing. She reads on and finds the simple judgment” ‘Chloe liked Olivia.’ “She believes the idea of fellowship between two women is groundbreaking in literature, as women have historically been viewed in literature only about men. By the 19th century, women grew more complex in novels, but the narrator still believes that each gender is limited in its knowledge of the opposite sex. The narrator recognizes that for whatever internal greatness women have, they've not yet made an important mark in the world compared to men. Still, she believes that the great men in history frequently depended on women for supplying them with “some encouragement, some renewal of creative power" that other men could not. She argues that the creativity of men and women is different and that their writing should reflect their differences. The narrator believes Carmichael has important work to do in recording the lives of women, and Carmichael will have to write without anger against men. Also, since everyone has a blind spot about themselves, only women can fill out the portrayal of men in literature. Still, the narrator feels Carmichael is"no further than a clever girl," indeed though she bears no traces of wrathfulness or fear. In a hundred years, the narrator believes, and with money and a room of her own, Carmichael will be a better writer.

  The pleasing sight of a man and woman getting into a taxi provokes an idea for the narrator that the mind contains both a manly and female part and for" complete satisfaction and happiness," the two must live in harmony. This combination, she believes, is what poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described when he said a great mind is" androgynous”. The androgynous mind transmits emotion without impediments. It is naturally creative, incandescent and concentrated." Shakespeare is a fine model of this androgynous mind, though it's harder to find current instances in this “stridently sex-conscious" age. The narrator blames both sexes for bringing about this self-consciousness of gender.

Woolf takes over the speaking voice and responds to two anticipated criticisms against the narrator. First, she says she deliberately didn't express an opinion on the relative merits of the two genders-- especially as writers-- since she doesn't believe such a judgment is possible or desirable. Second, her audience may believe the narrator laid too much emphasis on material things, and that the mind should be suitable to overcome poverty and lack of isolation. She cites a professor's argument that of the top poets of the last century, nearly all were well-educated and rich. Without material things, she repeats, one cannot have intellectual freedom, and without intellectual freedom, one cannot write great poetry. Women, who have been poor since the beginning of time, have understandably not yet written great poetry. She also responds to the question of why she insists women's writing is important. As an avid reader, the exorbitantly mannish writing in all classes has dissatisfied her recently. She encourages her audience to be themselves and" think of effects in themselves. “She says that Judith Shakespeare still lives within all women and that if women are given money and privacy in the coming century, she'll be revived.

Money and the Englishman by Nirad C. Chaudhari- An Analysis

 

Nirad C Chaudhuri at the opening of the chapter says that he did now not give a good deal of interest to the economic stipulations and issues of England due to the fact he was no longer in a position to recognize them. He is now not only ignorant of the challenge but even contemptuous of it. But at the same time, he stresses the truth that economics as a problem can't be prevented because it has its position in day-to-day human life and plays an important position in deciding the improvement of a country. He points out that he will talk about the Englishman’s relations with money from a moral standpoint.

 Nirad C Chaudhari explains that it is very difficult to get information from the English about their habits with money. Here hypocrisy rules the roost. He had to resort to indirect means to get the suitable information out of an Englishman.

 In the chapter Nirad C Chaudhuri sings the praise of the Englishman for his general ‘non-attachment’ to money; and, at the same time, compares and contrasts it with what Chaudhuri terms ‘religious symptoms of the love of cash in the Hindu Society’. There have been no non-secular signs and symptoms of cash in an English home, in contrast to in India where, at home and in shops, Lakshmi or Ganesh is worshipped. He failed to find in the residence of an English family a non-public shrine for a god or goddess of money and such a shrine is exactly the component one can't escape noticing in each normal Hindu home. In the shops, too, he missed the photo of any god who was probable to be a counterpart of 'Ganesa’.

 

About the religious practices at home, he has this to say: ‘‘Our religiosity covers every factor of money-making, including the dishonest and violent. There were no more dedicated worshippers of the Goddess Kali than the Thugs.” And in contrast “Christianity does not seem to have been directly involved in financial transactions, and so far, as I have read the Anglican liturgy I do not find in it any reference to money-making although there are prayers for protection against natural calamities.”

 About the Indian pundits he says, there is no different country in the world today in which the tribe of pundits known as economists is held in greater honor. He asserts that India has become an El Dorado for every type of economist from each part of the world. We have formed here an economic cult which is a combination of American, English, German, French, Soviet, and Japanese economies. In fact, as Chaudhuri asserts, the economic cult is so closely related to the religious cult in the Hindu society that it prompts him to comment: “Ever since the Rigvedic age we have had economic gods and we shall continue to have them. Just as we do not even now leave medical treatment solely to the doctor or the surgeon, but requisition the priest and the astrologer. So also, we call upon the gods to help us in our economic and technological ventures even in what is described in current economic jargon as the public sector. For instance, when the great dam at Bhakra was formally opened there were Vedic rites to ensure its success.” In the personal sphere, Indians still rely upon the occult powers for their success.

 

He also asserts that in his society money-making is an open conspiracy, if it is a conspiracy at all. We do not, however, regard it as such. In his eyes, it is an occupation that can be avowed with pride by every honest and honorable man. Indeed, as long as we remain in the world we are expected to put money above everything else.

 

Chaudhuri failed to see in the Englishman’s mindset to money the sordidness he finds amongst Indians. According to him, it is unthinkable to find in India the smoothness with which English humans put through their economic transactions. They pay their dues immediately and regularly, very readily part with money and without a second’s thought, trust individuals in money matters. All this offers a strong contrast to our society in which Chaudhuri says, the willingness to pay decreases as the ability to pay increases. Chaudhuri used to be exceedingly impressed by the industrial honesty of the English people. They comply with the principle that the love of money, in order to be enjoyed, needs to be restricted. Moreover, the Englishman believes in dwelling in style. He is no longer involved in hoarding money like the Indian. 

 

The author tells us that spending is the positive urge of the English people. For them spending is ideal and frugality is the practical correlative of that ideal. But for Indians, hoarding is a pleasure as well a virtue and spending, a strict duty but normally a pain. The English always expected to live in style and they were careless about money.

 

What excites him is the fact that the banks and shops are so lenient and honest in cash matters. Commercial honesty in England amazes him. He calls it a virtue of the highest order. But English people refrain from all types of ‘shop-talk. But in India ``money-making is an open conspiracy.” In a lighter vein, Nirad Chaudhuri remarks that money-making is as significant as love-making in the West.

 

English society deems it very undignified to openly discuss monetary problems and strategies of acquisition, a very unusual habit in humans who are described universally as shopkeepers and capitalistic. But this displays certain negative elements of the English character. The financial world is truly divided into two: the party of spenders and the party of savers. The difference is between the misers and the spendthrifts. But this is the case from the point of the income of view- “...love for cash in order to be enjoyed need to be restricted”.  The scene is one-of-a-kind when it comes to spending- “On this side, there was as a whole lot assertiveness as there was once secrecy on the other ''. Nirad Chaudhuri perceives spending to be the fantastic urge of the English people and saving as a corrective measure. He offers an insight into the psyche of Indians and the English in relation to money. For the Indians, hoarding is a pleasure. Unlike the English, we can't spend money in a planned and deliberate manner. Money is synonymous with temptation, passion, and panic.

 

The range and abundance of commodities in a shop amaze a man who has in no way been exposed to the thinking of ‘choosing’ from amongst items- “I suppose I need to have gone mad if I had to figure out about clothes, or furniture, or glass, or china”. There is a hierarchy in spending too. London has its very own share of low-cost and pricey stores. But Cambridge is for the middle-range. The English middle-class is not comfortable in a Bond-street shop. They feel shy because of their sartorial style, which is now not up to its mark when in contrast to those of the immaculately attired shop assistants. But the traveller in Nirad Chaudhuri enjoys to its heart’s content- “I can hardly ever say how it gladdened the heart of a spendthrift in both principal and...my means...to find myself in a country in which spending was once respectable. I appreciated the English people for their devotion to spending that's the way the cash goes”. Nirad Chaudhuri’s experience with the English financial affair is an eye-opener. He feels that people in England are fond of ‘style-in-living’. There is continually a desire for a high standard of living. So, “the fine use of money is to spend it on the desirable things of life”. A notion that is an anathema to the Indian mindset.