For Monday, we're reading the novel that we didn't read when the troubles at the Capitol began: Molly Glass, Wild Life: entire
For your blog, you can discuss the ways that Glass's novel plays with the meanings of wild men (look back at Harrison's FORESTS, where he discusses the various meaning of wild men in forests, such as Sasquatch)
Or you can explore the ways that Glass uses deforestation and wildness in her novel. What is she conveying with the images of logging camps and deforestation, versus the wild forest where wild creatures hide?
Or you can explore Glass's central theme of a journey in the forest. What happens on the hero's main journeys in the forest? Why does she get lost? Why does she eventually get found?
Charlotte Bridger Drummond’s journey into the forest places her face-to-face with her own “wild” nature. The initial phase of the journey—the sojourn with the lumbermen in search of Harriet—is a stepping-off point of sorts. She still remains tethered to civilization, with some of its comforts and many of its discontents. She finds society of a rough sort. She also faces the strictures of traditional gender roles—a set of expectations from which she has spent a lifetime trying to free herself. A deeply disturbing violation propels her to take flight, and get lost in the forest. Amid pangs of hunger and exhaustion, she finds herself “adrift in a wild beast fable,” moving among a species of forest giants, part animal and part human. She puzzles over them as they move through the ancient woods, feeding on roots and flowers, frolicking with their young. What do these hairy creatures think and feel? What do they make of her? She is acutely aware of their pungent smells and open displays of sexuality. She also notes loving actions.
ReplyDeleteFor all of their strength and size, the forest giants seek nothing more than sanctuary amid encroaching human civilization. As Charlotte settles in with this troop and connects with her “own wildness,” human society assumes an increasingly terrifying aspect. The men they encounter are trigger-happy. She questions the sharp distinctions between humans and animals, civilization and nature. “They inhabit these forests so comfortably and inconspicuously” she writes about her giant companions. “Perhaps they are not lower animals after all, but an evolutionary advance—have grown beyond poor Homo sapiens and understand the world well enough that they have no need to construct a civilization upon it” (206).
Upon returning to civilization, Charlotte feels like a “wildwoman,” baffled by the “human creatures” she encounters (228). Ultimately, she emerges from her forest odyssey with a deeper bond with her own children and a capacity to find gentleness in men.
-John
Charlotte Bridger Drummond (C. B. D.) most distinctly verbalizes her biased perspective of the forest when she declares that she is “a woman who most admires the wilderness from the comfort of her civilized home, and in point of practice my Utopist fantasies will every time bring forth a cultivated, pastoral nature, with ripe fruit dropping from every bough, and not a giant wild tree in sight.” She is a person who has intimate experience with forests through the logging culture, having grown up and lived among loggers in towns that have depended economically on timber, yet she admits to a prejudiced, and sometimes fearful attitude towards the forest.
ReplyDeleteThe form that fear takes transforms into many shapes throughout her life, depending on her own personal psychological situation. Charlotte is outspoken about gender issues in a way that I found particularly enlightening in the novel and this does affect how she reveals the source and the nature of her fear. When the child is lost and Charlotte contemplates the girl's possible destiny, she acknowledges that the fate that could befall the girl could stem from human or mythical actions or forest biology. The location where the child “goes missing” is both a stage for the trgedy and representative and reflective of Charlotte’s own fears taking various forms. Her adherence to a “Science” philosophy and her youth among intellectuals directs her mind to think one way (reasonably), but her upbringing in cultures both European and aboriginal, allows for the existence of mythical beasts and the mysticism of the forest. Her personal literary background also is a major influence on how she adapts to being lost in the forest, as is her own writing, where she is both participant and observer.
The pages dedicated to Charlotte’s “adventure” of being lost in the woods seem like a different novel to me. Although I enjoyed the entire novel, I think that this part, in particular, is especially well written. When Charlotte is lost in the woods, her mind makes adjustments to her situation and all the Scientific, cultural and literary influences rise to the occasion. As she spends more time lost in the wilderness, she seems to be able to meld these disparate parts of herself more readily. What ultimately looks like a cognitive collapse could be translated in many ways, especially as we have previously been introduced to the character of and influences on Charlotte. As the days pass and she remains lost, it seems that she passes through a level of disorientation and, depending on one’s translation, of re-orientation to her environment. As she becomes more like a “wild woman,” she becomes more intimate with the life of the forest. To me, this seems like a reasonable adaptation- being a social being and communicating with and naming the various entities of the forest. Creating companions of the clouds, wildlife and “wild people”-to become “we”- allows her to remain sane to a certain degree in this uncertain and daunting situation.
When she is discovered in the forest by recreational hikers and returned to what remains of her former life, Charlotte must adjust to that life again. Having been a visceral part of the wildness of the forest and returning to “civilization” represents a major cultural and emotional transformation for Charlotte.
As John noted, there are some immediate after-effects of her experience in the woods, but I wondered about how her experience of being lost in the forest for so long will affect her attitude about the wilderness and about her day-to-day life. Will her experience be considered primarily traumatic or revelatory or both?
As I first started reading this book I frankly found it rather annoying. Drummond’s insistence on not being the typical woman of the day was a little too much. Yet all of this changed when she got lost and had to spend time in the wilderness. I agree with Dee in her observation on Drummond’s love of a manicured nature. I think this added to her almost bold and cocky manner of being able to take on anything. As she faced more actual hardship in the logging camp and then out in the wilderness, these qualities started to dim.
ReplyDeleteDrummond is scared away from the group because of a sexual assault and then growing unease. Then everything changes when she gets lost. At first she tries to stick with her scientific ways and tries to reason herself out of the woods. Then as time goes on she loses some of her sense of reason and reverts back to animal instincts based on fear and hunger. When she loses most of her supplies when she is scared away during a storm she is forced to look at the world through a different lens. She starts to see the man/ape creatures that are around her and becomes almost part of their family.
One of the most interesting parts was when the group came upon two hunters. Instead of rejoicing in finding people, she runs away signaling her complete envelopment into the natural world and away from the human one. She no longer sees humans as her rescuers, but as creatures that are only out to kill and destroy. Indeed, when she finally gets out of the forest she has to almost be kidnapped.
I found it a bit curious that she was so completely changed after only being the in wilderness for six weeks. As I have not done the same, I cannot say that it couldn’t happen, but I thought that her motherly instincts would be a bit stronger and she would want to get back to her kids. Instead she kind of forgot about them until she finally sees them at the end and they seem to develop an even stronger bond.
previous post is by Mallory
ReplyDeleteGlass’s novel presents an interesting juxtaposition between deforestation or human influence on forests and true wildness; this dichotomy theme is prevalent throughout the hero’s lost journey through the woods. There’s some irony in that although Drummond prides herself on independence, free thinking, and a deep appreciation for nature, throughout the book there are several hints that her relationship to wildness is really one of hesitance and fear. For example, in an initial description of the breadth and natural beauty of the Nehalem Mountain range and northwest forests, she notes the presence of “horses and men laboring on the fish-seining grounds at Welch’s island” and of a “column of smoke from a dozen sawmills” and “cleared fields and the dark dots of houses.” Describing this “human’s presence upon the wilderness” she writes that it is “a reassurance and comfort more rational to me than any prayer” (62). And yet, although this statement conveys her fear of the wilderness, until she is at bay in the wild for a few weeks, does she admit finally admit to that fear. She finds weakness in admitting fear, writing of the search party who sports “their weapons about, which to my mind is only further proof of fear” (134). And even after being lost for seven days, she writes in her journal, “to feel fear is normal and necessary…I look carefully at each situation to determine if my fear is justified, and upon investigation usually find that it is not” (159). It is not until some twenty days lost that she gives in, admitting that the “creatures of her imagination” are in fact real, and that she is afraid of “their animal nature…and their hugeness” (179). Again, still very much separating humanity from wilderness and wild beasts.
ReplyDeleteBut after this point, and as she becomes a part of this clan of wild animals, her fear reverses: she becomes a part of the once feared wildness, and suddenly fearful of humans. Upon confrontation with humans as part of this clan, she runs twice the other way, having found some stronger bond with nature than man.
In this pronounced theme of fear and distinct separation of nature as pristine, wild and dangerous, and humanity as safe, known and proper, I’m reminded of the myth of Artemis and Actaeon as mentioned in the Harrison reading--where the forest is portrayed as a looming, enigmatic, cruel wilderness, that no human is able, or meant to see. Perhaps Glass’s character is punished, not unlike Actaeon, for seeing the true forest--bound to the confines of an animal-like state until she returns again to the human world, only to keep her discovery to herself. This would suggest the notion yet again, that you must sacrifice one (nature or humanity) in order to understand the other.
-Stevie
I agree with Mallory that Charlotte was not an immediately likeable character (I never really warmed up to her) and with Dee that Charlotte's “lost” transition was interesting. I particularly liked the entry in which she first admits to having seen the wild men, which is my favorite part of the book.
ReplyDeleteIt's significant that Charlotte's lostness is immediately preceded in the story by the sexual assault, a physical, personal expression of the social assault against which Charlotte has continuously expressed rebellion. I say “expressed rebellion,” because while Charlotte does openly defy many of the social conventions expected of her, she either embraces (the possibility of returning to the camp and staying in the supervisor's office because she is a woman) or demonstrates (her uncharacteristically ladylike behavior in response to the behavior of the other searchers) certain aspects of expected female behavior. Charlotte seeks the refuge of the outdoors after the initial assault, but even then the realities of noncivilization drive her back into a society (in both the larger and immediate senses) which she fears. Not until Almon Pierce's re-appearance in the forest and her identification of him as her assailant is Charlotte's alienation from human society complete, and it is then that Charlotte is lost.
Charlotte is the active driver of her lost-ness, not only in her initial flight, but in her continual movement even after it becomes clear that she is lost, rather than remaining still and maximizing her chances of being found. While Charlotte treats her lost-ness as a minor obstacle and her self-reliance as sufficient to return her, it quickly becomes apparent that Charlotte's mastery over the forest is largely illusory, mirroring her initial response to seeking refuge outside of the tent, in which this realization of relative powerlessness came much more quickly.
Successful survival in the forest only comes when Charlotte first imitates and then joins the society of the wild men. Her continual dependence on social structure and practices (for safety, guidance, food...) illustrates the futility and danger in seeing the forest as a place of isolation.
(continued)
(from above)
ReplyDeleteCharlotte's emergence from the forest follows a series of scenes in which she again demonstrates her resistance to social integration, this time to any part of human society, full stop. But Charlotte, though well acclimated to the wild society, is not mentally or physically equipped to fully take part in it: her inappropriate response to fear, freezing, is what brings her back to human society.
Though it may be tempting to read this as an affirmation of the impossibility of reconciling the wild and the civilized, Gloss sets up several themes which at least alleviate this reading. The image of the post-return Charlotte sleeping in her bed with all of her children mirrors the image of her seeking shelter with the slumbering wild men; the change in Charlotte's fiction from the Helena Reed stories to the Desolation stories mirrors her own experience; the book ends on a story told in a unified voice, one that mirrors Charlotte both in the fact of its telling (her authorial status is continually reaffirmed) and in its content, where she is the lost child separate from the speakers. Charlotte's return to human society took place because it must—she has found that isolation from human society is transient. Her return signals the inevitable interweaving of the forest and human society.
It also must be kept in mind that Charlotte is an unreliable narrator—not only in the sense that all narrators are unreliable, but Gloss begins the book with the letter questioning the factual nature of Charlotte's narrative even within the scope of the novel. By opening on a fictional pretense of nonfiction and closing on a piece of fiction twice over (in both Gloss' and Charlotte's authorship), Gloss reaffirms the impossibility of establishing a standard narrative of relationships between humans, culture, and the forest—the only constant is their inevitable interactions.
-Erin
Charlotte Drummond began the book caught between an independent feminist and helpless romantic (because those two things can never go together). Drummond’s definition of feminism was to not be ruled or supported by a man in anyway. Even though she did not want a man in her life she was completely fascinated by them, probably because they held privileges she longed for.
ReplyDeleteDrummond works to convince her audience that she is every bit as capable as a man in every way. She is even rational enough to wear men’s clothing. However there was a limit to her comfort in being seen as a male equivalent. When Drummond met Gracie Spear instead of feeling a sense of solidarity, Drummond was uncomfortable and over emphasized her femininity. By Drummond’s early standards of how a woman should live, Gracie was nearly perfect. But obviously Gracie was too good at assimilating and had crossed the line Drummond created about what gender lines women could or could not bend.
In the book I thought Gloss used the word “wild” to mean both freedom or brutality depending on what Drummond was describing. The giants she lived in the woods with were wild and free from civilization, but men were wild beasts that could not control their sexual desires. I liked Drummond’s comment that men were more afraid than women of wild men in the forest because women had to constantly fear the wild beast lurking inside men.
Sam
4/10
I agree with others in that initially Charlotte’s defiance of being the average woman of the period was overwhelming. However, we see Charlotte transform remarkably as she exposes herself to the wildness of nature and as a result is profoundly shaped and changed by this experience.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways I likened Charlotte’s experience to those of early romantically-minded explorers and settlers who believed that we exist and are entitled to exist as separate entities without the conventions imposed on us by society. Charlotte in many ways was able to readily adopt this romantic notion of nature—especially as she experiences fear, hesitance, and realizes her vulnerability as a human being (apart from the stereotypes she received as being a woman at the logging camp).
This juxtaposition between simultaneously loving and fearing nature is one Gloss tries to illustrate throughout the novel, as Charlotte eventually becomes enamored with the freedom and opportunities a life without conventions entails. Independently-minded to begin with, would Charlotte’s experience have been comparable if she was traveling and living in the wilderness with somebody else? Most likely not. Therefore, how much do the experiences and companionship of others compromise our abilities to understand and feel an intense connection with nature (like Charlotte’s)?
-Jo
Charlotte Drumond is initially presented to us to be a very independent woman, both of mind/thought and action. She denounces society’s expectations of her to be more feminine, from the way she lives, raises her children and runs her home. She dresses like a man when riding into town because a woman doing this is seen as “unspecified, doubtless shameful, acts of immorality…” Before she has even set foot in the forest she has a very strong idea about herself as a woman as when it comes time for her to leave in search of the lost child she says to Horace, “A woman can and should do everything a man can do, and do it without ceasing to be female…” Her ideas of independence and feminism correlate with her somewhat isolated and limited perspective of the forests and the “wild”.
ReplyDeleteThis perspective is quickly turned around once she initially makes contact with the loggers’ camp. The sexual assault that takes place haunts her and instils a fear that questions her initial understandings of man and the wild. This act of primitive behaviour I believe begins the transition and the journey she takes from civilisation and into the wild. Although continually instilled with a sense of fear she too regains a courage and confidence to continue on with the search; and I believe it to be the author’s intentions, that this journey is one she needs to make. As if driven from the “civilisation” she has become accustomed too, she embarks on a soul-searching adventure where she becomes lost to her surroundings and the environment. The forest becomes the platform which serves this journey of self-discovery, and yet, completely being removed from what she once knew at the same time.
Her assimilation with the forest apelike beings transcends her to a primordial state of survival; a reconnection to her instinctual needs, and when presented with the opportunity to be “saved” by the hunters in the woods, she opts to descend further into the wild and away from human society. I believe it came to a point when her awakening meant that she could now return to civilisation, as she must, and the reunion with her own children seemed to be of a stronger and deeper bond. It became apparent to me upon reading this novel that the relationship between human civilisation and the forests/nature is almost one that is in a transitional state of equilibrium. The vast impact of man’s footprint on the forest’s destruction is evident and yet once removed from society and into the wild, man is merely at the mercy of nature and its environment.
I agree with Mallory that at the beginning of the book I thought that Charlotte’s constant insistence on being an independent woman, and her assertions about men and woman in general were a little overdone. I feel like it is a lot easier to write about an extremely independent woman from a past time period in 2000 than it would be to write about it during the actual time period. However I did find the exchange with her son about what a bride is “A woman with a romantic inclination which has led her into reckless behavior” very amusing. I think this almost abrasive independence diminished during the time she was lost in nature, because she lost a lot of her confidence.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the others that it was interesting to see Charlotte’s attitudes toward nature change. She started the book without appreciation or understanding of wild nature. After going through a “wilding” of her own when she had to rely on basic instincts for survival she became fearful of civilization and viewed them as the “wild beasts.” I agree with Mallory that it is hard to believe that this kind of transformation could happen in six weeks. However I though part of the reason you could see this transformation was because of the “wild” nature inside of Charlotte. At the beginning of the book it seemed like her life was a little overwhelming and she wanted to escape everyone and have time and peace for herself, and she somewhat accomplished that in nature. I feel like that was part of the reason why she was resistant to come back to civilization, because she could now identify with wild nature. I though this book was an interesting departure from our typical reading. However attitudes towards nature and forests are as evident in fiction as in non-fiction.
Many posts have mentioned the role of fear in the story. Charlotte is portrayed as a strong character, and it is in the moments when she is most afraid, and when she gives into fear that the story takes its most dramatic turns. She is afraid of the man who sexually assaults her, and she is ashamed of that fear. She admits that she runs away as a result of her own excitability. She is lost in the woods and a new, fantastical story develops. Then when she is found by humans she is so fearful that she is stunned and cannot run away. Again she is ashamed of this.
ReplyDeleteCharlotte writes that in novels she most admires characters who “have stout hearts and hands instead of nervous conditions and inherited feebleness; tales in which the author finds it sufficient to give his boys and girls a fault or a weakness, and a precarious situation, and turn them loose to win through” (186). This is the type of character she has penned for herself. She sees fear as a shameful weakness, and it is this fault that provokes the turning points in her story.
Erin pointed out that since Charlotte is narrating the story, we are aware that the story is factually questionable. I thought it was interesting the way Charlotte’s writing from different times was interwoven into the story, often pointing to the type of story Charlotte likes to read and likes to tell. At one point she writes that in fiction there is foreshadowing, but it is in real life that surprises happen. And then a very unexpected twist in the plot happens, suddenly the story is no longer realistic, historical fiction. It turns into a fantastical journey through the forests.
I would like to focus on the second question that was asked involoving the nature of the forest. The constant desire by Glass to encorperate a negative tone about deforestation is really conveyed to the reader toward the end of the book. We start to see a true sense of what it is like to get caught 6 weeks in the "wild" or "untame forest" and still have a conversion of heart. Charlotte, despite not having anything to eat and drink would be considered a bit irrational in her attemts to describe this group of creatures, who have unbelieveable hugeness about them. "It is not until some twenty days lost that she gives in, admitting that the “creatures of her imagination” are in fact real, and that she is afraid of “their animal nature…and their hugeness”(179). it is for me hard for me to believe that 100 percent of what she accounts is true but i believe there lies a deeper meaning of her accounts in the wilderness. Gloss really is attempting to comment on the negative atmoshpere that is emiited from the logging camps and the overall idea of deforestation. With Charlotte being so nurtured and cared for in the wilderness give a nice juxtaposition how her interior felt hatred and angst at the beginning of the book. The proposition that we truly dont know what remains in the depth of the forest is being lost as well. People like Gloss, would the forest to remain full so it can lead the imagination into more fruitful encounters.
ReplyDelete“Wilderness is a great reminder of the limits of human perception. Where there are no clocks or roads, time and distance behave differently, and without signs or labels, everything appears able to shift its shape” (168). I think this is a great quote that foreshadows/speaks to Charlotte’s journal entries once she is lost. Dates were quickly lost once she was lost herself. Firsts she knows the date, which is in the heading of the journal entry where it is eventually replaced with the weather and type of day, even stating that she has lost track of the date. The shape-shifting and the blurred lines between what is real and unreal progresses through this transformation in part due to her starvation, hypothermia, and isolation. These blurred lines see Charlotte lose her own self and humanistic side for something wild and unknown (she goes through a shape-shift herself guided by cleo and the others).
ReplyDeleteThere is also a theme of wilderness conservation underlining much of the descriptions of the logging camps and how the area has changed with the incoming of logging and more mechanization of the practice. Mrs. Drummond is speaking with Mr. Boyce when Charlotte remarks, “They’re making every effort to cut them all down, in the evident belief that Eden was a stump garden” (121) then Bill responds with “I recall from my Bible that Eden is a garden, all right, and no mention of a forest” (122). The author is bringing up some ideological differences that shaped individuals views on the environment. The logger defending his livelihood supporting it with religious references of man’s dominion over nature which conveys the utilitarian point of view on the environment which would have been supported by Gifford Pinchot and the US forest service at the time. While the other side of the argument would be a John Muir type of preservationists thinking where the “ancient deepwoods [would be] unaltered by man” (122). This would have been an active debate for this time and which still exists in some form today.
-matt
Nancy, I just wanted to say that I found our class discussion to be quite captivating today. Maybe it is because, unlike you, I really enjoy (science) fiction novels and this book kind of allowed the reader to take a different perspective (their own perspective) on the forest/human relationship based on all of the little "choose your own adventure" aspects of the novel. The way we laid out all of the very intricate recurring themes of Wild Life just showed how the reader really could make an argument of their own about the story's events and meanings.
ReplyDeleteI was particularly moved by the idea that many humans today have entertained the notion that wherever we go in this world, whether it is to the deepest depths of the oceans or the most remote spot on Antarctica, we have some sort of knowledge of and control over whatever species are there. It's almost as if somewhere truly and entirely "wild" doesn't exist any more. Like you said, we have almost lost our ability to believe (or imagine) that there could be more out there than we know of.
It scares me that the human relationship with nature (in many cases) has been whittled down to one extreme concept: Conquer, or what you cannot conquer will conquer you. Although this mindset has undeniably been evolving, I do think that many people still feel the separation from nature much like Charlotte did before she got lost. I just wish that humans could accept that for our species to survive we don't need to manipulate and/or conquer every aspect of the world that surrounds us.
I found this book interesting, but at the end I was left with a lot of questions. Discussion today was very helpful in understanding the ending and picking up on how Gloss alludes to Charlotte's life post getting lost in the forest. I hadn't picked up on the fact that some of the writings throughout the book were dated after 1905. Looking back, I found an entry from 1906 where she wrote about marriage, what she missed from marriage, and why she would consider getting remarried. I took this to mean she was considering marrying Stubband, as her attitude towards him evidently changed after her journey. Another post 1905 writing was about her children and how she felt guilty about how she raised them with Melba playing such a primary role. This made me feel like her experiences changed her attitude towards motherhood. She came off as a selfish mother in the beginning, being annoyed with her children, but this entry shows that perhaps she no longer feels this way.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest question, however, was whether or not Cloe and her forest people family were real or imaginary hallucinations. It was hard for me to read the book with the belief that they were real, as I mentioned in class. They seemed inconsistently unrealistic, and I still have trouble picturing them as real. I often struggle with determining whether or not to take what an author is writing literally. I run into the opposite as well, by taking something literally when it was meant to be symbolic. I suppose I'm used to reading scientific and non-fiction works that are less ambiguous, and maybe I should read more novels.
Amanda
First, I would like to apologize, I thought my post had uploaded yesterday afternoon, but apparently it never went through, I was running to a meeting and did not check that it had uploaded.
ReplyDeleteDiscussion today was very interesting and enlightening, digging even further into the book than I did originally. In the beginning, there was a contrast between wild and civilization, but after Charlotte got lost the lines began to fade. There was no longer a stark difference between the two extremes and she began to lose her place in the jumble. After being immersed in the wild for a relatively short period of time, Charlotte began to feel more comfortable with the wilderness than with civilization. Upon seeing a human, she ran the other way, demonstrating her changing comfort level.
This made me think of the power the wilderness and the idea of wild can have over us. I know when I am out in the forest, just immersing myself in the” wild,” I do not want to find humans and I would walk away if I saw anyone else. Obviously this is a very different situation and I do not actually feel fearful as Charlotte did, but the wild certainly has power.
Another aspect of the wild that stood out to me, especially after discussion, was the wolf at the end of the book. It gently uncovered Harriet’s body and drew the loggers to find it. The wolf was almost a mystic force acting between the two worlds of life and death. It also acted as a transition between the wild and human civilization. The wild wolf was the good in the equation and the human was the bad, roles had become reversed at this point. Wild can be both good and bad, but so can human nature, so it was interesting seeing the comparisons.
-Hanna