Month: April 2023

1995 Katherine Philips (1632-1664):  “The Matchless Orinda”

De Paul University, MALS Program

Perceptions of Reality 

Dr. Jeanne LaDuke 

Pat Anderson

Grade A-

See examples of original sources at the end

Abstract

In this paper I look at the life and writing of Katherine Philips, (The Matchless Orinda), illustrating how Philips manipulated her writing to fit acceptable standards set up for women during the Renaissance. 

Her eloquent writing was appreciated by women and men of her day. Some recent researchers suggest that her female friendship poems were erotic in nature. I will argue that whether platonic or erotic, she was a talented poet. And despite having to use great care, she was successful in communicating life experiences from a woman’s perspective. I can only imagine what her writing might have been like if her spirit had been free to write without consideration of gender.

Historical Context

In the seventeenth century women not only had to have just the right circumstances to enable them to write, but they had to develop strategies about how to do so in keeping with the rules set up by men (Mermin 336). They had to be careful not to elicit men’s anger (Mermin 336). Women had to make their writing seem spontaneous, without artfulness and had to be sure to communicate that they were not in competition with men (Mermin 336)

Women generally avoided iambic pentameter, formal odes or epics, classical allusion, or exalted diction (Mermin 336). Women wrote relatively simple fables, understated small and ordinary themes, spoke of themselves in self-deprecating, low-key terms, and kept their tone conversational (Mermin 336).

Men wrote as if their words were genderless, but women could never forget what they wrote and would be read as women (Mermin 336). They had to be on their best behavior because failures of breeding or temper would discredit their whole sex (Mermin 336). The gentlemanly amateurism in the Renaissance tradition provided a framework for women to write in a time when simply appearing in public was viewed as taboo for women (Mermin 336), (let alone being published). Until well into the nineteenth-century publicity to a woman was assumed to defile her virtue (Mermin 338).  I like Ann Messenger’s (Williamson 23) description of women writers that Williamson provides:

Women may begin writing to deal with loss, but they end up writing to survive it. Because poetry is more public than private expression in the seventeenth century, we can also observe the degree to which contemporary discourse shapes women’s writing, just as it does men’s, but also the degree to which women transform the discourse to their purposes as a group (Williamson 23).  Women writers had to use enormous care to avoid posing any threat to male egos. In spite of the limitations placed upon them by their social realities, they were able to express their female perspectives.

         Early Orinda          

Katherine Philips was influenced as a small child by her grandmother Oxenbridge’s interest in writing poetry (Limbert 179). She loved poetry at school and actually started writing verses there (Limbert 179). Her father John Fowler, a prominent London merchant, brought her up with strong Puritan connections (Limbert 179). She read the Bible at age four and wrote down sermons verbatim at age ten. As a child, she used to pray for an hour at a time (Limbert 179). She was against the bishops and prayed that God would take them to him (Limbert 180). She started to attend Mrs. Salmon’s School in Hackney at age eight. (Limbert 180)

The earliest of her work known to survive was found in an unpublished manuscript in the uncatalogued Orielton Collection of the National Library of Wales. It illustrates that Philips was practicing poetry as early as age fourteen (Limbert 179) It’s not surprising that this manuscript was found in Orielton (three miles southwest of Pembroke, Wales) as it was once the home of Anne Lewis Owen, referred to as Lucasia by Philips, in her most intense friendship poems (Limbert 182).

The Orielton manuscript contains two poems and a short prose receipt that are unpolished compared to her later works, yet are informative about the author’s early years (Limbert 181-182). It is suggested that the manuscript was written when Philips was between fourteen and sixteen years old, after her mother’s marriage and before her own (Limbert 181-182). Excerpts from the two poems are quite telling in relating her attitudes about marriage and romance:

         No blooming youth shall ever make me err

         I will the beauty of the mind prefer

         If himans rites shall call me hence

         It shall be with some man of sence

         …

         Faithful in promise & liberall to the poor

         …

         Ready to serve his friend his country & his king

         Such men as these yout say there are but few

         …

         Butt if I ever hap to change my life

         Its only such a man shall call me wife” (Limbert 186). 

         Excerpts from the poem on the reverse side:

         A marry’d state affords but little Ease

         The best of husbands are so hard to please

         …

         No Blustering husbands to create y’r fears

         …

         Few worldly crosses to distract y’r prayers   

         Thus you are freed from all the cares that do   

         Attend on matrymony & a husband too 

         … (Limbert 186).

These early poems clearly illustrate her very early feminist thought and insight into conditions women faced.

Hageman views Philip’s two juvenilia poems above as an example of how thoroughly the young poet assimilated the values of seventeenth-century neo-classical poetry (570). Philips was able to transform the loyal, sensible, and moderate friend, advocated by poets like Ben Jonson, into a description of a model husband (Hageman 570).

These tiny glimpses into Philips’ early creativity show that she was familiar with composition and was approaching a feel for heroic couplets; they also illustrate her interest in talking to women through her poetry (Limbert 185). Her poems clearly reveal a young woman with unromantic ideas about marriage, not usually seen in English literature (Limbert 185). Philips does not speak as a character imagined by a man, she actually speaks for herself (Limbert 185).

It is believed that she lived in London until her widowed mother married Sir Richard Phillips (sic) of Picton Castle in Wales; she moved with her mother to Wales at that time (Limbert 180). At 16, Philips married Colonel James Philips, a fifty-four-year-old widower and prominent Puritan Parliamentarian (Limbert 180). They moved to her new husband’s home in Cardigan where he was active in politics (Limbert 180). After seven years of marriage, she had a son who died at six weeks of age (Williamson 76). 

Philips and the Renaissance

Women’s literary output began in England, around 1640 (Williamson 16). Katherine Philips was the first English woman to publish a volume of poetry (Williamson 16). Women became the subjects and developed their own perspectives, rather than being objects of male perception and expression (Williamson 16). They wrote from positions that were self-defined (Williamson 16). Before this time in history, women’s poetry was not distinguishable from men’s (Williamson 18). Around the seventeenth century, one can truly start to hear female voices who take female pseudonyms, address their needs, and created their own conventions and themes (Williamson 18).

Williamson says that Philips was a model for women poets; she used two current discourses, retirement tradition, and libertine ideology, to show women how to use the codes of the culture to write about their life predicament (14). It took great courage to write about gender relations for these women; their poetry can give us a clue about what they were thinking and what their biases were (Williamson preface). Women writers of the Renaissance viewed each other as models and obtained inspiration from each other; they created their own traditions and usually wrote for other women (Williamson 14).

Philips characterized commonalities of women writers after 1650 in that they were artistically, politically, and socially conservative (Williamson 21). They were married to supportive husbands, were usually childless, and were reserved about sexuality (Williamson 21). They had their own coterie audience and their writing forms included poetry, occasional plays, novels, essays, and autobiographical letters (Williamson 21). They seldom wrote for money, hesitated to call attention to themselves by publishing, and used undoing to excuse their gall to publish (Williamson 21). Philips felt obligated to justify her privilege to write, sought freedom, yet at the same time sought community too, especially with other women, frequently in intimate relationships (Williamson 22). She tried to tread the ambiguous line between being a silent, submissive woman and her energy and ambition as a writer (Williamson 65).

Seventeenth-century women writers’ conservatism did not allow them to advocate for radical changes, but they wanted better lives for women as a group (Williamson 22). In adapting the retirement tradition they avoided threatening their readers and illustrated a way, within their social constraints, to escape their social lot that could not be changed (Williamson 22).

Philips’ unblemished reputation served as encouragement to other women (Mermin 335). She feared publication as it might be seen as sexual self-display (Mermin 335-336). Philips claimed that her poems were printed without her consent and compared women’s publications to exposing their bodies (Mermin 335-336). She claimed to have written for her own entertainment, yet at the same time prepared her work in manuscript form (Mermin 338).

Women sought to demonstrate how they could survive in a male universe, largely through bonding with other women (Williamson 31). They took male indifference for granted and sought to compensate for it rather than challenge it (Williamson 31). Philips sought respect and consideration for wives but saw equality as only available in female friendships (Williamson 32). 

Philips took the privilege to write without social sanction for her doing so (Williamson 35-36). As a result, she had to develop strategies to get beyond societal messages to remain silent (Williamson 35-36). Writing served the purpose of raising women’s and men’s consciousness about their oppression (Williamson 35-36).

Philips provides confirmation of her humility in what she wrote Sir Charles Cotterell (her editor):

I am so far from expecting Applause on account of anything I write, that I can scarcely expect a Pardon: And sometimes I think that to make Verses is so much above my Reach, and a Diversion so unfit for the Sex to which I belong, that I am about to resolve against it forever…..the Truth is, I have always had an incorrigible inclination to the Vanity of Rhyming, but intended the Effects of that Humour only for my own Amusement in a retir’d Life” (Williamson 64).

Because translation was thought of as “feminine” (it was non-original), it was viewed as being well-suited for women. Renaissance female translators, despite being discouraged from creating their own original work, did inject their own translations, thus adding or shifting emphasis, coining new terms, extending metaphors, omitting phrases, and making the vernacular fit (Wilson xxx).

Philips’ translation of Corneille’s “Pompey” was enthusiastically received at the new Theatre Royal in Dublin, in 1663 and was later published in Ireland and London (Limbert 180). Philips also left behind a partial translation of Corneille’s “Horace”, which was later completed by Sir John Denham; it became a favorite of the court of Charles II (Limbert 181).

Friendship Poems

Shortly after her marriage, her poems began to be circulated widely by her coterie of friends who were also the subjects of her verses (Limbert 180). Her best works were platonic friendship poems about other women; she used symbolic trappings of fire, water, and twinned spirits to elevate them to goddess status (Limbert 180). No evidence exists to show that any of the women responded in a similar fashion (Limbert 180).

During the time of the Renaissance, gender was bound in a hierarchy in which men and women could not be equals (Mueller 114). Thus men and women could not be friends (Mueller 114). Separate education and socialization for the sexes functioned to reinforce limits on how human equality could be perceived (Mueller 114).

Philips’ friendship poems provided an acceptable form for women to experience equal relationships. It makes sense to me that women might attempt to share intellectually with other women since the men in their lives didn’t perceive them as intellectual equals. It seems quite logical that people would naturally gravitate toward egalitarian relationships.

The theme of platonic friendship is found throughout Renaissance literature (Hageman 573). The English writer, George Turberville, described two friends as, “two in bodies twaine/Possessing but one heart” (Hageman 573). The classical assumption made by Renaissance writers was that friendship poems were celebrating the relationships between men (Hageman 573). When women were present in friendship poems they were portrayed as seductresses who separated male friends (Hageman 573). Philips’ friendship poems took for granted that women could be friends with each other as well as with men (Hageman 573). Philips also modeled the male style of uniting spirits and bodies.

Like many female writers of the seventeenth century, Philips took a traditionally male convention and applied it to the female experience, thus providing a forum for their female voices to speak (Mermin 343). Mermin sees the results as revolutionary because of Orinda:

… speaks as a woman, to a woman, usurping the position of the male speaker rather than responding to a man or a male tradition that has spoken first” (Mermin 343).

In writing about female friendship, Philips gave them value, not only in a literary sense but in the realm of human relationships. By following the male poetic traditions in her friendship poems, Philips avoided being perceived as threatening to the powers that be. And yet she actually gave power to women by valuing their relationships. New scientific knowledge about the placement of the planets was seen as threatening to current religious beliefs. Through Philips, women found a way to value each other and to speak without posing a threat to patriarchy.

Most women can probably relate to taking a “back seat” status when a woman friend obtains a boyfriend. Her friend is willing to forfeit much of the female relationships to make herself totally available to her lover, thus devaluing the female relationships. Devaluing our relationships is a part that we ourselves play in perpetrating patriarchy.

Many of Philips’ poems were romantic in nature. I think that many women view romance in a magical sense. The white knight in shining armor ideology is not dead and could be seen as a woman’s magical thinking, especially since science was not perceived to be within the realm of possibilities for women in the seventeenth century. (Teacher – in what sense) It doesn’t seem far-fetched to imagine that women writers might use romantic friendship poems with other women as a way to fantasize about what an equal romantic relationship might be like and as a way of coping with their lower social status.

“To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship”

Mermin refers to Donne’s and the Cavalier poets’ work as aspiring to a perfect, paradoxical union of souls, canonization of their lovers, and casual elegance, along with Metaphysical hyperbole and wit (343). She compares Philip’s amatory poem “To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship” with this traditional male style:

         “I did not live until this time

                  Crown’d my felicity,

         When I could say without a crime,

                  I am not thine, but Thee.

                  …..

         No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth

                  To mine compar’d can be:

         They have but pieces of this Earth,

                  I’ve all the World in thee” (Mermin 343).

Mermin says Philip’s amatory poems lack the dramatic tension between flesh and spirit present in Donne’s amatory verse (Mermin 343). Mernim describes Philips’ work as asexual and respectable, despite the quasi-Sapphic theme, and did not give rise to any societal sanction because of the blindness to the possibility of female homosexuality at the time (Mermin 343). She claims to perceive Philips as speaking the language of courtly love without hearing any “unseemly” overtones (Mermin 343).

Stiebel views “To My Excellent Lucasia…” as Philips’ soul actually becoming Lucasia not simply that Lucasia gave life to her soul (157). As united immortal souls the speaker is given similar attributes as a “bridegroom” or a “crown-conqueror”, while at the same time, remaining innocent because they are females (Stiebel 157).

Stiebel compares “To My Excellent Lucasia…” with Donne’s “The Sun Rising”:

“She’s all states, and all princes I / Nothing else is” (Stiebel 157).

Stiebel claims that Donne forces the reader to view their relationship as a traditional courtly desire that goes through a transformation to a sacramental union where soulmates share the divine (Stiebel 157). Donne as the speaker invokes spirituality and innocent design to justify the use of excessive language (Stiebel 157). This is further illustrated in the poem:

         “As innocent as our design,

         Immortal as our soul” (Stiebel 165-166).

         Stiebel further claims that traditional readings of

Philips’ friendship poems have either ignored or denied the lesbian sexuality of her verses, dismissing them as asexual examples of the current literary vernacular (Stiebel 153). Stiebel says that Mermin’s use of “unseemly” relates to her attitude about female homosexuality (153).

Stiebel discusses Faderman’s study in which she insists that “historically there was no such thing as a `lesbian” (Stiebel 154). Another reason that Philips could claim that love between two women was innocent is that, as Queen Victoria asked, “What could women do?” (Stiebel 158). In a culture that defines sexual behavior with linkage to male anatomy, sex without men was not only unthinkable, but it was also impossible (Stiebel 158).

Since the Renaissance had no concept of lesbianism, female poets were free to let their creativity flow within the acceptable framework of female friendship poetry. Women writers today couldn’t write the same poetry without homosexuality being questioned, simply because the concept of homosexuality is a part of our public discourse – it is a part of our reality.

As I see it, women were trying to use men as role models, but of course, the fit is not always appropriate. It was not socially acceptable for women to be assertive with love for men, so they directed themselves toward something they had experience with, intimate friendships with other women. I think that any woman today could relate to the level of intimacy and level of acceptance that you can share with a woman friend. It seems to me that Philips did a splendid job modeling the traditional male amatory style in the above poem to Lucasia.

I think that both authors’ perceptions make valid points. Society certainly has tried to ignore and/or deny homosexuality in general, so it wouldn’t seem surprising that seventeenth-century readers wouldn’t “see” the possibility in Philips work. I can also see that her friendship poems could easily be read as asexual, modeling male conventions. One’s perception might originate from one’s attitude and comfort with the topic of homosexuality. From my feminist perspective, I think that it is certainly possible that Philips was a lesbian. For me, it’s not an issue. What I value is her talent and courage as a woman to write at the time she did, and the fact that her voice was and is being heard. She gave value to women’s life experiences, which realistically do include heterosexual and/or homosexual perspectives.

 “Orinda To Lucasia”

Philips compared herself to nature in “Orinda to Lucasia”:

         “Observe the weary birds ere night be done,

         How they would fain call up the tardy Sun,

                  With feathers hung with dew,

                  And trembling voices too,

         They court their glorious planet to appear,

         That they may find recruits of spirits there.

                  The drooping flowers hang their heads,

                  And languish down into their beds:

         While brooks more bold and fierce than they,

                  Wanting those beams, from whence

                  All things drink influence,

         Openly murmur and demand the day”  (Mermin 344).

Mermin claims that Orinda compares herself to nature awaiting the fecundating sun, the image of male sexual force, frequently used by women poets (344). 

Stiebel says Lucasia is the sun who will restore the light and energy of the day (life) to Orinda, who calls for her friend to appear like the birds, flowers, and brooks call for their own rebirth at a delayed sunrise (156-157). Lucasia means more to her than the sun to the world and if Lucasia doesn’t arrive soon she will see her die rather than be able to save her (Stiebel 156-157). The conventional oxymoronic terms such as light versus dark, day versus night, presence versus absence, and life versus death are what Orinda used (Stiebel 156-157). Elements of nature were used to reflect her state of being, and in a reversal of the magnitude of traditional significance, illustrated microcosmically in relation to the macrocosm of Orinda’s feelings (Stiebel 156-157).   

Since I believe that artists are unconsciously relating a sense of their time, I don’t necessarily think that Orinda was referring to sexual power. Why not the innate power of her spirit to be free in the controlled time in which she was part. I get an image of her definitely using nature to illustrate a powerful hierarchy, like the brooks being more powerful than the flowers and yet all desiring the beams to “drink” in influence (which IS power).

Mermin labeled the sun “fecundating”; other definitions of the word are: to make fruitful, prolific, to fertilize, to impregnate, fertile, and rich in inventive power. I think Mermin was really making a stretch in relating it to male sexual power.

I agree Orinda probably saw herself as a flower compared to the brook, but I fail to see any sexual reference. Any woman who was bold enough to write at that time was a strong woman for whom power would not only rest within a sexual frame. I value the power to write freely what your spirit (your unconscious voice) brings to you from the universe, rather than having to write artlessly and avoid fracturing any male egos. As a woman who likes to write, I can identify with Orinda’s “demanding the day”. She wanted her voice to be heard, she wanted to be taken seriously, I cannot begin to see how Mermin makes sexual connections. I can see that women did identify themselves with nature.

Male Responses

Mermin says that women writers were praised easily, if not condescendingly (336). She provides an example of what one of Philip’s editors said in a preface of her published poems: would be no disgrace to the name of any Man that amongst us is most esteemed for his excellency in this kind, and there are none that may not pass with favour, when it is remembered that they fell hastily from the pen but of a Woman (Mermin 336). Abraham Cowley said that Philips was, “the only genuine woman poet known to history” (Mermin 337).

Cowley wrote of her in verse:

         We allow’d you beauty,

         and we did submit

         To all the tyrannies of it,

         Ah cruel Sex!”

         will you dispose us too in Wit? (Mermin 336).

The Earl of Orrery wrote to Mrs. Philips:

         In me it does not the least trouble breed,

         That your fair sex does ours,

         in verse exceed (Mermin 336).

         Even a century and a half later Keats prefaced his praise for her poems with a nasty snarl at intellectual women (Mermin 337).

An anonymous woman commented felicitously:

         Thou glory of our sex, envy of men,

         Who are both pleas’d and vex’d with thy bright pen (Mermin 337).

Philips’ physical person, her beauty, was generally the prime target of criticism (Mermin 338). Henry Vaughn said of her:

         language Smiles, and accents rise

         As quick, and pleasing as your Eyes,

         The Poem smooth, and in each line

         Soft as your selfe (Mermin 338).

The beauty and virtue of her poetry are the same as her body; they are thus both exposed (Mermin 338).

         The quotations certainly illustrate men’s attitudes towards Philips.

Conclusion

Around 1663 a group of Philips’ poems fell into the hands of a London publisher Richard Marriott; he filed to print a pirated edition on November 25, 1663 (Limbert 181). Philips was in London at the time to do business for her husband and to see that her friends were able to suppress the pirated edition (Limbert 181). While still in London, she died of smallpox on June 22, 1664 (Limbert 181). Philips’ legacy included publishing one volume of verses, one of the letters, and the translation of two plays (Williamson 19).

Philips claimed for women the ability to build and sustain friendships, to voice healthy skepticism about love and marriage, to realize identity and integrity in private worlds, and to write about their personal experiences (Williamson 78). For a woman of middling background who died at thirty-three at a chaotic age, this was not a meager achievement (Williamson 78).  

I am willing to bet that many people today, not having studied women’s history, have an image of women as quite passive historically. Many people today if asked might say that feminists’ voices came about in the late 1960s and early 1970s – the modern feminist movement. I know that women have been trying to scream out for equality, in whatever way they could, since time began.

In conclusion the words of Wilson seem to sum it all up:

Participation – any participation – in the shaping of language is social power. The written word as a signifier of status and power is capable of bestowing parity to males and females in that privileged space. The literary labor of Renaissance women writers thus articulates a desire, however subliminal, for the status and power that equality implies. Assuming the voice of a poet, engaging in the shaping, defining, and ordering of experience, participating in constructing and creating, women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could temporarily offset the hierarchies of gender and become the equals of men in the act of creation (Wilson xxxii).

Works Cited

Hageman, Elizabeth H. “The Matchless Orinda: Katherine Philips.”  Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. 566-608.

Limbert, Claudia. “Two Poems and a Prose Receipt: The Unpublished Juvenilia of Katherine Philips” (text) Women in the Renaissance. Ed. Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Arthur Kinney.  Amherst: the University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, 179-186.

Mermin, Dorothy. “Women Becoming Poets: Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch.” English Literary History 57.2 (1990): 335-356.

Mueller, Janel. “Lesbian Erotics: The Utopian Trope of Donne’s `Sapho to Philaenis.'” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context. Ed. Claude     J. Summers. New York: Harrington Press, 1992. 103-134.   

Stiebel, Arlene. “Not Since Sappho: The Erotic Poems of Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn.” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context. Ed. Claude J.  Summers. New York: Harrington Press, 1992. 103-134.  

Williamson, Marilyn L. RAISING THEIR VOICES British Women Writers, 1650-1750. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1990.

Wilson Katharina M. Ed. Introduction. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.   

1995 Visions of the Self

MLS 401

Charles Strain 

Synthetic Essay  – Women’s Struggle to Find the Self

Grade: A-

Synthetic Essay

For many women, the search for a sense of self is extremely difficult. Women’s selves frequently get lost somewhere along the way in their attempts to fit images described by patriarchy. A woman’s sense of self comes pretty much pre-defined. Right from birth females are told how to be in the world. And how to be as a female frequently has little to do with inner reflection and contemplation of the self. It’s a package deal that usually concentrates on the outer aspects of a woman’s identity. The package tells women what they should look like, what their characteristics should be, and what their roles should be. Women internalize these definitions that serve men at the expense of women selves. The packaged self that patriarchy provides has an external focus that values outer appearance over inner reflective qualities. Our inner selves are either ignored or not valued. The oppressive patriarchally defined identity that many women adopt, becomes an invisible cage, silently draped over women’s selves. Under these circumstances, the discovery of true self is frequently accomplished through cracks in the cage of internalized oppression. Women must find ways to see around, beyond, or through the invisible cage of male-defined identity. Without a specific intention to seek a liberated self, many women may never learn who they really are; many women go through their entire lives thinking they are who they were told to be. They miss out on an exciting and uplifting journey.

Not true for the women authors I discuss. They created cracks in their cages and facilitated an inward journey of self-discovery. Each of the authors, Mary Wollstonecraft, Annie Dillard, and Maxine Hong Kingston, illustrate unique methods of cracking the cages of their selves that allow them to journey inward. Wollstonecraft’s (1792) sought her sense of self through reason. Dillard’s imagery of the instinctive weasel provided a path out of the cage and into the self. Kingston (1989) got to her core through disobedience to demands for silence, by speaking the unspeakable she empowered her journey to the self. 

Wollstonecraft (1792) questioned the patriarchal notion that women could not use reason, a notion used to construct women’s cages, to disempower them intellectually. Wollstonecraft (1792) said that, “… man’s pre-eminence over the brute creation …” (1), “is found in “(1) … Reason” (1). In defining women without reason patriarchy also attempts to place itself pre-eminently over women. Her inner self-knowledge allowed her to know that reason was not testosterone dependent. The discovery of reason within herself was all she needed to start her journey to self.     

^[1] Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) reasoned, “Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison” (Morgan 1991, 34). She illustrates the externalization of women’s identity. She knew that women’s compulsion to attain beauty would not free their minds; preening would never serve to gain equality for women, but reason could. 

Wollstonecraft (1792) expects women to use their reason to rise above, “… the mistaken notions that enslave my sex” (2). She says women should submit to reason, not to man. Society’s order, rather than being inverted by women using their reason, would actually become balanced (Wollstonecraft 1792, p. 2). The balance would have a profound effect on human relations.

Dillard escaped the cage that imprisoned herself through the vision of a weasel, who was, “Obedient to instinct…” (11), rather than to societal directives. Her description of the weasel’s eyes actually compares quite well with the invisibility of women’s internalized selves, “… two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window” (Dillard 13). A great description of the invisibility of oppression! The weasel’s eyes did indeed reach into herself. Instinct was a way to avoid societal definitions.

Dillard also creates images that describe the shock a woman might experience when first gaining insight into the self beyond the cage, “stunned into stillness” (Dillard 13), “… clearing blow to the gut” (Dillard 14), “… it emptied our lungs” (Dillard 14), “… a bright blow to the brain” (Dillard 14). These phrases describe how the discovery of a feminist consciousness feels. It’s a profound inner insight into the unknown self. 

“Brains … and secret tapes …” (Dillard 14), women’s secret tapes, internalized messages of the patriarchally defined self. “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live” (Dillard 15). Dillard realizes that something is missing, that something is a strong sense of self. She must learn how to get to a different place beyond the tapes. She seeks a self-defined self. A self that wanted the freedom to be, to experience the world at a primal natural level apart from the cage of patriarchally defined normalcy. The weasel was her metaphor for a liberated self, it gave her a way to view deep within her caged self. 

Dillard longs to “… calmly go wild, Down … where the mind is single, … Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses” (Dillard 15). I love these images, they illustrate seeing beyond the cage and getting out of the encaged self’s skin. Her self also envisioned, “… the dignity of living without bias or motive” (Dillard 15), the image of a liberated free self.  

Kingston (1989) had to peek beyond the fear imposed by violent images used to silence Chinese women. Silence seals off the self from the truth. Silence is a barrier that blocks the validation of the self. Her mother demands silence on the first page of her book, “You must not tell anyone” (Kingston 1989, p. 1). Her mother proceeds to tell her a terrifying talk-story about her no-name aunt whose home was raided as punishment for a rape that caused her to become pregnant, an unforgivable sin for a Chinese woman. The frightening violent images serve to brand the invisible cage onto the self, ” … hands flattened across the panes, framed heads, and left red prints” (Kingston 1989, p. 4). Villagers’ red hands, dripping with chicken blood from a destructive raid on the no-name aunt’s home. Kingston (1989) thought, “… there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have” (16). By refusing to be silent she ended no name aunt’s punishment and her participation in it; she remembered her no name aunt, and she was not forgotten after death.

The image of the villagers with, “… eyes rushing like searchlights” (Kingston 1989, p. 4) on a family trying to hide an unacceptable truth. Truths Kingston (1989) does not hide. Her inner eyes also rushed for truth, she used truth to disempower the myths that caged herself. 

Kingston (1989) takes the sting out of the destructive metaphors by etching them on the page. Her disobedient speech lifts the cage off of her potentially disjointed self. Speaking of the emotional imprints dilutes the potential damage to her spirit. She penetrated the fear, spoke of it, thus diluting the power of the fear, allowing her to share through her book, the torturous inner journey she traveled in search of a whole and valued self.

Kingston (1989) even develops a sarcastic voice, to express her anger at the oppression from both cultures. She sees beyond both the American and the Chinese caged selves. She uses an American slang phrase to refer to the man who got her no-name aunt pregnant, she hoped he, “wasn’t just a tits-and-ass man” (Kingston 1989, p. 9). It’s evident that her self-derived power from speaking of women’s torture, especially by speaking out in a manner that patriarchy would not expect from a Chinese-American woman.

Kingston’s (1989) fear went as deep as thinking that the ghosts of her ancestors had access to her thoughts, “… feeding on her very thoughts” (Kingston, 1989, p. 69). Exactly what internalized oppressive ideologies do to the oppressed. 

Kingston’s (1989) mother actually initiated the betrayal of the silence by telling her daughter the story about cutting her tongue. Her mother told her that to prevent her from being tongue-tied she, “… pushed my tongue up and sliced the frenum” (Kingston 1989, p. 164). Despite its gruesome image, this metaphorically curative procedure did actually serve to free Kingston’s (1989) voice. Kingston (1989) carried forth her mother’s secret hope for the future by not keeping silent and breaking the spell of the crippling talk-stories. Silence her mother’s true self may have unconsciously also wanted the silence broken. 

Kingston (1989) puts words to her feelings about confusing cultural messages which eloquently describe an entrapped self. “Even now China wraps double binds around my feet” (Kingston 1989 p. 48). Despite the fact that foot binding has been outlawed in China, Kingston’s (1989) imagery illustrates how one’s mind can be just as bound by oppression’s cage as by physical feet binding. Double binds around her feet describe the power of psychological mind-binding.

Auditory tortures such as:  “… a sound so high it could drive you crazy” (Kingston 1989, p. 73), “… the sound tears the heart” (Kingston 1989, p. 73), “… tortured people screaming, and the cries of their relatives who had to watch” (Kingston 1989, p. 73) are diffused of power when spelled out. She combines visual and olfactory senses, “… wood dripping with blood, … the stench was like a corpse exhumed for its bones too soon” (Kingston 1989, p. 75); the broken silence provides a path toward the development of the self. Black letters imprinted on the pages of her book function to dilute the ghost stories and act as lenses to help visualization of the self within. 

As an adult Kingston (1989) finally tells her mother, “I’ve found some places in this country that are ghost-free”. … I think I belong there, where I don’t catch colds or use my hospitalization insurance. Here I’m sick so often, I can barely work.” (Kingston 1989, p. 108).  Here she makes a connection not only with the separation needed to discover her sense of self but between the damaging images and physical as well as psychological health.

Wollstonecraft (1792) is right, women certainly can use reason, but women also see beyond the tunnel of reason. Women who do go within to discover their self are the frightening ones in our society. For they are not obedient, they are strong and find a way to go within to find their sense of self – a self that may be separate, having nothing at all to do with men.

Dillard’s sense of self may at first appear seductive to men, they may perceive the desire to go wild in a sexual light. But the wild instinctive delight is within Dillard’s self. It can be quite blissful just to be one’s self.

Kingston’s (1989) “haunted” literary journey reflects upon her Chinese-American upbringing that disguised her true self with secret violent images. Kingston’s (1989) voice offers a glimpse into the devaluing Chinese and American images that formed her invisible cage. She finds the power of self by facing the family ghosts that served as her captors. Through disobedience to the command for silence, she frees herself to look deep within for the self.

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1995 Visions of the Self

De Paul University

Charles Strain 

Grade: A

Analytical Essay

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior takes the reader on a “haunted” journey with a Chinese-American girl growing up in California, working in her family’s laundry. Her burgeoning sense of self struggles to make sense of family ghosts that torment the spirit. Metaphors and images serve not only to describe but to take the reader right along with her beneath the skin, offering a glimpse beyond the social mask that would normally hide her true self.

Frequently bombarded by messages that attempt to silence, forget, and deny violence against women, from both the Chinese and American cultures, she rises above refusing to be silent. 

She shares her torturous girlhood, a girlhood where talk stories (oral history) from her mother about ghosts serve to brand frightening ideas into her emerging sense of self. In the very first words of her book, her mother speaks of silence about the violence, “You must not tell anyone, … what I am about to tell you” (Kingston 1989, p. 1).

Her mother then proceeds to tell her the gut-wrenching story about her forgotten and denied aunt in China who got pregnant by one of the villagers. Her fellow villagers destroyed her family’s home and livestock. ” … hands flattened across the panes, framed heads, and left red prints” (Kingston 1989, p. 4), red with chicken blood. The image of bloody hand prints on window panes is a descriptive visual metaphor for a fractured, hemorrhagic sense of self, resulting from hearing of her aunt’s anguish. Anguish to be continued even after death. Kingston expresses her outrage at the abhorrent event sarcastically with a common American slang phrase, she hopes the man who got her aunt pregnant “wasn’t just a tits-and-ass man” (Kingston 1989, p. 9).     

Fa Mu Lan is an image of a swordswoman, the woman warrior empowered to rescue Chinese people; despite a Chinese woman’s disempowered status, there is still an expectation of being responsible and powerful in taking care of her family and community. “We are going to carve revenge on your back”, her father told Fa Mu Lan (Kingston 1989 p. 34). A metaphor for their culture’s taking its pain out on women. One wince at reading about them carving “oaths and names” (Kingston 1989 p. 34) in her back whether the carving was actually physical or metaphorical. The pained self, whatever part of the self, is still deeply carved. The image of the wounds and their horror is imprinted upon the reader’s mind through her eloquent verbiage. Her mother’s talk stories were, what we might describe as nightmare stories, stories ” … to grow up on” (Kingston 1989, p. 5).

Kingston’s (1989) mother told her that she, “… pushed my tongue up and sliced the frenum” (Kingston 1989, p. 164), so that she would not be tongue-tied. Despite this metaphorically curative procedure, Kingston (1989) describes, “A dumbness–a shame–still cracks my voice in two, even … to say `hello’ (165) and “A telephone call makes my throat bleed and takes up that days courage” (165). One gets a deep sense of how difficult it is for her to speak. 

Kingston’s (1989) poignant images include other types of sensory violence. The following are descriptive of her auditory torture: “… a sound so high it could drive you crazy” (73), “… the sound tears the heart” (73), “…the sound of energy amassing” (73), “… tortured people screaming, and the cries of their relatives who had to watch” (73). She also combined the visual with the sense of smell, “… wood dripping with blood, … the stench was like corpse exhumed for its bones too soon” (Kingston 1989, p. 75).

Kingston (1989) provides visibility and understanding of Chinese-American women and of historic Chinese women whose names and existence were forgotten, denied, or silenced. Her artful words paint the violent, soul-abrading images of her mother’s talk stories and their profound complexity within her intimate selfhood’s development. The student of selfhood is offered the opportunity to develop a sensitivity toward a Chinese-American woman’s inner world. Her work provides a vision and a role model for other women struggling to speak despite societally imposed demands for silence. Kingston’s profoundly moving story is a triumphant refusal to be forgotten, denied, or silenced.

In her last chapter, she vividly portrays the main theme of her work through an ancient grandfather’s voice, “Maggots! Where are my grandsons? I want grandsons” said at every meal as he looked into six sisters’ faces (Kingston 1898, p. 191).    “And here I was in the United States paying two hundred dollars for you” (Kingston 1989, p. 83). “I am useless, one more girl who couldn’t be sold” (Kingston 1989, p. 53). Kingston reveals the message imprinted on her spirit, first of all, feeling she wasn’t “good enough” to bring financial and the guilt her mother infringed on her mother told her about older girls being given away for free during the war in China.

1991

DePaul University

Major Seminar

Teacher: Grave Levit

Media Violence: Teaching Our Daughters About Misogyny

The Problem

Whether in the form of television, popular music, movies, or video games, one would have a hard time finding a young person today who has not functioned as a media consumer. The problem is that the product delivered to these young consumers contains enormous amounts of violence – a disproportionate amount of that violence is directed against young women.

Among the worst of the misogynist media are the “slasher” or “slice and dice” films in which young women are victimized by a crazed male. Any teen can tell you that Freddy Krueger and Jason may be back. Even the popular prime-time soap, “Twin Peaks”, is about the torture-murder of a homecoming queen.

The real-life statistics about the occurrence of violence against women are chilling, especially if put together with what we know about how children learn – they learn by observing models and can, with repeated exposure become desensitized to gore. I have no doubts that the violence against women in the media is interrelated with some of these statistics. 

In 1988, the National Coalition on Television Violence reported that of the ninety-five most popular video games, 83% contained violent themes. 1        

The United States is known to have the highest rates for murder, rape, and wife and child abuse in the world! 2

An FBI study revealed that 81% of 36 serial sex killers said pornography ranked highest among their sexual interests. 3

“Five years ago, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta declared interpersonal violence a major public health problem, comparing it to cancer and heart disease in potential years of life lost and costs to society”.  4

Estimates in the U.S., reveal that a woman is battered every 15 seconds; a rape takes place every 6 minutes. The largest cause of injury to women in the U.S. is battering. Four to six million women are abused in their homes every year by husbands or lovers. Twenty percent of single-offender rapes are committed by males under 21; 62% of multiple-offender rapes are perpetrated by males under 21. 5

“One out of 4 women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus. (Only 1 out of 10 will report it). Their attackers will be fellow students 80% of the time”. 6

                                                 Questions

What effect has the violent misogynist media had on the girls in my daughter’s high school graduating class? How has their desensitization differed from the boys? Are they more likely to identify with same-sex models, as my daughter hypothesizes? If so, how does that affect them?

                                                Hypothesis

I think that girls are deeply affected by this media; their desensitization is different than that of boys because they are portrayed as victims rather than aggressors. I imagine that, like their mothers, they suppress and deny the awareness – it’s too frightening to face. Women have developed denial as a coping mechanism in order to cope and function in their lives. (Similar to women who, in their thirties and forties, suddenly remembered being victims of incest).

                                  The Literature in Review

Albert Bandura’s social learning theory postulates that we do not come into this world knowing how to be aggressive; we must be shown how to aggress upon others. 7  Tan (1981) further explains Bandura’s theory as our learning from direct experience, in addition to modeling or observation. He claims that Bandura’s theory works well when applied to media violence. The media can see to it that children learn all different types of violence. 

Tan (1981) describes one of the earliest studies done by Bandura, et al, where they exposed nursery school children to researchers kicking and hitting a large inflated doll. They frustrated all the children by giving them neat toys and then taking them away. They found that children in the groups who viewed the aggressive modeling were observed in many more aggressive acts on the inflated doll afterward than the control group.

Tan (1981) reveals another study in which Hicks sought to learn whether or not children would remember aggression they had seen modeled on TV. He found that even 6 months later, despite not seeing the aggressive model again, the children were able to imitate the aggression only slightly less than immediately afterward.

Eron and Heusmann (1986) were involved in cross-national studies involving hundreds of first and third-grade children. (I am relating only the U.S. studies). They used questionnaires, parental interviews, self-evaluations, peer reports, IQ tests, psychological tests, TV character identifications, and levels of fantasy use, to assess each child’s level of aggression. The children selected the shows they watched the most and used self-evaluations about the amount of time spent watching them.

They found that boys were more aggressive than girls and watched more aggressive shows. They found that children’s viewing habits were related to aggression and could even be predictive of future aggression. Infrequent viewing of severe violence was less likely to be associated with aggression than regular viewing of mild violence.

The child who watched violent shows the most, who saw the portrayals as realistic, who identified with the aggressive model, who fantasized about aggression, and who, if a girl, identified with boy activities was most likely to act out aggressively. Parental perceptions about the reality of the violence did affect the child’s perceptions; the more real they see the violence the more likely they are to model it.

They think there is a critical age range (6-11 years old) when children are more likely to be influenced by television. Aggressive tendencies obtained during this period seem to defy extinction. So the aggression becomes habitual and eventually gets in the way of the child’s intellectual and social success. Bullies are not popular, don’t do well in school, become frustrated about their situations – leading to more aggression. A sad cycle ensues ensuring failure and isolation.   

Meltzoff (1988) did a fascinating study to evaluate the imitative abilities (immediate and deferred) of 120 infants ages 14 months, and 24 months after viewing a model on TV; they made a take-apart toy out of materials in the lab that could easily be repeated by the infants. The results showed that the infants who watched the target behavior on TV were more likely to produce the act than a control group when given the toy immediately after viewing and 24 hours later.

According to Pollak (1988), The National Coalition on Television Violence charted the responses of 8-10-year-old boys who played a video game called, “Captain Power”. In the games, they shot interactive laser weapons at enemies displayed on the TV set. They found an 80% increase in fighting behavior on the school playground right after playing the game. 

Donnerstein et al (1988) report a Gallup poll of American teens that showed: 84% of 13 to 15 years olds have seen an R-rated movie; one in five of them have seen an X-rated movie. This implies that boys this young ARE watching this type of movies.

The authors used 156 male college freshmen to study the effects of emotional desensitization to 3 different type of films: violent against women, sexually explicit/degrading, and non-explicit/non-violent on their beliefs about rape and using women as sex objects. The men were tested for affective and cognitive perceptions after viewing one of the films. They then also judged a defendant and victim in a rape trial.

Donnerstein et al (1988) claim that prolonged exposure to violence and degradation of women may have two separate effects: First, it may inhibit emotional reactions, not only to the violence in the film but sensitivity toward the suffering of women in real life. Second, exposure to non-violent sexually degrading films may lead to perceiving women more as sex objects who are promiscuous.  

After repeated viewing the subjects related: diminished anxiety, less depression and enjoyed the films more as they viewed more. They were experiencing greater emotional comfort; material previously described as degrading and violent became “not so bad”. It blunted their awareness about the severity and frequency of violence; it may also decrease sensitivity to emotional cues, thus further decreasing the perception of the violence. The amount of sympathy for a rape victim and the judgment of the severity of the injury was less among those who viewed the violence and correlated with the subjects’ perceptions of violence.

The end result is altered affective and perceptual reactions which could also alter perceptions and judgments about real-life violence. They discovered that 2 films were enough to bring about desensitization.

Donnerstein et al (1988) also relates the results of a study done by Zillman and Bryant in which they exposed college males to long-term exposure to non-violent, but degrading pornographic films. They found that the subjects became tolerant of more bizarre forms of pornography, were less empathetic in response to statements about sexual equality, and assigned less punishment to a rapist.

Bushman and Geen (1990) used 100 male and female freshmen college students to learn about individual differences in modeling aggressive TV violence. They tested the thoughts and emotional reactions of subjects while watching violence after completing various personality tests. They tested for irritability, assault and verbal hostility, and stimulus screening, (a tendency of the person to ward off stimulation in the tapes by using selective attention). They showed subjects either a violent or a non-violent tape and then asked them about thoughts they had while viewing. 

They found that as the level of violence increased so did aggressive thoughts and ratings of the violence. Those whose personalities showed a high amount of stimulus screening were found to have the least violent cognitions; they were able to block out the violence.

Basically, their findings showed that media violence does bring out violent cognitions and affects emotional responses related to aggression. Men who were more physically assaultive experienced more violent thoughts during viewing. As far as emotions, the most violent tape increased self-reports of hostility and elevated blood pressure. Individual personality did have an effect and also in moderating responses, those who were more susceptible emotionally also felt more hostile after viewing.        

According to Bower (1989), New York University Psychiatrist, Dorothy Otnow Lewis, is involved in an ongoing study of violent juvenile delinquents and has done previous research on death row inmates. In a seven year follow-up of 95 young men, who were initially contacted while in a correctional school, at age 15, 77 of them were considered VERY violent (murder and rape) and 18 less violent. She has found that the men who committed the worst violent offenses had other problems: hallucinations and paranoia, epilepsy, recurrent psychotic symptomatology, abnormal EEG (brain wave tests) results, neurological problems, lower reading ability and intellectual ability, and were brought up in abusive, violent homes.

Landau (1990) reports that Leonard Eron, of the University of Illinois, was able to show that there is a direct correlation between the amount of violence children view to the amount they act out. He did a long-term study of children in New York that started when they were 8 years old and followed them through to 30 years old. They were able to use the amount of violence viewed at 8 to predict aggressiveness at 19. When the criminal offenses were tallied at age 30, they matched with the amount of TV violence back at age 8. 

Crowell et al (1987) relate a study in Canada, by Granzberg and Steinbring, who brought television to a group of Cree Indian children who had never seen TV. They found that the children who had begun watching a lot of tvs showed large increases in aggressive behaviors.

Crowell (1987) described a study done by Belson in England involving 1650 boys ages 13-16. He assessed them as far as socio-cultural history, violent behavior and attitudes, and the amount of exposure to TV violence. Boys with saturated exposure to TV violence were 47% more likely to commit violent acts than the group who were light viewers.

Crowell (1987) related several studies about children’s moral judgments. They presented young children with various social actions and then asked them questions to find out about their moral judgments, i.e. Would hitting be ok if there were no rules against it? Would it be all right for schools to have rules letting children hit each other? The results showed that their judgments did not depend upon any rules. Children said that institutions that allowed people to hurt other people were wrong. Social rules and the dictates of authority do not mandate a child’s moral judgments.

Davidson et al, also according to Crowell (1987), studied moral reasoning in older children; six to ten-year-olds were told stories that they could identify with and were familiar to them (theft of a toy from a school). Interestingly, they found that the type of story most children found familiar was about a bully aggressing other kids. “The issue of physical harm was more familiar to children than issues such as theft, scapegoating, embezzlement, and dereliction of duty”. Avoiding harm to others and caring for other people were the most important justifications to children. The older children evaluated rules on the basis of harm to others and on the basis of rights and mutual obligations. 

These studies serve as insight into the complex sophisticated moral abilities of children. They serve to illustrate that children are uniquely perceptive in picking up the double and the conflicting messages they get often get from adults. They CAN read between the lines and make moral decisions that go beyond the confusion they learn from adults. For instance when adults don’t practice what they preach.  

Crowell (1987), used David Pearl’s summary to describe the results of numerous studies about TV’s ability to influence aggressive behavior. Aggressive modeling is most likely to be copied when:

     1. It pays off, the problem was solved with aggression.

     2. No social sanctions were attributed to the aggressor.

     3. The violence was, in the plot, justified.

     4. The violence is shown as being socially acceptable.

     5. It appears real to the child.

     6. The motivation to hurt is shown as deliberate.

     7. The portrayal gives the child cues that fit into his reality.

     8. The child can identify with the model.

Pearl also illustrates messages that will inhibit aggressive  imitation among adults and teenagers:

     1. The aggressor is punished, crime does not pay.

     2. Displaying the destructive, painful consequences that

        violence leads to.

     3. Remind the audience that this violence is against moral

        and ethical values.

Josephson (1987) did a study to test the responses of 396 second and third-grade boys to televised violence, considering characteristic aggressiveness ratings done by teachers, the timing of frustration, and the effect of cues in moderating response. Some boys were frustrated before viewing the violence and some afterward. She assessed aggressiveness comparing viewing violence only and violence along with a cue. The boys were observed playing ice hockey after viewing the violence. 

She found that violence viewing did increase aggressiveness, but only in the boys with high characteristic aggression scores; they were even more aggressive if also subjected to a cue (called the “cueing” effect, which serves as a reminder of the violence). In the violence-plus-cues condition, the less aggressive boys seemed to be more aggressive as a result of having the highly aggressive boys in the group. In the less aggressive group, frustration before viewing resulted in less aggression than if frustrated after viewing.

Potts, Huston, and Wright (1986) did a study on the effect of TV form and violent content on 3 to 6 years old boys’ social behaviors and attention spans. The subjects were 64, white middle-class boys from a university preschool and two private daycare centers. They observed changes in styles of interaction and increases in some prosocial behaviors after viewing violence. They found that fast-moving action, not violence, got the boy’s attention; the action content had no effect on behavior. Cues in the environment were found to have an effect on watching TV violence; prosocial cues can override short-term television violence.

Peterson and Pfost (1989) showed 144 undergraduate males various forms of erotic, violent, non-erotic-non-violent rock videos to assess the effect they might have on attitudes toward women. Viewing the non-erotic-violent rock videos led to a much higher score on the Adversarial Sexual Beliefs indicator. The findings led them to believe that aggressive rock videos can lead to an antagonistic, callused attitude about women; more so than erotic or erotic-violent material.

They relate their findings to Bandura’s ideas about emotional incompatibility; mild erotica stimulates pleasurable feelings that do not allow for aggression. Non-erotic-violent videos do not elicit pleasure reactions, so they do not supply the inhibitory effect that would block aggressive feelings. High levels of anger, frustration, and anxiety are known to promote aggressive behavior.

For men who already view women as weaker and justifiable targets, combined with extensive viewing of violent rock videos, it is certainly possible that they might take their aggressive feelings out on women. (39.6% of the men in this study indicated some likelihood of committing rape, if they could be assured of avoiding punishment – further evidence that attitudes of violence against women remain widespread).

Atkin (1983) studied 96 fifth and sixth-grade boys and girls from lower middle and working-class backgrounds; he showed them tapes including fantasy and real violence. He theorizes that adolescent aggression increases along with the perceived realism of violence. He claims that Bandura’s theory of observational modeling applies in that the actuality as perceived by the viewer is very important. 

Aggressive responses were much higher from the groups that viewed the violence on the news, significantly more than with recreational violence. They observed that the teens paid much more attention to the violence in the news than they did with fictional violence. 

Frost and Stauffer (1987) administered personality tests to 150 persons, then exposed them to 20 minutes of dramatized violence while using skin conductance and blood pulse volume to test for autonomic arousal. 72 were non-paid volunteer, white, affluent, undergraduate college students; 78 were paid volunteer, racially mixed, inner-city housing project residents; both groups were ages 17 to 24, and included males and females.

They discovered that both the college students and the housing project residents were aroused the most while viewing a female killing another female. The college males were aroused quite a bit less by rape scenes than the inner city dwellers. 

The major finding was that city dwellers became much more stimulated by 10 types of violence than college students. Apparently when the violence viewed matches what one sees in their neighborhood it enlarges the reality and thus the response.

When evaluating the approval of the films through post-viewing questionnaires, the inner city persons were much more positive about the violence; greater physiological arousal correlated with greater approval.

The researchers did not find gender to be a factor, they did not observe any difference between genders in physiological arousal. They, however, did find great differences in the approval ratings. The college females expressed much more disapproval than did the inner city females and males or the college males.

Steinfeld (1979) tells of researchers at Penn State University observed 92 kindergarten children and recorded levels of verbal and physical attacks. Over the next 4 weeks, they divided them into 3 groups and had them watch different half-hour TV shows. Group 1 watched “Batman” and “Superman” (containing physical and verbal assaults); Group 2 watched “Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood” which had puppets teaching kids how to cope with their feelings. Group 3, the control, watched neutral films.  

Children with low aggression scores did not show a response one way or another. Children considered to be less well off, who watched “Mr. Rodger’s”, demonstrated amazing improvement in cooperation, going along with rules, and relating to others. Half the total amount of children scored high on the aggression score and displayed much more aggression with the other children.

This shows that we can use POSITIVE models to teach children skills useful in developing successful POSITIVE social communication. In other words, we can use what has been learned about the powerful effects of modeling violence and use it to teach children about being humane human beings.

Proposed Research Methodology

                                                Interviews

Before starting the actual research, I would do some pre-testing to learn about teen vocabulary; if I am able to use the teens “lingo” I will probably get better results. I will want to know how they describe these types of films – do they know what “slasher” or a “slice and dice” films are?  Do they have others words to describe these films? 

I also need to develop a sense of “where their heads are” in terms of this type of media. Will they shock me by demonstrating a clear understanding about their media victimization? I need to obtain this type of information if I am to accurately learn the effects that it has upon them. (After all, I am making some assumptions going only by my daughter, who was raised by a feminist, and by observations made of adult females).

Out of the 225 students in the graduating class, I plan to use one class with 10 students to pretest my questions within a group, then I will interview 5 students individually to pre-test the best questions to ask individually. I will use random selection throughout to form groups of students.

I would use two types of semi-structured interviews, using what I learned from the pre-testing. I will then interview 25 girls in a group setting and 15 in individual interviews. I would use the same basic format to interview the girls in the classroom as I would in the individual interviews; I want to see if there are differences in what they say in a group compared to individual responses.

I am very biased on this subject so I will try to remain aware of it to avoid infecting the results. I will document the data obtained from the interviews as soon as possible after completing them. I do not choose to tape or take notes during the interviews to prevent distraction to the respondents and to allow myself to really listen and concentrate on not only what is being said with words, but on what they are communicating with gestures and body language that I might miss while writing things down.

I will initially tell the girls that I am doing research on a subject that they are experts at. They, as teens, see tons of movies, watch rock videos, play video games and are at times true “couch potatoes” with either TV or movies on the VCR. I will assure them that ONLY they have the answers to my questions. I hope to enhance their self-esteem about the opinions they hold about media; if I tell them they are experts, I may very well get “expert” data from them.      

First I would ask some easy questions like, how old are you? I would gradually work up to the questions dealing with the research. I would end the interviews, again with easy questions. Here are some examples of questions that I imagine I could use:

-Do you watch “slasher or “slice and dice” films?

-Imagine explaining a “slasher” movie to someone who has never seen one. How would you explain it?

-Think of a “slasher” film you have seen. Explain how it made you feel?

-Tell me about the plots in these movies.

-Tell me what these movies make you think about. 

-How close to real life are these films?

-Tell me about the victims in these films.

-What do boys say about “slasher” films? 

-What effect do you think this type of media has on you?

-What kinds of things do you think I will learn from these interviews? 

My goal is to learn about basic themes that are present in adolescent girls perceptions of media misogyny. I want to learn first of all, whether or not they see themselves as being portrayed as victims, if they do, I want to know what they think and feel about it. If they do not see the victimization, then I want to learn how they do perceive it. Their perception of the films will be used to guide me in ascertaining the effects that the films have had upon them. 

Questionnaires

I would also utilize questionnaires, I would pre-test them as I did for the interview questions using a group of 10 girls. I will pre-test with less structured questions and devise more structured questions from what I learn. I will administer questionnaires to 25 girls. I could compare the results reflected in them to the similar questions asked in a group or in-person to what they might answer in the anonymity of a questionnaire. I will use explorative questions in the hopes of gaining insight into their perceptions.

As with the interviews, I would begin with easy-to-answer questions, gradually get more in-depth and end up with easy questions again. Most of my questions would be open-ended to allow them to use their own words. Some closed-end questions will probably be used but I will be much more interested in the open-ended questions because I seek to learn about the complex sociological and personal effects of media violence.

With questionnaires, you could even allow space for the girls to draw pictures about perceptions they have about violent films. If they are at a loss for words pictures could tell reveal feelings. Some possible questions might be:

-Describe a “slasher” or “slice & dice” film.

-Give an example of a “slasher” film that you have seen.

-Pick one “slasher” film you have seen and explain the plot and what the movie meant to you.

-Does violence in movies affect you in any way? Please describe.

-Do you enjoy “slasher” films?

-Who do you watch these type of movies with?

-If you do NOT like these types of films, and you do view them, what promotes you to do so?

-Who are the usual victims of media violence?

I would use triangulation, in that, after finishing all the interviews and questionnaires, I would repeat studies on the same girls, 2 months later, to see if just being a part of the research may serve to make the girls more aware. 

I might also do the same questionnaires and interviews with daughters of NOW (National Organization For Women) members to see if having a feminist mother makes a difference in how girls perceive media misogyny. I also entertain the idea of questioning daughters whose mothers are in a battered women’s shelter and comparing results among them also.  

Another type of study could use role-playing; the girls could be assigned to summarize a “slasher” film (of their choice) by role-playing what they perceived about the film. You could simply observe their role-playing or you could videotape it, and watch it with them later, while they narrate. Who knows what you could learn from this type of observation.

In evaluating the results of the research I would do a content analysis looking for word use, similar feelings, and basic themes or attitudes about media violence. What was loudly NOT said, and conflicts noted between verbalizations and body language, may also be enlightening.

                                       Expected Outcomes

I expect to find that the girls are not aware of their victimization in the media; they may be aware of the violence, but I doubt they will see how much it is directed against themselves. I also think that peer pressure has a powerful effect on their movie-viewing behavior; teens have a desperate need to “fit in”. Since media violence is popular – they must watch it. I think that daughters of feminists will be more cognizant of the “slasher” films than those with non-feminist mothers. I imagine that girls who view physical violence against their mothers in their homes may have an even more powerful need to suppress and deny.

Just being involved in this research may have an effect on the girls; just being encouraged to think about the subject may change their future perceptions; some may be able to perceive the victimization, but most will not – most will continue to deny its existence. I project that a few girls will change the way they perceive misogyny after being involved in the research.  

End Notes

1       Pollak, Richard. (1988). “Videotic Maniacs”.  The Nation.  December 19,  pg. 673.

2       Landau, Elaine. (1990).  Teenage Violence  New Jersey: Julian Messner, p. 39.

3       Russell, Diana E. H., & Caputi, Jane.  (1990).  “`Femicide’: Speaking the Unspeakable”  MS. vol. 1  September/October, p. 36.

4       Dobie, Kathy.  (1990). “Growing Up With Violence”.  Vogue vol. 180.  December, p. 313.

5       Majo, Kathi. (1990).  “Hooked On Hate? Unfunny Comedians, MTV, Tabloid, Television, Fright Films and Other Media Invasions”  MS.  vol. 1, September/October,  p. 45.  

6       Hirsch, Kathleen. (1990). “Fraternities of Fear, Gang Rape, Male Bonding and the Silencing of Women”  MS. September/October, p. 52.

7       Braun, Jay., Linder, Darwyn E.  (1979). Chapter 28  “Conflict vs. Cooperation”.  Psychology Today Textbook 4th ed. p 627.

Note to self reading this over 6-13-98 – the word slasher, if broken apart is quite stunning: slas-her

Bibliography

Anker, Roy, M. (1989). “Yikes! Nightmares From Hollywood”. Christianity Today.  June 16, vol. 33.  

Atkin, Charles. (1983, Winter). “Effects of Realistic TV Violence VS Fictional Violence on Aggression”. Journalism Quarterly.  vol. 60, pp. 615-621.

Bower, Bruce. (1989).  “Adding Up Violent Vulnerabilities.”  Science News. vol. 135.

Braun, Jay., Linder, Darwyn E. (1979). Chapter 28 “Conflict vs. Cooperation”.  Psychology Today.  Textbook 4th ed. 

Bushman, Brad J., Geen, Russel G. (1990, January).  “Role of Cognitive-Emotional Mediators And Individual Differences in the Effect of Media Violence on Aggression”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. vol. 58, pp. 156-163.

Colen, B.D. (1989, March). “BANG, BANG!”  Health. vol. 21, pp. 90-91.

Cottin-Pogrebin, Letty. (1989, September). “Boys Will Be Boys?” MS. vol. 18, p. 24.

Crowell, David H, Evans, Ian M, O’Donnell, Clifford R. (Eds). (1987). Childhood Aggression and Violence: Sources of Influence, Prevention and Control. New York: Plenum Press.

Dobie, Kathy. (1990, December). “Growing Up With Violence.”  Vogue.  vol. 180, pp. 314-343.

Friedrich-Cofer, Lynette., Huston, Aletha C. (1986, November). “Television Violence and Aggression: The Debate Continues.”  Psychological Bulletin. vol. 100, pp. 364-371.

Frost, Richard., Stauffer, John. (1987, Spring).  “The Effects of Social Class, Gender, and Personality on Physiological Responses to Filmed Violence.”  Journal of Communication. vol. 37, pp. 29-45.

Hirsch, Kathleen. (1990, September/October). “Fraternities of Fear, Gang Rape, Male Bonding and the          Silencing of Women.”  MS. vol. 1, pp. 52-56.

Huesmann, L, Rowell., Eron, Leonard D. (Eds). (1986).  Television and The Aggressive Child: A Cross-National Comparison. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Josephson, Wendy L. (1987, November). “Television Violence and Children’s Aggression: Testing the Priming, Social Script, and Disinhibition  Predictions”.  Journal of Personality and Social   

Psychology. vol. 53, pp. 882-890.

Katz, Lilian, G. (1991, January).  “How TV Violence Affects Kids”. Parents Magazine. vol. 66.    

Kohn, Alfie. (1988, June). “Make Love, Not War: We Keep Hearing That We Are An Aggressive, War-like      Species. Scientists Keep Telling Us That We Have A Choice”. Psychology Today. vol. 22.   

Kutner, Lawrence. (1990, December  27). “Helping Children Handle Disturbing News Reports of Death And Violence”. The New York Times. vol. 140, pB4(N) pC8(L) col 4.

Landau, Elaine. (1990).  Teenage Violence. New Jersey: Julian Messner.  

Linz, Daniel, G., Donnerstein, Edward., Penrod, Steven. (1988, November). “Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Violent and Sexually Degrading Depictions of Women”. Journal of Personality and Social    

Psychology. vol. 55, pp. 758-768.

Majo, Kathi. (1990, September/October).  “Hooked On Hate? Unfunny Comedians, MTV, Tabloid, Television,         Fright Films and Other Media Invasions”. MS. vol. 1, pp. 42-44.  

Meltzoff, Andrew, N. (1988, October).  “Imitation of Televised Models by Infants”.  Child Development. vol. 59, pp. 1221-1229.

Milavsky, Ronald, J., et al. (1982).  Television and Aggression A Panel Study. New York: Academic Press, Inc.

Pattison, Robert. (1988, August 13).  “The Mean Machine”. The Nation. vol. 247.

Peterson, Dena L., Pfost, Karen S. (1989, February).  “Influence of Rock Videos on Attitudes of Violence Against Women.”  Psychological Reports. vol. 64, pp. 319-322.

Pollak, Richard. (1988, December 19).  “Videotic Maniacs”. The Nation.      

Potts, Richard., Aletha, Huston., Wright, John., (1986, February).  “The Effects of Television Form and Violent Content on Boys’ Attention and Social Behavior”. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. vol. 41, pp. 1-17.

Russell, Diana E. H., Caputi, Jane.  (1990, September/October). “`Femicide’: Speaking the Unspeakable.”  MS. vol. 1, pp. 34-37.

Steinfeld, Jesse, M.D. (1979).  “TV Violence IS Harmful”.  Mass Media & Society. 3rd ed., Section 35.       California: Mayfield Publishing Co.

Tan, Alexis, S. (1981).  Mass Communication Theories and Research. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Toufexis, Anastasia. (1989, June 12).  “Our Violent Kids”. Time.  pp. 52-58.

Wilson, Barbara, J., Linz, Daniel., & Randall, Barbara. (1990,  Fall).  “Applying Social Science Research to Film Ratings: A Shift From Offensiveness to Harmful Effects.”  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. vol. 34, number 4, pp. 443-468.

Zoglin, Richard.  (1990, October 15). “Is TV Ruining Our Kids?”  Time. 

Zylke, Jody, W. (1988, October 7).  “More Voices Join Medicine in Expressing Concern Over Amount, Content of What Children See on TV”. The Journal of The American Medical Association. vol. 260, Number 13, pp. 1831 & 1835.

1991 Advanced Level as a Professional Nurse Experiential Learning

DePaul School for New Learning

Foundations of New Learning

Teacher:  Catherine Marienau       

Advanced Level as a Professional Nurse – Experiential Learning

QUARTER:  Winter                   

YEAR:   1991

COMPETENCE STATEMENT: 

PW-10 Capstone  Can effectively administer health care at an advanced level as a professional nurse.

THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE: 

My learning experience began as a nurse’s aide in 1966. After 3 years as an aide I went to school to become a practical nurse; I practiced as a licensed practical nurse off and on over a 15-year period. My experience varied greatly from a psychiatric unit, a recovery room, a coronary intensive care unit, a long-term care facility, an oncology unit, to opening a health office for a small manufacturing company when OSHA laws went into effect. Finally, in 1984, I graduated from Indiana University, passed the registered nurse state board exam, and began practicing nursing in various types of intensive care units. 

REFLECTIONS:

I thought that I had learned a lot in nursing school until I went to work. Most of what I learned was, in reflection, dangerous. Some intensive care units have structured programs for teaching you what you need to know – some don’t. I recall my first day as a graduate nurse in an ICU. The head nurse said that I would work with another nurse by following her around all day. After 1 hour a man who was electrocuted came in and all I did was do chest compressions on him as his heart continually stopped all day. The second day I was told there are your 2 patients, you may not have time to eat lunch.

There were some formal classes, but by the time you had them, you could have hurt someone. So upon reflection, the learning was less than desirable, to say the least.       

A vital part of the learning is the politics involved. I thought we were there because we really wanted to care for sick people. Instead, I learned about “game-playing”, and competition, and that it was a system that was very hard to survive in if you had any sense of fair play or altruism. I am surviving now by the skin of my teeth by not working for a hospital; I work for a nursing agency and go to a different hospital sometimes every day. This way I can just go in and just care for the patient. The system thank God, did force me to be confident and self-reliant because I saw that it was necessary for survival. This is why I can go work anywhere.

GENERALIZATIONS:

To sum up, the last 7 years spent working in intensive care units I can certainly think of many stories to tell, but the overwhelming thought that disturbs me is that I do not think that all patients have their civil rights. The most basic of rights, the right to our personhood and our bodies is frequently stripped away by a patriarchal medical system. There are times that I think that I will not be able to bear one more day being a part of this system. As with any system, all those involved must keep up their role in the system in order to keep it going. I no longer “fit” in the system because I do not see my role in keeping any type of oppressive system in operation.

I now see that the value system I began forming is being betrayed as I work in nursing every day. When elderly patients complain about inadequate care they are said to have “lost it” in their head, you know, they’re old and confused. Pay them no mind.

I must, however, stay in the system to pay the rent and the advanced education that will allow me to hopefully begin to tilt the power structure in favor of the patients.

APPLICATIONS:

I hope to take the negative aspects of what I learned through nursing experience and with specialized education make things better within the system for the patients who need us very much.

HOW IT FULFILLS THE COMPETENCE:

I am functioning in nursing’s most complex areas: intensive care units, coronary care units, and open heart units.

EVIDENCE:

-Resume

-Evaluations from previous supervisors and employers

-Certificates of advanced training in nursing

EVIDENCE DESCRIPTION:

-Resume of past experience

-Evaluations from:

Michael Reese Hospital, Coronary Surveillance Unit, by Nurse Manager Linda St. Julien R.N., M.A.

Pediatric Unit, by Nedra Skale R.N., M.S.N.

Olympia Fields Osteopathic Medical Center, Coronary Intensive Care/Open Heart Unit, by Helen Hallman R.N., & Maria Layman R.N., Nursing Administration Supervisor

Myerscough Medical Staffing that they received from LaGrange Hospital after I worked there through the agency off and on for about 1 and 1/2 years.

-Certificates of advanced technical nursing education (on-the-job training):

-Advanced Cardiac Life Support – 1988 (What medical personnel do beyond Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation).

-Certification in the Intraaortic Balloon Pump (Used on patients after other measures are not enough to sustain the heart after a heart attack.

-Class in how to read an electrocardiogram. A requirement in intensive care units. 

1991 Triumph on the Bunny Hill

DePaul School for New Learning

Foundations of New Learning

Teacher:  Catherine Marienau                

Triumph on the Bunny Hill

Leisure activities are meant to allow us a temporary escape from our work, study and/or responsibilities. It is time when we can hopefully do whatever we choose. Hopefully, it’s a time when we don’t have to worry about time. To some leisure is what we do for fun – it’s an adult term for play. To others, it’s simply relaxation or getting away from routine.

To me, leisure is all of the above but also includes the concept of reflection upon the quality of one’s life. We are frequently so busy fulfilling the role that we think society has cut out for us that we fail to take the time and allow ourselves the personal space to examine just what we are doing with our lives. Leisure time can be a sabbatical for examining the quality of our lives. I used my leisure experience to correlate a new frightening experience, (snow skiing) to the fear of facing life in a single role after spending 14 years in the traditional role of wife, and mother. 

To a working mom, who is also a nursing student, leisure might be simply taking a long hot bath after the kid is in bed. Even a McDonald’s hamburger can seem like a magnificent feast if eaten at a leisurely pace without interruptions. Leisure is frequently foreign to superwomen. You sometimes are forced to sit up alone at 3:00 AM just so you can get your thoughts together.

So here you are losing your mind, trying to fulfill the many roles and duties designated to you by society (according to your genital anatomy) and at the same time trying somehow to fit in an identity quest. Just when your last neuron is about to experience a cataclysmic synaptic explosion your darling husband says that the two of you don’t do anything fun together! There you were foolish enough to have been thinking – survival.    

He wanted to find some common leisure pursuit that we would both like – this was sure to save the marriage! We agreed to try something neither of us had ever done before – so downhill snow skiing it was.

I was terrified to try skiing. It looked dangerous and I was 36 years old for God’s sake. I questioned trying something this risky at my advanced age. I also felt that a major part of my life was at stake – my 14-year marriage. Right from the start this was much more than leisure to me; it was more than getting away from my job, college, and motherhood responsibilities.         

So here I go. The ski school said that they grouped people according to ability level, but – I saw those “others” actually ski to the area where the lessons started! I walked there in sheer terror of putting those sticks and boots on my feet. I did not believe that you could have any control over your speed and direction going down a mountain full of slippery snow, let alone with those massive sticks tied to your feet. 

The first thing that you learn is to snow plow – boy is that important! You form a triangle with the curved points of the skis together facing down the hill. You use your knees to apply pressure onto the skis to dig into the snow. The amount of pressure applied controls the speed. Wha la – simple! I had no trouble understanding the physics principles involved in how to snow ski – I did have trouble with the fear that I would screw up the well-designed scientific principles and be sorry as hell.

I proceeded with the lessons until we were to start the intermediate hill. My God, that intermediate hill had curves, bumps, and steep inclines that looked more powerful and believable than any scientific logic. At least on the bunny hill, you could see the bottom and if desperate could roll down the hill on your butt if you chickened out.

So, I sat in the lodge paralyzed by fear, disgusted, and disappointed with myself. I was a wimpy woman – a failure. That damn fear and lack of confidence had me at its mercy.               

I began to realize that I didn’t like being in a situation where I felt I didn’t have reasonable control. I felt like the mountain had power over me – power over my mind. I slowly, during the 4 days in the lodge watching others ski, came to see that I had similar feelings about other parts of my life. Having the leisure of time to reflect made me realize I had no control over my husband’s “Archie Bunkerism” and the type of marriage that we had. His attitude had taken control over my life. It was just as scary for me to question his status quo opinions as it was to conquer that bunny hill. Both were things that you had to do alone, within your inner self. This time spent alone gave me space to search within for the courage that only I could muster.  

When I woke up on the final day of the trip, I decided that I could not leave without trying on my own to see if I could use my newly acquired knowledge about snow skiing. Somehow unconsciously, I sensed this was a “do or die” situation for me.

Most of the people at the resort were on the same package that we were, so that meant that they would all be well beyond the bunny hill by now. That meant that I might have the bunny hill to myself. Well, almost to myself, it was just me and the toddlers – I could deal with them. I stood at the top for quite a few moments talking to God, praying – I was now determined to do it. But I had to do it on my own terms, at my own speed, and without being critiqued as I fell flat on my face. I kept saying loudly in my mind, “I will do this”.     

I get goosebumps just remembering that precious moment. I was in the middle of the bunny hill, the tips of my skis were pointed inward, I had just enough pressure on them to make me go slow enough to make it fun without undue fear. I felt the wind blowing past my smiling face, I felt a delightful thrill in my heart and enormous pain in both of my knees. I felt free at that moment, free to dream, to dream of just being me, of finding the me that I somehow lost in the stereotypical role that even I thought I must fulfill.  This brief exhilarating feeling that I had not had in so long put me in touch with a spirit within myself that was desperate to express itself. 

I don’t know of words descriptive enough to describe the feeling of triumph I felt after getting to the bottom still standing on those sticks. I can tell you that I screamed, I hugged the poker face attendant at the lift (he actually smiled), and I could not wait to get back up the hill to do it again. You really can go 1 mile per hour, you can stop right in the middle of the mountain and you can get down standing on those skis. It is a real thrill. I went home feeling on top of the world – I had achieved a major accomplishment. Knowing this, I somehow also knew, I had other major life hurdles to ski through as well.

The feeling of conquering your own fear is very uplifting. It gives you confidence and enhances your self-esteem. It gives you the courage to think – gee what else could I do that I never thought that I could? This experience made me realize I did have the courage to face who I really was and who I was determined to be regardless of any damn fear.  This was much bigger than leisurely learning to ski – this was a major life event for me. It changed how I saw myself. This leisure pursuit ended up being the catalyst for an enormous growth spurt in my life. I realized that my growth was being enormously oppressed living with this type of man. If I could take control of a mountain, surely, I could do whatever I needed to do to find “me” again.

You find determination inside yourself; no one else can give it to you. You hold the power over your own potential. You have the power to get rid of obstacles in the way of your growth – whether it’s an Archie Bunker husband or overcoming the fear of snow skiing. 

I still snow ski. Each time I’m on top of a mountain, in control, I experience not only the fun of skiing, but I reflect upon how much I’ve grown since then. I now share skiing with my daughter. (To her it’s simple leisure for there wasn’t any fear involved for her – she just plowed on down that mountain right away). I ski with friends now. I even went on a skiing vacation ALONE after getting divorced. (This was done by a woman who previously felt too self-conscious to walk into a restaurant or bar alone). Leisure can help you to put life in a different perspective, it allows you to step back and look at your life while not actually involved in living it. It has provided me with a thoroughly life-enhancing experience that has been a part of my taking the lead in defining my quality of life. I now know you cannot have quality of life without an individual personal identity, even if doing so demands facing fear.

1991 Practical Use of Algebra

DePaul School for New Learning

Foundations of New Learning

Teacher:  Catherine Marienau                

Practical Use of Algebra

Non-SNL Coursework

QUARTER:  Winter          

YEAR:  1991 

COMPETENCE STATEMENT: 

PW-1 Can use mathematics to describe and solve problems.

THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE:

Algebraic math was a part of my nursing education; it was incorporated into the appropriate areas and thus not labeled separately as a math course. However, this did really prepare me for the kind of math I would be using when I went to work in intensive care. This is where I really learned to use math and to see its vital importance to my patients’ care.

REFLECTIONS: 

At many local community hospitals, the doctors figure out the dosages of the super-potent drugs. I had worked in two local type hospitals before going to work at Michael Reese. Here you are working with interns and residents, they come from many different medical schools and are still considered students. The nurses are NOT students. They apparently are left to learn the math required on the job, because they always asked us how to do it.

I had grown up thinking that I was terrible in math so the fact that this was going to be such a vital responsibility in my new job I was terrified.

I also soon learned that the other nurses had little patience with the fact that I felt unsure of myself using these new formulas and trying to them at the bedside of a critically ill patient. So, it made me determined to KNOW it! I went to our clinical nurse specialist and asked her to teach me. She did teach me most of what I needed, but even she did not know how some of the figures were figured out. I HAD to know that too.

GENERALIZATIONS: 

An example of the math that I need to use I can best explain with a situational problem. A man comes to the coronary intensive care unit and is having a heart attack. As a result of heart damage and the inability of his heart to pump well, he loses his blood pressure. We then use drugs that will constrict his blood vessels to send blood to his vital organs, like his brain, heart, and lungs. This drug is called dopamine; the dosage of this drug determines the effect on the body, for example, if you give too high a dose you can damage the kidneys and give him more problems than he already has. This is why you must know how to calculate the dose properly.

The first thing to be considered is the concentration of the drug in the intravenous fluid. Let’s say you mix 400 mg of dopamine in 250cc(ounces) of fluid. You need to know how many micrograms of the drug are in each cc of fluid. SO……

250cc : 400mg : :  1cc : X mg

____   = _______

(400 mg divided by 250 cc = 1.6 mg/cc)

Now we know that each cc of fluid contains 1.6 mg of the drug.

We have a problem because we need to know how many micrograms are in each cc of fluid.

1.6mg          1600mcg    (Because 1000 micrograms = 1 mg) 

_____ X 1000 = _______  

 1cc             1cc

So … 1600 mcg/1cc

These drugs are so potent that they must be given on machines that will pump it into the patient at a specific rate in cc’s per hour. What we need to figure out is how many micrograms per kilogram per minute (mcg/kg/min) to give it at; this must then be put in terms of cc’s/per/hour that the pumps deliver.

The formula then looks like this………..

mcg x kg x 60 minutes (in 1 hour, which is what the pump delivers)

_____________________ =   

  1600 mcg per 1 cc

Let’s say we want to give 5 mcg/kg/min to this patient.

5mcg x 68kg x 60      20,400

________________ =  _________ = 12.75 or 13 cc’s per hour  

1600mcg/1cc            1600

We set the pump at 13cc per hour and the patient will be receiving the right dose.

If you take over a patient who is already receiving dopamine it is your responsibility to figure out if the right dose is being given. There is a shortcut that I have discovered that works well. If 1600mcg is in 1cc, if there are 60 minutes in an hour (the pump works on cc/hr) you can just divide the mcg by 60 and you get a constant factor.

So …

1600mcg

_______ =  26.6 mcg each hour

 60min

So when you walk in and find the rate at 13cc/hour you can quickly figure out if it is right. The formula would look like this:

13 cc per hour x 26.6     345.8

_____________________ =   _____ = 5 mcg/kg/min

       68kg                68

If any of these variables change, then you must do the whole thing over. For instance, the patient’s weight, the concentration in the bag, or the amount you want to give. This is only the formula for one type of drug.

Some are given in just mcg/min and then the weight becomes irrelevant. For instance, nitroglycerine. If you have a

50mg       0.2 mg                         200mcg

_____  =  _______  x 1000 to find mcg =  ________  divide by 60 = 250cc      1cc                             1cc

A constant factor of 3.33. Then you just multiply 3.33 by the number of cc/hour to find how many mcg/min.

You then proceed to fill in the amount in mcg that you want to give, you take the patient’s weight in kilograms, let’s say 150 pounds which you would divide by 2.2 to get the weight in kilograms (2.2 kg = 1 pound), or 68 kg.

Let’s say we want to give 50mcg/min. We then divide 50 by 3.33 and set the pump accordingly – at 15cc/hour. To check your figures you can take the cc,s per hour and divide by 3.33, or 15cc multiplied by 3.33 = 49.5 mcg/min (close enough).   

Sometimes we do what we call titration of these drugs according to the patient’s symptoms. If we are using dopamine for low blood pressure we increase it if the pressure is low and decrease it if it goes up to an acceptable level. With a medication like nitroglycerine, used to relieve chest pain by dilating the coronary arteries, you increase it or decrease it according to the patient’s pain. Sometimes if a person is unstable you may be changing the amounts you are giving every minute or so. You must keep checking what amount you are giving so that you prevent other side effects of the drugs.

There are many other things that critical care nurses calculate on a daily basis. If you require more I will try to explain. Some of it requires knowledge of anatomy and physiology like figuring some one’s cardiac output (how many cc’s of blood the heart pumps out per minute). There’s cardiac index which is found by taking the cardiac output and multiplying it by the person’s body surface area (we use a chart to figure this by the height and weight). We figure systemic vascular resistance (the resistance offered by the body to the blood on its way out of the left ventricle on its way to the body, which would be high with high blood pressure). These involve many formulas and many patient parameters that would require tons of explanation. 

APPLICATIONS:

As a nurse who goes to a different hospital every day, I desperately need these skills to survive, to say nothing about my patient’s survival, and my not being sued. Each hospital mixes drugs in different concentrations, so you have to start from scratch each time. Some hospitals have charts to calculate the drugs, but what if they don’t? I find that I end up teaching other nurses about the constant factors at least once a month because they can’t believe there is a faster way to figure.

Doing this is making me reflect upon the past 7 years of critical care nursing – I see what I could not see while just doing what I had to do. This now illustrates to me why they are now advertising, “If caring were enough, anyone could be a nurse.”

HOW IT FULFILLS THE COMPETENCE:

I can and do use math to describe and solve problems as a part of my work every day.

Spring, 1991

DePaul School for New Learning

Foundations of New Learning

Teacher:  Catherine Marienau                

Male Literary Inspirations: Henry David Thoreau, Russell, Bertrand, & Martin Luther King Jr

Thoreau

FORM – The first English class exposed me to Henry David Thoreau, born in 1817. Thoreau used essay and book form; his ideas were seen as radical in his time, but succeeding generations viewed them with admiration. He is most famous for his living experiment where he lived for a couple of years alongside a pond in New England; he wrote occasionally in journal form. He also wrote poetry. He also expressed his civil disobedience (in addition to his work by the same name) by not paying his poll tax because it supported slavery. He thought human rights were a precious thing.  Thoreau used eloquent language to express his views, for instance, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, seems profoundly true to me.

CONTENT – The basis of Thoreau’s content was to tell others to “simplify” their lives. He advocated defining success in your own individual terms, ignoring public opinion, and thinking for yourself. He criticized the current economic and social systems.

STYLE – His style was rather philosophical in nature. I was amazed at his sentences that frequently had 4 or 5 semi-colons in them! I was impressed. I was also impressed by the way he made simple everyday events seem somehow profound. He formed his unique ideas about life while at Harvard University and through the influence of his older neighbor and friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Thoreau’s Walden contains several types of writing: descriptive, argumentative, and expository. In the book, he discussed 4 basic topics: the desperation in which most men lead their lives, the economic myths that led to their desperation, the joys of living close to nature, and the higher laws that lead man from wildness to genteel.   

Bertrand Russell

I also came to love the work of Bertrand Russell; he was eloquent with his sarcasm and common-sense evidence to prove his points. His work called “Intellectual Rubbish” led to my examining my religious convictions and writing a paper about my idea of intellectual rubbish that earned me my first “A” in a written assignment in college. (My intellectual rubbish was the fact that in order to give the sacraments in the catholic church you had to have a penis – we all know of the absolute necessity of this piece of anatomical equipment in the catholic church).

FORM – Russell used book and essay form.  Anyone who was raised catholic knew that those nuns never took off their habits. Russell would take that “general knowledge” literally to the point that you had to realize how ridiculous it was. He says that even in the shower those ladies kept their habits on. He wrote essays that eventually went together into books on related issues and subjects.  

CONTENT – His contents in Intellectual Rubbish and Why I Am Not A Christian involved attempted to apply reason to subjects such as sexual ethics, morality, freedom, mortality, and education. He is brave enough to tackle subjects that leave him open to criticism by those who “believe” simply because of “faith”. He challenges the rationality of what we frequently don’t think to question – I love him!  

STYLE – He used sarcasm, wit, humor, and logic to get his message across about how ridiculous some of our common assumptions are about religion and politics. While his work was philosophical, it was at the same time easy to read even for me in one of my first college classes.

         Martin Luther King Jr.

My second English class exposed me to Martin Luther King Jr. His writing has the ability to grab at your conscious emotionally, intellectually, and at your innate sense of justice. I hope to someday write like him – I hope to write in a way that will move people and enable them to be tolerant of others whose morals and views differ from their own. (Examples being issues about abortion, the right to die, and racism).

FORM – The class assignment was to read his “Letter From Birmingham Jail”. He wrote it, of course, in letter form to fellow clergymen. He had been jailed for 8 days because of his campaign against segregation in Birmingham. He specifically directs the letter to WHITE clergymen who criticized his work and blamed him for breaking the law.  

King also used speeches as a form to express his passion. I always get goosebumps and tears in my eyes when I hear, “I have a dream……….”.

CONTENT – The contents were brilliantly directed at the conscious, guts, and intellect of his fellow ministers. He talked about equality and human rights that no clergy could dare argue with.

He defends his civil disobedience to the other clergy so well that I’m surprised the whole country didn’t join him. The contents of the letter addresses the criticisms he received from white clergy who did not understand what he was up to.

He addresses their criticisms and questions about what he is doing. He simply tells them that he is there because his organization is functioning there in Birmingham and simply that injustice is there – isn’t that reason enough?  He makes a correlation between what he did and what the apostles and Jesus did to spread their gospel; truly attacking the very principles that clergy stand for.

He explains why direct nonviolent action was necessary – to force negotiations that had previously been done but failed to remove racially degrading signs in the community. He said it was a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up privileges voluntarily. The oppressed must demand that the oppressors stop. The clergy criticized his timing of the sit-ins and he said, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied”. When is the right time to demand your freedom? Negroes had waited 340 years for their constitutional and God-given rights. He said it’s easy to tell someone to wait for their freedom when you have not seen your mother and father lynched, your brothers and sisters drowned at will etc.   

STYLE – His style was to intelligently clutch at your heart. I know I was not prepared for the emotion that it would wrench from me; I was glad I had decided to read it before I went to sleep because I could not contain my tears.

The style and content were directed at the very core of morality. He chooses words that have the ability to reach right inside your core to humanness and vulnerability that is the same for us all – black or white.

He writes with intelligent passion and clearly makes an eloquent unshakable argument for civil rights that is now a classic among arguments.

While reading his work I was also able to apply his ideas to the issues of patients and women’s rights.

Bibliography

Krutch, Joseph Wood. (1982). Ed. Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Essay pp. 105-340. Walden. Bantam Books, New York.

Miller, Robert K. (1986).  The Informed Argument a Multidisciplinary Reader and Guide.  Part 2-section 9. Some Classic Arguments.  Letter From Birmingham Jail. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Russell, Bertrand. (1950). Unpopular Essays.  Chapter 7.  An Outline on Intellectual Rubbish. New York:  Simon and Schuster.

Russell, Bertrand. (1957).  Why I Am Not A Christian.  New York: Simon and Schuster.