Alice Cary

I'm at the tail end of my sixth class, which has been a struggle. Even Mo tells me that I never seemed to connect to the course. I wish I could figure out why since I like the professor and enjoyed many of the works. The only thing I can think of is that I'm the type of student who likes to hear what the teacher has to say, what other scholars have said, and then react. I don't like sitting around and simply talking about the text for three hours, especially in a small group.

One fun thing is that I've begun to read Alice Cary's work and I like it - especially after Hawthorne. I find this entire 19th century group of transcendental writers tiring. They are too self absorbed and this hurts their work. I still love Melville, Twain, and now Alice Cary. Her work is lyrical and there is an oddity in the tales, a depth of human understanding that I have loved so far.

Reading her makes me wonder why women authors seem to fall off the end of the earth. To what extent is the male scholarly world too self-important to take the straight forward writing of women seriously.