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Some spider
We kicked off my Writing for Young Readers class with Charlotte's Web, which is not only a beloved children's class, but will also cure a hangover, or so says the young man who overindulged on a weeknight and then began his assigned reading the morning of class.
Charlotte is an author: "a true friend and a good writer", as Wilbur pronounces her in the concluding paragraph, of which I had no particular recollection. She publishes four texts during her career ("SOME PIG", "TERRIFIC", "RADIANT", and "HUMBLE", as you will recall) and they are widely read and admired.
Of course, her authorship is instantaneously dismissed. "Oh, no, it's the pig that's unusual ... It's just a common grey spider." Zuckerman tells his wife, one of the few who to any degree see through Charlotte's gentle ruse on behalf of Wilbur. That was rather odd and funny, I think, when I was first reading the book, but it struck me and many of my fellow classmates even more forcefully, how instantly dismissive everyone is.
Much is made, rather, of the "miraculous" nature of the texts, which in the absence of any writer deemed capable of producing them have been attributed directly to God. Well, isn't that always what happened to women writers, I thought. Men were happy enough to have the texts, but they were suspicious and hostile towards the women who had evidently written them, in a flagrant breech of their supposed capacities.
I commented on this, and my professor added that White's wife, Katharine Sergeant White, was herself an editor of the New Yorker who never received any great attention for her work while White obviously did, and perhaps on some level he thought he was her Wilbur ...
Unrelatedly, we hear an awful lot about the goings-on at the Zuckerman farm, but not a single word about a male spider. We get Charlotte herself, and she talks about her mothers before her, and the three spiders who stay with Wilbur are all female, as well. Anyway, the point being -- I never once wondered before how Charlotte conceived those eggs which constitute her magnum opus, but ... I did some research, and spiders like Charlotte (A. Cavaticus) are somewhat liable to consume their spouses, but it is not absolutely de rigeur as it is with the black widow and her ilk. The male spider performs an elaborate ritual to disarm the female's predatory instincts, but evidently they often win out anyway.
Speaking of which, Charlotte is an authoress who considers her offspring to be her greatest work and thus more important than her writing, but it still doesn't come off as that tired old cliché to me. Maybe because of the awe that surrounds the egg-sac and its outpouring of spiders.
Charlotte is an author: "a true friend and a good writer", as Wilbur pronounces her in the concluding paragraph, of which I had no particular recollection. She publishes four texts during her career ("SOME PIG", "TERRIFIC", "RADIANT", and "HUMBLE", as you will recall) and they are widely read and admired.
Of course, her authorship is instantaneously dismissed. "Oh, no, it's the pig that's unusual ... It's just a common grey spider." Zuckerman tells his wife, one of the few who to any degree see through Charlotte's gentle ruse on behalf of Wilbur. That was rather odd and funny, I think, when I was first reading the book, but it struck me and many of my fellow classmates even more forcefully, how instantly dismissive everyone is.
Much is made, rather, of the "miraculous" nature of the texts, which in the absence of any writer deemed capable of producing them have been attributed directly to God. Well, isn't that always what happened to women writers, I thought. Men were happy enough to have the texts, but they were suspicious and hostile towards the women who had evidently written them, in a flagrant breech of their supposed capacities.
I commented on this, and my professor added that White's wife, Katharine Sergeant White, was herself an editor of the New Yorker who never received any great attention for her work while White obviously did, and perhaps on some level he thought he was her Wilbur ...
Unrelatedly, we hear an awful lot about the goings-on at the Zuckerman farm, but not a single word about a male spider. We get Charlotte herself, and she talks about her mothers before her, and the three spiders who stay with Wilbur are all female, as well. Anyway, the point being -- I never once wondered before how Charlotte conceived those eggs which constitute her magnum opus, but ... I did some research, and spiders like Charlotte (A. Cavaticus) are somewhat liable to consume their spouses, but it is not absolutely de rigeur as it is with the black widow and her ilk. The male spider performs an elaborate ritual to disarm the female's predatory instincts, but evidently they often win out anyway.
Speaking of which, Charlotte is an authoress who considers her offspring to be her greatest work and thus more important than her writing, but it still doesn't come off as that tired old cliché to me. Maybe because of the awe that surrounds the egg-sac and its outpouring of spiders.
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Speaking of which, Charlotte is an authoress who considers her offspring to be her greatest work and thus more important than her writing...
hm. well, I always got the feeling that Charlotte considered Wilbur to be like one of her children. She took care of him, protected him, and made sure he would survive -- a very maternal thing to do. In that light, her 'writing' is really just part of her maternal feeling, which would also cover 'miraculous' -- mothers will move heaven and earth on their children's behalf, a devotion that men just can't get, even when they are the recipients of it.
I always loved Charlotte's Web, but it never got me over my arachnophobia.
This class sounds fascinating. I wish SB offered one like it.
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i just never was able to associate the many-legged things outside with Charlotte. It did get me to refrain from squashing them for the most part, but i still run in fear from anything with more than four legs.
Yes, I'm a wimp. =)
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