Clover Autrey

There are many levels of mental illness and emotional stress and William Shakespeare deftly portrayed the two young characters in Hamlet in different levels of this mental state, although the cause of stress was similar to both. The focus tends to be aimed at Hamlet as the main protagonist, yet I believe that poor Ophelia had the same dilemma and wasn’t able to handle it as well so sank into full insanity, while Hamlet’s depression didn’t go into quite the same depths. Both of these characters are caught between what they want and what others expect of them. Hamlet’s father shows up as a ghost and demands that if Hamlet is a good son, he will kill Claudius. Claudius is the king and no one, including Hamlet’s mother, wants the new king dead. Plus, Hamlet isn’t sure that Claudius murdered his father, although he is fairly upset that life has just gone on for most people, including his mother, who got remarried as quickly as she could. According to Christopher J. Hall, “what may be perceived as madness may be his way of protesting against the dominant narrative that his father has been forgotten” (Hall 9). Then of course, Ophelia’s father, Polonius tells everyone that Hamlet is insane. Polonius says, “Your noble son is mad./Mad call I it, for, to define true madness,/What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?” (Act Two, Verse Two). Since everyone thinks that Hamlet is mad, he can get away with a lot more crazy behavior and questions if he goes along with. 

Ophelia, on the other hand, is also trapped between being a dutiful daughter and her love for Hamlet. Her father forbids her to speak with Hamlet and she ends up unable to cope with the conflict between them and retreats within her own mind. She “finds herself at a point from which she cannot escape so she appeases all by going mad…losing contact with one’s reality” (Hall 8). She ends up floating peacefully down the river, happily singing old Catholic hymns that have been outlawed by the Protestants so it’s the closest she can get to escaping into a nunnery as Hamlet had told her to do in a moment of anger.  

While looking at Hamlet’s mental state with the comparison of Ophelia’s true insanity right next to it, his ability to question his emotional state “To be or not to be” (Act Three, Verse 1) in many instances throughout the play, show that Hamlet was able to reason and weigh  possible outcomes for any actions he would take. In my opinion, he pretended to be insane in order to gain information of the truth of his father’s death, and he did it well. Was he also suffering emotional trauma and probable depression? Very likely, yet he was far from insane.

 

Works Cited

Hall, J. Christopher. “A Narrative Case Study of Hamlet and the Cultural Construction of Western Individualism, Diagnosis, and Madness.” Journal of Systemic Therapies, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2016, pp. 1-13. EBSCOhost, doi; 10.1521/jsyt.2016.35.2.1.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1524/1524-h/1524-h.htm

 

Virginia Woolf wrote To The Lighthouse after living through both the First World War and seeing that a second war was on the horizon. She grew up through the wars and economic depression and saw how everything about cultural, political, and economic life in Britain had vastly changed. “The First World War broke out suddenly in the summer of 1914 and dragged on far longer, and at vastly greater cost, than anyone had dared to predict. In Britain, thousands of young men responded to appeals to join up in defense of nation and ‘civilization,’ and found themselves stuck, in Ezra Pound’s words, ‘eye-deep in hell,’ living in trenches alongside rats and corpses, and measuring their progress and victories in inches. The destruction of the landscape of battle, of human bodies, and of lives was unprecedented and indescribable, and for many writers and artists like Woolf, grouped under the loose term ‘modernist,’ it represented a decisive, irreparable break from the past and a need for new forms of representation in art and literature” (Scutts).  

Woolf herself, took part in the Bloomsbury Group, where she was able to think and discuss concepts freely instead of trying to be a standard of the outdated Victorian ideal woman. To the Lighthouse seems to have been written as a farewell to the Victorian age as the family looks across the sea to the austere Lighthouse that they can only imagine what it is really like. Going to the lighthouse in a way represents emerging “from the period of painful recovery from the war” (Scutts) and for the family it becomes the symbol of healing when they finally cross over the sea to reach it. 

In her introduction in the Everyman’s Library edition, Julia Briggs notes that “the last part of the novel is free from the idealizing presence of Mrs Ramsay and all that she stood for; in the absence of feminine beauty, the eye is now drawn to objects rather than people, to the boat in the bay or the lighthouse itself; and the search for a moment of happiness when life stands still is replaced by the more masculine and end-directed goal of reaching a particular destination (if Mr Ramsay cannot arrive at R, at least he can get to the lighthouse)” (xxii). Getting to the lighthouse for Mr. Ramsay, Cam, and James marks “the final stages in this movement towards forgiveness and acceptance, the emotions that the mourning process aims to induce” (Briggs xxiv). Mr. Ramsey knows that his wife loves the lighthouse and wished to go there. In the beginning of the novel, he sees her staring at “the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst” (Woolf 14). He notes that as she looks across the water she grows “greyer-eyed, that her husband loved” (Woolf 14). At the end of the novel, the lighthouse is described again in an austere view. “There it loomed up, stark and straight, glaring white and black, and one could see the waves breaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks . . . so it was like that, James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark tower on a bare rock” (Woolf 231-2). 

It is almost as if what they have been hoping for all this time has been reached. For James, it is when they are almost there that he receives the praise that he has earned for from his father. Cam “knew that this was what James had been wanting, and she knew that now he had got it he was so pleased that he would not look at her or at his father or at any one” (Woolf 235). For the others, according to Julia Briggs, “James and Cam come to see their father not as a tyrant but a sad old man, their sense of pain and anger, in part deflected from Mrs Ramsay to Mr Ramsay, is transformed into a generosity that is releasing and empowering, bringing peace to the children ” (Briggs xxiv).   

It is interesting to note, that the three members of the Ramsay family who make the journey to the lighthouse do so with a parcel to take to the lighthouse keepers, almost as an offering to this new way of life and forgiveness and relationships with each other begin. Nor do we get to see what happens when they step on shore as Mr. Ramsey “rose and stood in the bow of the boat, very straight and tall, for all the world, James thought, as if he were saying: ‘There is no God,’ and Cam thought, as if he were leaping into space, and they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a young man, holding his parcel, on to the rock” (237). Moving into a new way of living, pulling oneself from the wounds of the past, is like taking a leap with your offerings as the lighthouse has always been there as a guide. The Ramsay family, and I suppose, all of Britain in the modernist era, had to first go through the pain of war and loss to be at a stage when they were ready to go to the lighthouse.

 

Works Cited

Briggs, Julia. “Introduction of To the Lighthouse.” To the Lighthouse. Everyman's Library. 1991. Print. 

Scutts, Joanna. “Historical Context for To the Lighthouse.” Columbia College. https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/node/1767

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Everyman's Library. 1991. Print. 

Image: "Cuckolds Lighthouse, ME" by hatchski is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

So this was a little article written about me at my day job's newsletter...

GETTING TO KNOW...CLOVER AUTREY

Clover Autrey almost always has a smile on her face, and with good cause. In this past year, she's had two children graduate from University, and she joined them, earning her B.A. in English. She has three insanely adorable grandchildren, Felicity, Shane, and Dani, who light up her life. Clover said that as much as she loves her children (which is a lot), the grandchildren have a special layer in her heart. They don't live nearby, so they enjoy quality time together via videoconferencing.

Clover is an inveterate writer, spanning from fantasy to sweet romances, and her books are available on Amazon and other online outlets. She first realized she wanted to be a writer when she was still quite young, deciding that it must be the best job ever. While she wrote some short stories and poems in her youth, she didn't get started seriously writing until she was in her early 20s. If she could talk to her 20-year-old self now, she'd tell her that it will take a lot of perseverance, but to go for what she

loves. Some of her best friends are writers, and it has been truly wonderful to have a tribe that understands how each other's crazy brains work. They sometimes get stares when they're out in public and get to talking a little too loudly.

When asked about common traps for aspiring writers, Clover said she thinks it's both ego and a lack of

confidence. Most writers jump into it, believing that writing is easier than it is. Once they realize how much work it takes, and how much there is to learn about the art and skill of storytelling, the ensuing self-doubt can be crushing. You have to really love writing, and you have to have the guts to put your words out there. It helps to join writers and critique groups, as you'll both teach and learn. Don't take the criticism personally--it's necessary to help you refine your craft. At the same time, don't edit so much that you take your heart out of your writing, leaving it almost soulless. Write with emotion. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. If you hold back and don't let yourself feel it, or if you let your characters off too easily, readers will not feel the connection.

Clover said she's written scenes where she was crying so much she couldn't see what she was typing, and just hoped her fingers were still on the correct keys. Those magical moments make all the hard work worth it, particularly when a reader reaches out to share the emotion and connection felt while reading those passages. 

Clover said that going back to school and working full time comes with a unique set of challenges. You need to be prepared to have no spare time, and your brain cells will be depleted when you finally wind down for the day. It's important to carve out small components of time. Clover used her lunch hours for study and homework, which freed up some other time. Another difficulty was that she was so busy that there wasn't time to be social. The hardest thing, though, was not having sufficient time for writing. She has a profound respect for anyone who is working and going to school. When asked if she was planning to continue her formal education, she was quick to reply that she went back to school for a specific purpose, and at present is not planning on going any further.

Clover Autrey is the most loyal of friends, and truly blesses the lives of everyone she meets. CONHI is incredibly fortunate to have Clover on staff.