Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Welcome Students...

Good morning class! Welcome to your first day of English 12. My name is Miss.Blondé and I will be your teacher for the remainder of the semester. This semester we will be focusing on film adaptations of modernist novels, specifically Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End. I hope that everyone is as excited as I am to cover this novel. We will be looking at different topics such as feminism and politics which can be seen in both the novel and the movie. You will be expected to attend every class and read the supplimentary posts on this blog. Furthermore, I would like to hear what you think about the novel and the movie. So please feel free to comment on any of the blog post. At the end of the semester you will be expected to write an online quiz based on the readings presented and we will be going on a field trip to Ford Madox Ford's house! I hope you can all attend, I look forward to meeting each and everyone of you!

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Synopsis

A Synopsis of the film Some Do Not

The film starts in a pre-war Edwardian setting. Two young men – Christopher Tietjens and Vincent Macmaster – discuss various matters of the day, from the fairly banal to the utmost important. Here is where the audience is introduced to an adulterous woman whom Macmaster very much dislikes: Sylvia Tietjens.

The audience then crosses the channel in the next scene to arrive on the continent. Lobschied Germany is where Sylvia’s mother Mrs. Satterthwaite, Father Consett and Sylvia are all residing. Mrs. Satterthwaite and Father Consett are seated alone, drinking tea and dicussing the possibility of divorce for Sylvia and Christopher Tietjens. Soon Sylvia arrives and immediately launches into a tirade of the reasons she hates her husband and ways in which to torture him. Sylvia receives a telegram from Christopher making tentative plans for him to come to Lobscheid on Tuesday and asking if this is good for her. Sylvia replies it is, but she wants her maid Hullo Central to come with Christopher. Father Consett then suggests for Sylvia to go on a retreat for Catholic women, but both Mrs. Satterthwaite and Sylvia say this is impossible. The ensuing conversation reaches a climax when Sylvia threatens to corrupt her and Christopher’s child which prompts Father Consett to throw holy water on her. Back in England, Macmaster and Tietjens wait for Sylvia to telegram back. They talk of Tietjens’ work – finding figures for the government, who always want the most flattering figures to keep the country from ruin. Tietjens receives Sylvia’s telegram.

This sparks a flashback of a short time earlier when Macmaster met with Christopher’s godfather General Campion. Campion interrogated Macmaster about whether Christopher (and supposed affairs) is the reason for the Tietjens’ marital difficulties. Macmaster is appalled at Campion’s assertion.

The next day Macmaster goes to Mrs. and Mr. Duchemin’s residence, where he immediately falls for Mrs. Duchemin. She invites him and Christopher for Saturday breakfast. He returns to find Christopher with his brother-in-law Sandbach and General Campion. They are discussing Tietjens’ work and Tietjens asserts he would rather resign than have to fake figures. Both Macmaster and Campion think his attitude is silly. From here the men decide to go golfing. At the golf course Tietjens meet two suffragettes – one named Gertie who has been hurt and another who does not introduce herself. A policeman tries to arrest them, but Tietjens helps them get off. Only Sandbach is annoyed with this. Sandbach recognizes the other suffragette as Valentine Wannop, the daughter of Professor Wannop, a woman he believes he has seen Christopher walking with through Pall Mall.

This is why Campion believes that Tietjens is wrecking his marriage, and promptly chastises Tietjens on his sloppy behaviour in terms of his alleged affair with Miss Wannop. Tietjens, though they are false, does not refute the claims, as he believes it is better for people to find him the problem than Sylvia.

The next day Macmaster and Tietjens arrive at the Duchemin’s for breakfast. Miss Wannop and her mother are there, among other guests. Mrs. Wannop monopolizes Macmaster’s attention and this greatly annoys Mrs. Duchemin. During polite conversation between the guests Mr. Duchemin has a fit. He is taken away under the pretence of working on the next day’s sermon. Back with the guests Mrs. Wannop screams when finding she is dining with a Tietjens: Christopher’s father saved Mrs. Wannop’s life. Shortly after they begin talking, Christopher leaves with both Mrs. and Miss Wannop. Back at the Duchemin house, Mrs. Duchemin and Macmaster make plans to meet at dusk by a white gate.

Christopher acquires a horse and buggy to take Mrs. Wannop back to her house, while Christopher and Valentine Wannop decide to walk. They discuss the suffragette cause and Christopher reveals he approves of their methods but not their cause. When they arrive back at the Wannops’, they have lunch with Mrs. Wannop and again discuss women – Sylvia, Valentine, suffragettes and reputations. After lunch Mrs Wannop retires to her room to write and Christopher goes to work in the study until 5pm, when he will drive Valentine to where she must go.

Christopher takes Valentine in horse and cart. During the ride they discuss Ovid and Valentine proves to be the more knowledgeable of the two. Christopher does not know where they’re going but Valentine insists she does. However, as it gets later and the fog starts to settle around them, she reveals that she does not know where she’s going and in actuality wanted them to get lost. While veiled in fog they continue to banter and argue and talk. Christopher wants to kiss her but doesn’t. When they finally they get on a proper road, it is 5 am. The horse is not long on the road when a car, driven by Campion, hits it. The horse is badly hurt and very bloody. It dies a rather gruesome death while Christopher stays with it and Valentine goes back to her house, and the screen goes black.

When the film comes into focus again, the audience sees Sylvia again. Through a series of flashbacks, we are acquainted with the men in her life – Drake, the possible father of her child, Perowne and Christopher, from her point of view. Back in the present, WWI is raging and Sylvia and Christopher are eating dinner. She throws her plate of food at him on whim. Hullo Central cleans it up and they begin to talk of the recent marriage of Mr and Mrs Macmaster (Mrs. Duchemin) and Christopher’s constant loans to Macmaster. Sylvia accuses him of taking both Valentine Wannop and Mrs. Macmaster as mistresses, and throughout their conversation Christopher keeps forgetting names of people and places. Sylvia asks him what happened while he was in the war in France. He cannot remember and misses three weeks of life. Aside from Christopher’s shellshock, they talk of the deaths of two of Christopher’s brothers, his sister and his mother. His father has also died. Sylvia asks if he thinks she killed his mother by coming back to him. Christopher does not answer and Sylvia is overwhelmed by emotions. She is calmed by Christopher allowing their son to be brought up Catholic and confirms that, through extensive research, the child is his, not Drake’s.

Later on, Mark, Christopher’s brother, and Christopher discuss a man called Ruggles who, on the urging of Mark, has been investigating Christopher and had previously come to Mark and their father to tell them Christopher is having an affair with Valentine Wannop. Christopher explains Valentine is not his mistress and the $3000 Mark thought was going to keep Christopher’s mistress decent was really loaned to Macmaster. They discuss their family’s home, Groby, and their father’s will. Christopher says he will never forgive Mark or his father for not outright asking him if he was having an affair. Mark asks him to have compassion for their father, since he shot himself over grief of Christopher’s affair.

Walking back to the war office, they run into Valentine. She pulls Christopher off to speak to him in private and asks if he’s having an affair with Mrs. Macmaster, for Sylvia has told her this. He tells her it is not true and she is so relieved she begins to cry. Christopher goes off to talk to some officers and leaves Mark to comfort Valentine. Mark tells her his father left money in his will for her and her mother. During his conversation with Valentine he comes to believe Valentine is perfect for Christopher. Christopher returns and Mark leaves. Christopher finally asks Valentine if she’ll be his mistress and she says yes.

In a flashback to a week prior Mrs Macmaster essentially ends her friendship with Valentine. She accuses Valentine of having Christopher’s child – something she heard from Sylvia – and thus does not invite her to their Knighthhod Party.

Christopher attends the Knighthood Party and figures that Macmaster has acquired his knighthood for work originally done by Christopher. He leaves the party to see Valentine. Though they had previously planned to sleep together, they don’t, and, instead, have a tearful good-bye, as Valentine shuts the door. Christopher catches a transport lorry to Holborn, ready to go back out to France the next morning.

- Molly Sotham

Monday, April 2, 2007

The Opening Scene


"We are the origins of war," says Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter. The first scene of Some Do Not... says essentially the same thing, although in a far more subtle fashion. Christopher and Macmaster's introductory conversation sets the stage for everything that is to come later in the film. They touch upon every subject that is later expanded upon: sex, class, adultery, poetry and literature, business, trust, divorce and war. Macmaster spends extra attention asking Christopher questions about Sylvia - who turns out to be a very important and interesting character. Here, in the comfort of the plush Edawrdian setting these ideas are safe and talked about with ease. The men jump from topic to topic seamlessly; everything of which they speak is obviously an integral part of their everyday lives. Christopher claims he "does not read poetry except Byron" (Ford 16) and later he tells Macmaster there is sure to be a war. These two topics may seem quite polar, and yet they are not so different. Both are important in every his life - the scholarly and the political.

This illustrates that though we may think the First World War would be the most important issue the characters face opposed to adultery, every aspect of life is given fairly equal weight - there are not even any explicit war scenes in Some Do Not...! War is then the amalgamation all of the many different parts of life, but also only one of these various parts. It is trust and mistrust, fidelity and infidelity, sex and divorce, and poetry and business that are the forces which drive our human life on and therefore what drive us to these catastrophic situations like the First World War. However, huge events like war are only facets of human life. So, from the beginning of Some Do Not... we see all the salient aspects of the subsequent film prefigured by Christopher and Macmaster's chat. We also see a Whig and Tory who, along with the rest of us, are the origins of war.

- Molly Sotham

The Lion in Winter. Dir. Anthony Harvey, 1968. DVD. MGM, 2001.

Ford, Ford Madox. Parade’s End. London: Penguin Books, 2002.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Tietjans as Dreyfus


- A Newspaper Cartoon suggesting Dreyfus' motives

After the incident at the golf course, when Tietjans assists Valentine in escaping arrest, General Campion has a discussion with Tietjans about his supposedly open and adulterous relationship with Valentine. In this conversation, General Campion refers to Tietjans as “A regular Dreyfus” for appearing in public with the girl he is apparently supporting with his wife’s money.

Dreyfus was a Captain in the French military and was wrongfully convicted of sending military secrets to the German government (Lynn-George, 2006). A man of Jewish religious affiliation, it is alleged that his conviction for treason was born out of deeply rooted anti-Semitism and supported by the belief that Jews were attempting to usurp control of the French educational system. Beyond personal injustice, however, the conflict deeply divided French society and instigated what is known as the Dreyfusard movement (Harris, 2006). This movement was associated with open enquiry into the actions of government and criticism of the French social hierarchy.(Lynn-George, 962-963) The established order, therefore, regarded the Dreyfusards as a threat to their position and livelihood because of their attempt to unsettle traditional power relations. The Dreyfusards rejected the notion that those in authority are beyond criticism and they suggested that Dreyfus' conviction and imprisonment represented the abuse of process that is endemnic of unchecked power.

To General Campion, Tietjans is a comparable to Dreyfus because of his apparent willingness to fly in the face of the established standards of propriety. Gentlemen do not appear in public with their mistresses - they keep them behind closed doors. Therefore, for Tietjans to supposedly do so with Valentine, would make it appear as though he is flaunting the established social order. To Campion it does not matter whether Dreyfus actually committed treason or not, the fact that he and his supporters had the audacity to challenge social norms makes him “worse than guilty” (Ford, 75). This reference also seems to foreshadow the displacement of the English Upper Classes that occurs as a consequence of WWI. While Campion is reflecting on a situation in a foreign country, the consequences the affair had for France mimics the consequences that WWI had for England – a dramatic upheaval of the English hierarchy.

There is also another parallel between Dreyfus and Tietjans that the General is not attuned to. At the time that he is speaking, Dreyfus has been exonerated (Dreyfus was released from exile in 1906) and can no longer said to have committed the actions in question. Similarly, at this point in the novel, Tietjans has neither committed adultery, nor given Valentine any money - let alone his wife’s. Through the association to Dreyfus, Ford thus represents Tietjans as a character unjustly impugned by the social order of England. He has not done what he has been accused of, but the appearance of impropriety makes him “worse than guilty”(75) in the eyes of people like General Campion.

- Taylor Buis

Lynn-George, Michael. “The Crossroads of Truth: Ferdinand de Saussure and the Dreyfus Affair.” MLN. 121 (2006): 961-988.

Harris, Ruth. “Letters to Lucie: Spirituality, Friendship, and Politics During the Dreyfus Affair.” Past and Present. August (2006): 118-138.