Category: Student posts

When we are children, we are sometimes told stories that have been retold throughout our family’s generations. Because we can retell stories, hundreds of them are centuries old but are still known today.  These stories we hear can sometimes spark our imagination. In Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley lets the reader know that she was inspired to write this novel after hearing and reading about ghost stories during one of her summer vacations.  She expresses her feelings towards these stories by saying “These tales excited [me] in a playful desire” (Shelley 12). During her vacation, the season was cold and rainy so, for entertainment her and her friends would gather around a fire and tell these stories. Her intrigue for them led her to write this Frankenstein.

The letters Mary Shelley incorporated into her novel were written by the character Robert Walton. He wrote those letters to his sister in order to keep her informed of his voyage to the North Pole. He tells her of his encounter of a stranger in the middle of the iced sea and how he took him onto his boat. Later in the letters, Walton says that the stranger was going to tell him his story. I found it interesting that Mary Shelley would incorporate storytelling so much into her novel. After reading the letters, I realized a connection between Mary Shelley’s experience with storytelling and the way the letters were framed. Walton’s sister read the letters written of her brother’s stories just like Shelley read and listened to other people’s ghost stories. In addition, we know Walton will later become the writer and listener of the stranger’s stories when he states “He then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day” (Shelley 26). When he writes about the stories, not only does he become the listener, but his sister does to. I believe Shelley intended to portray the oral tradition of storytelling through Walton and the stranger in a unique way.

Annette Debo introduces her say on Bellocq’s Ophelia by highlighting the significance of looking as a part of the sexual trade conducted between Ophelia and her customers. “The sex industry is as much about theatricality as it is about sex, and in Bellocq’s Ophelia the act of looking is layered, circular and reflexive” (Debo, 207). Looking is central to sex. Ophelia’s customers look at her and identify her traits by looking before they conduct a deal with her. The “wealthy gentlemen” auction to get Ophelia just by a simple look (Trethewey, 13). The men at the brothel are seeking to purchase a prostitute’s services just by looking at her. They judge a woman by only observing.

Debo in her article “Ophelia Speaks: Resurrecting Still Lives In Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia”, also asserts the role looking plays as a part of a person’s self and social identity. “Layers of looking are complicated by the racial and gender identity of each person looking and by the way in which people are trained to look at others” (Debo, 207). The act of looking at someone is very strange, superficial most of the times. After one glance, a person tries to identify someone’s characteristics and quite often one goes too far, leading to wrong assumptions, generalizations and discriminations. Men at the brothel are curious to search for evidence of Ophelia’s blackness. “Others (customers) look for evidence – telltale half moons in our fingernails, a bluish tint beneath the skin” (Trethewey, 26). Customers want to classify Ophelia as black and relate her to the stereotypical characteristics of an African American by just looking at her.

Initially I thought that Ophelia identifies her to be black because she is deceiving people on the streets to be white, however, she herself knows that she is black. “I walk these streets a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, a negress again” (Trethewey, 7). But after a careful reading, I think that she is still rather confused as to who she is. She once talked back to her teasing friends when she said “You are what you like” (Trethewey, 17). Ophelia looks white and can easily deceive people that she is white. Is she confused about her identity? Her white demeanor and upbringing may be troubling her self-identity.

In her literary critique, “Ophelia Speaks,” Annette Debo claims that through Bellocq’s Ophelia Trethewey is showing how significant work is in someone’s life. Trethewey does this through providing certain “layers of looking” that are “complicated by the racial and gender identity of each person looking and by the way in which people are trained to look” (Debo 207).  Debo then goes on to describe the different people who are looking and why they look at the Ophelia among other photographs or pieces of art certain ways. Thus, because Ophelia has chosen sex work, it changes how people look at her and how she looks at her self. While I agree that Trethewey emphasizes different perceptions throughout the collection of poems, I disagree that it is to further emphasize the importance of work.

I believe that Trethewey plays with perception in order to show that people are actually not defined by their work or their job. Nothing is as it seems. Photography is a tool used to show different perspectives and to force people to look at perhaps the same subject but with a different focus. Debo argues that in the poem “Bellocq,” Ophelia writes “I’m not so foolish/that I don’t know this phtograph we make/will bear the stamp of his name, not mine” (Trethewey 39), so as to mean that Ophelia is objectified because although she is a crucial factor in the making of this photograph, she will not be credited. Though this may be true, I see it in a different way. Bellocq uses photography as his media of art. Debo also talks about making the subject more vulnerable to its audiences by making it more of an object. In keeping Ophelia’s name out of the art piece, Bellocq is sparing her. He makes her less vulnerable, because it becomes more about the photograph itself rather than whom the photograph is portraying. Ophelia will be seen as a figure of art rather than a random prostitute in Bellocq’s motif.

Additionally, Ophelia may be perceived as an uneducated and low life girl because she has chosen the profession of sex work. Ophelia, however, is far from uneducated and a low life. She attempts to find a way to defy the stereotype, and ultimately finds it in photography. Because she takes up photography, she eventually “looked into/ a capped lens/ saw only my own clear eye” (46). Due to photography, Ophelia is able to look into her “own eye,” metaphorically able to look into her soul. She finds herself and thus finds the courage to leave the brothel and move on. Therefore, she finds strength in photography. Literally and figuratively, photography deals with perceptions. As Ophelia is able to overcome the stereotype of her work through photography and thus proves how her work is unsuccessful in defining her completely, Trethewey uses perception throughout her poem collection to show how people can break free from society’s definition of them. Overall, I disagree with Debo’s argument that looking and perception is a way to show the significant impact work has on one’s life.

The idea of “looking” as being a key theme throughout Bellocq’s Ophelia was something I did not pick on, but could easily see after reading Annette Debo’s article. Ophelia is constantly being looked at by everyone in her surroundings; the community, Bellocq, the men who bid on her, the police, the bawd and many others. She is constantly under a microscope and most of the time when people are looking at her, they are staring in a harsh manner. For instance when taken in by the police, Ophelia states, “I posed for another lense, suffered/ indecencies I cannot bear to describe. (29). Insinuating that the lens in which the police are looking at her through is harsh and judegmental, but through the word “another”, Ophelia makes it clear she has already experienced this before.

From the community at large Ophelia is also starred at as people try to figure out who she really is from the ambiguity of her appearance. In the poem August 1911, Ophelia expresses, “We are no surprise to the locals, though / visitors from the North make a great fuss, / and many debates occur between them / as to whether one can tell, just by looking, / our secret” (26). She recognizes the confusion people feel when looking at her for sheis  a, “black women/ with white skin” and “exotic curiosities,” do arise, especially from costumers. (26) Debo argues, “In Ophelia’s profession, looking is perhaps even more significant than the physicality of sex,” (207). In some cases I would have to agree that being stared at is more humiliating and degrading than the actually work she performs.

However, there was one part of Debo’s argument that I did not quite understand and I hope we can talk about it in class. The first is when the author states, “She knows that we are looking, and we are forced to recognize that knowledge, giving her the upper hand in the situation.” (210) When she says “we” is she referring to the reader, because if so that makes a little more since. Ophelia wants the reader to know that she is intelligent and aware of all those who stare. But if Debo is referring to the customers or all the others that look at Ophelia, I don’t understand exactly where this is apparent in the poems.

In Bellocq’s Ophelia, Trethewey uses a combination of photography and poetry to get her message across. The poetry can be found in the form of letters, diary entries and vignettes. Not only is there a connection between poetry and photography, but there is also a complementary relationship between the two evident in Bellocq’s photography, as well as Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia.

First off, poems, just like photographs, “accord value to their subjects”(Rindge and Leahy 2). Both can take the simplest and least meaningful subjects, and still manage to make them into something beautiful. Thus, both photographs and poems can also be manipulated, not only by the photographers, but also by the subject or object of the photograph, and made so that they hide the truth. For example a lingerie photo shoot of a woman smiling as if everything in her life was perfect would be a photo that could definitely be hiding something. Likewise, a poem describing this woman in the picture as beautiful and happy would definitely be missing a lot as well. What type of struggles did this woman really go through? It is this type of poetry and photography “by which the subjects [of the photographs] are held forever in silence,” for the truth is not revealed (Rindge and Leahy). I believe that Bellocq’s goal instead, was to make the hidden truth in his subject’s personalities and struggles obvious and present in each of his photographs. Trethewey chooses to latch on to this truth that Bellocq portrays in his photographs, and develop it. Trethewey not only develops the struggles faced by a prostitute Ophelia, but also the struggles caused by race. The ability of poetry to be manipulated in a beneficial way is shown when Trethewey brings her own past into the photograph highlighting the struggles caused by race in the 19th and 20th century. Ophelia attempts to run away from her race as “she walks the[se] streets/ a white woman” (Trethewey, 7). Thus, Bellocq, and ultimately Trethewey’s use of photographs and poetry provide an opportunity for “female voicing” and the voicing of race, rather than “silence” (Rindge and Leahy).

As Trethewey emphasizes, “the camera’s angle will be a wider-angle lens, and I’ll be able to include more” (369). It is here where the complementary relationship between the photographs and poetry is evident. What allows Trethewey to reach that “wider-angle lens” is her use of poetry. The poetry brings the photos to life. Just as the photographs are a moment preserved from history, Trethewey lets her poetry give a voice to this moment, and reveal the unseen. Trethewey further connects photography and poetry, by giving the visual structure of each poem significance. Many of the poems appear to resemble letters with dates, while others includes addresses that serve as additional hints. Furthermore, as Rindge and Leahy emphasize, the white spaces between couplets in many of Trethewey’s poems visually give Ophelia time to formulate her thoughts. As a result, each poem almost becomes a photograph within itself.

When you think about daily life, you don’t tend to think about the simple things. No one is going to think back to that one awesome night you had with your friends and remember that you were breathing the entire night. The same tends to go for looking. Just like breathing, something I do every waking second of my life, is looking. I look at the street in front of me so I don’t fall or step in something, I look at my phone to check the time or maybe see if I have a text from someone, but most importantly, I look at people. I know that sounds incredibly creepy, like I’m lurking in a dark corner and leering at people who are passing me, but it’s true; I look at people. And don’t deny that you don’t, because people are interesting. They’re fun to look at. They’re unique. Just like Ophelia.

In Annette Debo’s “Ophelia Speaks: Ressurecting Still Lives in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia,” Debo writes about the mundane act of looking, except the way she tells it, it’s not so mundane anymore. She says, “The sex industry is as much about theatricality as it is about sex, and in Bellocq’s Ophelia, the act of looking is layered, circular, and reflexive.” (Debo 207) What she is saying, is that looking at Ophelia is on the same level as having sex with her. Debo goes on to continue the different people who look at Ophelia, and how each of them look at her differently. I agree with Debo about the fact that Ophelia is being looked at and each person looking at her, does it differently. Ophelia is a strong woman, and she keeps her head held high, through all the objectification and lurking she’s put through. When she is found outside of her Quarters, and she is slathered with paint and forced to pose for a mugshot, she decides not to let it tear her down. She sees the picture of herself, “paint smeared on my face, my hair/loosed and wiled—a doppelgänger/whose face I loathe but must confront,” (Trethewey 29) and she doesn’t shy away from it. She confronts herself, and I find this to be one of the moments where you can see how strong Ophelia really is.

In Ophelia Speaks: Resurrecting Still Lives in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia, Annette Debo states that Ophelia “emphasizes the performative nature of her sex work, how she takes on other identities in order to be looked at and to protect the self she considers her own” (208). Ophelia not only takes on other identities during her sex work, but also does so in her overall life.

Ophelia does take on another identities in the brothel. Countess P tells the girls in the brothel to “see yourself through his eyes…let his gaze animate you” (Trethewey 11). Here the Ophelia, along with the other prostitutes, has to take on a role of someone she is not. She has to act according to how her customer wants and follow his lead. The woman is a malleable object to the customer. He can choose how he wants the girl to be and she has to immediately follow.

Not only does Ophelia feel the pressure to take on other identities in the brothel, but also in her earlier life. She “took arsenic- tablets [she] swallowed/to keep [her] fair, bleached white as stone” (Trethewey 20). When Ophelia went out into society and consequently was looked at, she felt the need to change her outer appearance. Taking the arsenic, made Ophelia more pure, white, and acceptable throughout society. In another scene, Ophelia leaves the brothel and goes out into the town. She dresses in “proper street clothes/a new bow on [her] white straw hat,/[her] white linen jacket cleaned/and pressed” (Trethewey 28). However, as she dressed like a white women and her skin matched that of a white women, a man recognized she was merely performing. The man realized that this was a place she was not allowed to be. Although Ophelia tried to properly dress and put on an identity of the upper class, her efforts were thwarted. She felt the need to dress up and become someone different just to live her daily life. Ophelia not only feels the need to follow Countess P’s instructions to put on an identity for the men in the brothel, but also feels the need to put on an identity to just survive.

In Annette Debo’s “Ophelia Speaks: Resurrecting Still Lives in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia,” she discusses the significance of looking and objectivity. Through photographs, sex workers, and how Opelia looks at herself as a sex worker, there is a deeper meaning behind the simple action of observing and looking. Debo claims that, “looking is perhaps even more significant than the physicality of sex, and everyone is looking,”(207). Indeed, Debo brings up an insightful observation that everyone has to look and stare at something in his or her daily life, and we often take our vision for granted when it actually says a lot about how we perceive things.

Debo and many other writers suggest that sex workers and Ophelia are looked as objects instead of human being. However, this objectivity is not necessarily bad. Debo says, “Ophelia knows she is the object, not the subject, of the photograph,”(208). Not only the customer is looking at her as an object, Ophelia is also observing the things that are going on around her. I believe, this mutual relationship gives Ophelia an advantage in her career as a sex workers. According to other writers Debo mentions, such as Berger, he explains, “the subject is aware of being seen by a spectator,”(49). Although she is posing, she knows what she is supposed to do and what will make her look better. Ophelia is able to use her advantage and make a living, and therefore, the objectivity can sometimes be looked as a fair game for both observant and object.

We can also draw this objectivity in looking to the movie Titanic. When Jack is drawing a picture of Rose being naked, he is able to concentrate on the drawing and finish his artwork. Rose, just like Ophelia, is seen as a art/object instead of a real person who is sexually attractive. Rose knows Jack is looking at her, similarly, Ophelia knows Bellocq and people are going to look at her. Further, Debo believes, “She [Ophelia] knows that we are looking, and we are forced to recognize that knowledge, giving her the upper hand in the situation.” Objectivity sometimes becomes an advantage for sex worker, as a good way of molding their appearance make them earn better living. Therefore, our perception of things change depends on what object we are seeing, even when the object is a human being, and the object itself  is also able to change our perspective to them.

In Tuesday’s class, we spent a majority of the time discussing race, one of the main themes in Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia. In Ophelia Speaks: Resurrecting Still Lives, Annette Debo asserts that there is an ironic contrast between Ophelia’s initial yearning to be acknowledged as white and her customers obsession with her black traits. I believe that this contrast is a result of Ophelia’s acceptance of race, initially running away from it to later acknowledging and favoring the benefits of race.

At the beginning of Bellocq’s Ophelia, the readers acknowledge Ophelia’s desire to be viewed as a white woman by society rather than black. In Ophelia’s letter Letter Home, she tells the audience that she has left home to find a job in New Orleans. However, Ophelia never explicitly explains to the readers the reason for her leaving. I believe that Ophelia leaves her home to escape the unnamed “white man”, probably identified as Ophelia’s father, who “leaned over [her], pinching/ the tiny buds of [her] new breasts/ sneering” (February 1911, Trethewey 18). In other words, Ophelia was escaping her ‘white’ father and running away from sexual assault. In addition, Ophelia is taught as a child to “curtsy and be still/ so that {she} might please a white man, [her] father” (March 1911, Trethewey 20). Debo states Ophelia’s father “is clearly a man of a higher social class” (Debo) because of the color of his skin and because of Ophelia’s proper manners. When Ophelia travels to New Orleans to improve her employment options “she decided to pass for white, but constantly fears that she will be found out despite her skin” (Debo). In other words, Ophelia believes that the only opportunity for employment will be to conceal her color. This is another example of Ophelia running away from race, by physically “dressing each day/ in [her] best, hand covered with the lace gloves” as she “walk[s] these street/ a white woman” (Letter Home, Trethewey 7).

At the beginning of Bellocq’s Ophelia, it appears that Ophelia hides from race running away from the sexual abuse of her white father and physically disguising herself as a white woman in New Orleans. However, as Debo recognizes, there is this ironic contrast between Ophelia’s “worry that her African blood will be identified” to her “customers obsession with finding markers of her African heritage in her” as a sex worker (Debo). Ophelia’s white customers “look for evidence-telltale/half-moons in our fingernails/ a bluish tint beneath the skin” (August 1911, Trethewey 26) that identify Ophelia as black and, as a result, receive a larger paycheck. Furthermore, when Ophelia arrives at the brothel, the Countess at the auction calls her “African Violet for the promise/of that wild continent hidden beneath/ my white skin” (Letter From Storyville, Trethewey 13). In the brothel, though being a prostitute is not the ideal situation, Ophelia comes to realize the advantages of her race. As a result of her race, Ophelia is able to make enough of an earning to move west, where she can be who she wants. The readers acknowledge Ophelia’s acceptance of the self “March 1912 Postcard, en route westward”, where the imagery of springtime represent re-birth and re-newel.

Debo’s article, “Ophelia Speaks: Resurrecting Still Lives in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia” displays the stalemate that race creates for Ophelia. Debo shows that though Ophelia’s  “African heritage” (Debo 210) attracts an audience, it also forces a placement upon her as she receives smarmy glances outside and inside the brothel. All in all, I coincide with Debo’s view of the conflicting attributes of race, which result it in being advantageous and disadvantageous – in Ophelia’s case.

Besides attracting an audience, Ophelia’s race provides other advantageous to her situation. Unlike a white prostitute, Ophelia is allowed to work in a “fancy colored house” (Trethewey 17), which was of higher maintenance and of more secure security. Although a nicer brothel might not seem to one as an advantage, in Ophelia’s case, not having to supplement her worries with sanitary conditions and security are great survival benefits. Another advantage her race provides is that it makes her more exotic “She calls me Violet now/ – a common name… except/ I am the African Violet” (Trethewey 13), which raises her price range for the auction’s customers. Though one may believe the moniker “African Violet” (Trethewey 17) a mere descriptor, the fact that the Countess says this during the auction, shows that it is a more monetary reason.

Although Ophelia’s race provides some benefits, there are also a number of disadvantageous that come with her race. Through all the progress that Ophelia is facing from her newfound money to her job, it seems that Ophelia might progress to a situation of economic security. Unfortunately, her race causes others to prevent her from progressing as they detest to see her be financially well off, or as Debo puts it white society “remind her of her position.” Ophelia receives her degrading position as she is found “guilty of being/ where I was not allowed to be, a woman” (Trethewey 29), showing that society expects Ophelia to be in the brothel and not outside with the success of society. Apart from receiving a degrading position, Ophelia’s race also creates a barrier of acceptance. While she works at the brothel the men “debate” (Trethewey 26) on how to know that she is African American “whether one can tell, just by looking, / our secret” (Trethewey 26). So though being an “exotic curiosity” (Trethewey 26) raises her auctioning price, it also serves as a constant reminder that she will never be accepted like a white worker.

Conclusively, Ophelia’s position of race is not only a deleterious one, but an advantageous one as well. How one considers which is more dominant – in Ophelia’s current situation – is up to one’s opinion. Though I agreed that Ophelia’s race attributes clash, I believe that her negatives outweigh her positives. I stand by this argument on the basis that had she not been half black, she would not be in this situation at all.