Title: Pride and prejudice

READING LOG 2
Article Info:
Housley, Sharon. Impact of Technology on Politics. FeedForAll, 2012.
The continued growth of technology has had a significant impact on the political ratings that candidates achieve. The article Impact of Technology on Politics attempts to analyze how these two spheres of modern life, technology and politics, interrelate and what the outcomes are of this interrelationshi
Political candidates use technology in many ways. Different communication channels provided by the Internet have the power to influence the growth of different individuals in their respective spheres. The likes of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are powerful communication media platforms that can easily raise the ratings of political candidates. Housley claims that whether we acknowledge it or not, technology is a deciding factor in most political races. Through technology, politicians are able to access funds, gain political pundits, and spend less on campaigning and pushing their candidacy.
One of the ways in which technology influences politics is the financial side. Raising funds to use for campaigning is an important factor for political candidates. It comes with the need to create a vertical response to the whole country or target region. This is a major hurdle experienced by political candidates. The Internet aided Howard Dean to get donations that he required to gain access to a large part of the campaign region. By broadcasting through technological marketing, candidates get suitable donors to support different parts of their campaigns. Publicity on the Internet is a cheap method, as they do not have to re-publish, unlike what is provided by the print media. This is placed in various commonly-accessed links (Housley, Par. 1).
The Internet enables politicians to use podcasting. The act of podcasting can make anyone a journalist. Through podcasting, politicians are able to portray a journalistic stature, thereby ensuring that the information is considered credible. Self-proclamation of politicians through pundits is easily spread through messages. It is, however, difficult for politicians to guarantee the integrity of the information posted. The Internet can be accessed by anyone and podcasts can be posted by anyone. The integrity of information is therefore difficult to preserve, hence, many potential candidates may have to establish a verifiable connection with various achievements. All in all, gaining political publicity through podcasts is a common but expensive method to use, Housley admits. However, it is logical to assume that when correctly utilized, this is an extremely powerful political tool that pays off completely.
According to Housley, the impact of technology is great on a given generation. The young, educated, and affluent will relate to technological innovations. A proper presentation will gain ratings for candidates. Using the most recent technology will surely attract the youth. The older generation may not impact the raising of presidential bids, especially if they are done through social media. The older generation uses the Internet much less. The younger generation relates easily to these media platforms. This differentiation is used by politicians to gain advantage in their political bids. Politicians use technology to raise their bids among the youth, while traditional methods are used for the older generation.
Another way to look at the matter is in relation to thinking about the Internet as a tool for free advertising. It is no secret that presidential bids are the most expensive, as they are run to cover the whole region. On the other hand, political videos easily generate online rating gains, and such political Internet advertisement will reach the target audience if launched properly. Individuals perform the needed publicity as each person shares the video, and so on. The extra generated videos are not paid for, while on social networks even the original posting is free.
It is clear that gaining political publicity through the use of technology has become easier, especially since technological devices are so accessible and widespread. The article analyzed is prudent in arranging technological tools into separate groups that work as a effective means of communicating between a political figure and the target audience. However, with the use of the Internet, any political figure can become recognizable within just a few minutes. In only a few hours, public opinion on a particular political figure is already formed within one of the social groups of voters. Not just the good, but also a bad reputation can be formed in a blink of an eye using modern technology. It often happens that the bad “gossip” spreads much faster. With the huge impact that technology has on societies and public opinion in particular, it is crucial to be cautious in the use of information about any political figure, or you risk making a positive advertisement into a negative advertisement with just one click.

READING LOG 3

A review of Virginia Woolf and the Women who shaped her world by Gillian Gill

http.goodreads.com

Virginia Woolf’s writing was well-known in the 1920s and ‘30s, then fell into the shade until her nephew, Quentin Bell, published her diaries in 1972. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, the second wave of 20th century feminism was flourishing, and Woolf’s novels were eagerly embraced by a new generation of readers. She emerged again as a major literary and intellectual figure, important because she wrote about the second class citizen status of women and even about sexual abuse.

Gillian Gill is of the generation that rediscovered Virginia Woolf. Her new book, Virginia Woolf and the Women who Shaped her World is a new slant on an author who has been the subject of many scholarly and popular works and even novels. Written in a reader-friendly style, full of anecdotes and speculation, Gill’s book is hard for a Woolf aficionado to put down. With its forty-one pages of bibliography and notes, it is definitely a scholarly work that approaches Virginia Woolf from a different angle.
“Rare in her generation,” writes Gill, “Virginia Woolf valued the contribution of women to the English literary tradition as much as we do today. From childhood she immersed herself in the work of women writers of the past, and as a prolific reviewer and essayist she liked to choose books that allowed women’s voices to be heard. She saw herself as a link in a chain of women writers and this pride in tradition was a spur to her authorial ambition. At the same time, she knew better than most the enormous obstacles that even the greatest women writers of the past had faced.”
Woolf was also influenced by women of her own time, and by her remarkable female ancestors on her mother’s side of the family. Her great aunts, Sarah Pattle Prinsep and Julia Margaret Pattle Cameron, returned wealthy from colonial India and established salons of writers and artists in Kensington and on the Isle of Wight. In an era of rigidly defined gender roles and separation of the sexes, Victorian women and men often reached maturity not knowing much about each other’s lives. These 19th century salons were flirtatious but adhered in principle to the conventional morality of the era, and provided an opportunity for men and women to meet and converse as friends. The Bloomsbury group of the early 20th century, in which Virginia and Vanessa Stephen played major roles, was similar in some ways to these earlier salons.
Julia Margaret Cameron was also a renowned photographer. Some of her pictures hung in Virginia Stephen’s home, making her aware from an early age that a woman could pursue a creative endeavour of her own rather than devoting herself entirely to family.
Virginia Woolf’s mother, Julia Jackson Duckworth Stephen, influenced Virginia mainly as a negative example. When she married Leslie Stephen, she a widow, he a widower, she had two sons and a daughter from her first marriage. She and Leslie had four more children. She was not a feminist, but believed in doing good works, and nursed the sick, an activity that took her away from her household. Her daughter, Stella Duckworth, managed the home and cared for the four young Stephen children, when she was out. Absent physically and emotionally, she preferred her sons to her daughters. Her Duckworth sons bullied her Stephen daughters and sexually abused them. Julia died, worn out, at 49.
Later, in an essay on women and writing, Virginia Woolf wrote about “the angel in the house”, the voice in the back of a woman writer’s mind, urging her to be charming, self-sacrificing and domestic. It is clear to Gillian Gill that Woolf had her mother in mind. The character “Mrs. Ramsay” in To the Lighthouse is based on Julia Stephen, with another character, “Lily Briscoe”, a single artist, as her opposite.
Stella, Virginia’s half-sister, was raised by Julia to be the spinster daughter who would look after her and Leslie in their old age. After their mother’s death, however, Stella fell in love with a suitor, Jack Hills. Virginia later wrote that love had transformed Stella and made her glow. When Stella died from complications of pregnancy shortly after her marriage, Virginia saw a worst case example of the consequences of marriage and sexuality. Stella’s fate, combined with the sexual abuse Virginia suffered, had a profound effect on her.
Another problematic woman in Virginia’s life was her elder sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Throughout Virginia’s early bouts of mental illness, Vanessa was her comfort and support. After their father’s death, she was instrumental in liberating herself and her siblings, then between the ages of twenty and twenty-four, from the old family home in Kensington to the less expensive district of Bloomsbury to live a freer, more bohemian life.
Virginia relied on Vanessa for psychological support, and felt bereft when Vanessa married Clive Bell. Knowing of Clive’s rakish past, Virginia suspected, correctly, that he wouldn’t be a faithful husband. According to Gill, Virginia flirted with Clive to expose him as unworthy. But Vanessa, upset over Clive’s resumption of an affair with an old mistress, yet needing Clive’s financial support, focussed her blame on Virginia. From then on they were never as close as they had been. Her remarks about Virginia in subsequent letters were often unhelpful and cruel. To keep Vanessa in her life to some extent, Virginia never questioned or criticized her directly. Meanwhile, Vanessa’s household was liberated and avant garde but dysfunctional for children, particularly her daughter Angelica.
Gillian Gill devotes considerable space to analysing “Bloomsbury”, that coterie of Cambridge friends who gathered on Thursday evenings for refreshments and conversation at the young Stephens’ home. With the exception of Thoby Stephen, Clive Bell and Leonard Woolf, the group was homosexual, an informal network of artists, art critics, writers and an economist who became influential and promoted each other’s work. At first, Virginia and Vanessa were co-hosts of the group, along with their brother Thoby, but Gill says the men, disdainful of women, tolerated and accepted them only as Thoby’s sisters. Nevertheless, Virginia learned a lot about life from the group and also learned how to debate and discuss in a group.
Later, says Gill, “Bloomsbury” diverged into two paths. One, based at Vanessa’s farmhouse in Charleston, was sexually adventurous. It included the artist Duncan Grant and the writer, David “Bunny” Garnett. The other, centred around Virginia and Leonard Woolf, was a broader group that included authors and left-wing political people, and welcomed women. The Woolfs visited Charleston, but Leonard Woolf was uncomfortable among Vanessa’s Charleston set, and Virginia wrote critically in her diaries about everyone in that milieu except Vanessa. Any reservations as to how Vanessa was raising her children were expressed cautiously and obliquely.
While the beliefs, dramas and antics of the male “Bloomsberries” make interesting reading in a gossipy prurient way, the Woolfs were not directly or consistently involved. Since Gill’s book is about the women who shaped Virginia Woolf’s world, one would have expected more information about the women friends Virginia made as an adult and less about her female ancestors and the friends of her youth. Since other writers have written extensively about Virginia’s relationship with Vita Sackville-West, perhaps Gill decided it was unnecessary to re-explore that territory. She says that Vita “sparked Virginia’s period of greatest creativity” and that by publishing with the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press, she made money for Virginia and Leonard. Gill says that Vita was no more able than Leonard was to make Virginia “feel comfortable in her body.”
In the same chapter, “Virginia’s Way, Part II”, Gill writes of Virginia’s expanding world of women friends which included the writer Katherine Mansfield, who was married to John Middleton-Murry, and the composer Ethel Smyth, who influenced Woolf’s final novel, Between the Acts. Still, one chapter covering all the friends of Virginia Woolf’s mature years seems too little.
It is an author’s prerogative, however, to decide what to delve into. Gill’s book is a tour de force in bringing together information about Virginia Woolf’s Pattle ancestors and the Thackeray connection; in showing the damaging patriarchal milieu out of which she fought her way, and in highlighting her use of autobiographical material in her novels. Readers unfamiliar with Virginia Woolf’s story and writing should probably choose a simpler introductory biography (perhaps Phyllis Rose’s, Virginia Woolf, 1980) but millions of Virginia Woolf fans worldwide will be delighted that Gill has found a new slant on this great author’s life and work.