37 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2022
  2. icla2022.jonreeve.com icla2022.jonreeve.com
    1. Fleet Street

      Known for publishing, especially news; sometimes used as a metonym for journalists and papers as a whole

    2. white face and a white moustache and white eyebrows,

      Negative association with the word/color white

    3. crape

      Crepe (of which crape is an archaic spelling of) paper is traditionally associated with mourning

  3. Jul 2022
  4. icla2022.jonreeve.com icla2022.jonreeve.com
    1. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs.

      People getting pushed out by development

    2. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her?

      She fears that her escape will turn into another prison

    1. piano, quick, loud and impatient

      Music described as harsh and unpleasant, making it another subversion of perfect domestic life

    2. She wanted to be home, or sitting on the veranda listening to those baby owls.

      Nature vs cultures; authenticity vs facade

    3. Meg’s tuberoses, Jose’s long loop of amber, Laura’s little dark head

      The family from "The Garden Party"

    4. Have you really never been to a ball before, Leila

      Seems like it's setting up another coming of age narrative

    5. A Lady with a Box of Sardines

      like with the pineapple remark a little earlier, Dennis encapsulates the scene as if it were a portrait

    6. nd William thought, “A filthy life!” and went back to his papers.

      class relations again; William is derisive towards the person who likely maintains the trains passing through the station, if not the very train William is on

    7. At

      Only time she expresses genuine emotions and thoughts

    8. Allie veet

      Child's (presumably English first language) pronunciation of "allez vite"

    9. The

      Description is reminiscent of a taxidermy bird with the emphasis on age, usage of "creature", "feathers", and "claws", and unnatural, externally manipulated motions.

    10. But nobody sees us,

      Facetiousness of upper class, overly concerned with appearances

    11. Constantia

      Will her characterization and mood/mental state remain stable throughout the story as suggested by her name? Or will her development/actions be juxtaposed with her name

    12. marvellous

      In the way that the sublime is awesome

    13. That

      Contrast these true feelings with the affectations of wanting to do away with class distinctions at beginning of story

    14. Olive, pet

      She speaks to her mother as if speaking to a child

    1. to see the sun rise through the window. He was very weak. His head fell on my shoulder. He whispered, “It’s coming!” Then he said, “Kiss me!” I kissed his forehead. On a sudden he lifted his head. The sunlight touched his face. A beautiful expression, an angelic expression, came over it. He cried out three times, “Peace! peace! peace!” His head sank back again on my shoulder, and the long trouble of his life was at an end.

      Reinforces my previous annotation in Ezra's narrative that his dialogue/character has a significantly Romantic influence

    2. late sergeant in the Detective Force, Scotland Yard, London

      Cuff's narrative is by far the most concise of all the narratives so far. This clarity enhances the "all is revealed" purpose of this narrative. It has no special formatting, but the brevity alone gives it the feeling of a police report.

    3. “Let’s see what is under this,

      The physical removal of the layers of deception from Godfrey parallels how the narratives nested within the larger "compendium" introduced in the frame narrative peel away the layers of deception in the plot.

    4. What

      Though The Moonstone cannot be called Romantic literature or seen as fully modeled after that movement, the introspection, focus on strong emotions, and meandering/musical quality of the paragraph does exhibit Romantic influences.

    5. A horrible fancy that the dead woman might appear on the scene of her suicide, to assist my search–an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the heaving surface of the sand, and point to the place–forced itself into my mind, and turned me cold in the warm sunlight.

      A classically Gothic motif; Gothic literature was most popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so it is possible that Collins read Gothic works in his youth and took some inspiration from them.

    6. detective-fever

      The detective-fever can be interpreted as the desire for fame/glory present in every person, no matter how content they say and believe they are with their current lives.

    7. I strongly suspect myself of thinking as the rest of the world think in this matter–except in the case of Rachel Verinder. The self-dependence in her character, was one of its virtues in my estimation;

      More of a positive tone towards Rachel's independence than Betteredge's; does not imply that Rachel should change to become more dependent. Still, both Bruff and Betteredge see Rachel's self-sufficiency as contradictory to her gender.

    8. Quite indefensible, I admit–an act of tyranny, and nothing less. Like other tyrants, I carried my point

      The most self-aware of all the narrators we have seen so far. Will this carry on through his narrative?

    9. Aunt Ablewhite would listen to the Grand Lama of Thibet exactly as she listens to Me, and would reflect his views quite as readily as she reflects mine.

      Another example of Miss Clack's superiority complex. Though she is far too concerned with appearances to outright state it (or perhaps may not even be aware of it herself), Mrs. Clack considers herself the spiritual and moral equal of figures like the Dalai Lama.

    10. poor

      Miss Clack describes people she considers of good character or morals (including herself) with words like "poor" and "weak." She associates meekness and victimhood with morality, likely due to her devout faith. It will be interesting to see if she describes those she sees as immoral with words associated with aggression and assertion.

    11. he Last Rose of

      From how strongly roses have been associated with Cuff, it would be worth tracking when/where they appear again

    12. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be.

      Doesn't outright say it, but both this excerpt and the earlier one about the aristocracy's destructive idleness heavily imply Betteredge's position that the working class is morally and practically superior to the upper class.

    13. yellow

      The Moonstone, which is established as a harbinger of misfortune, is also often described as yellow. Here, yellow again takes a negative, sickly, and dangerous association. The use of yellow as color symbolism could be worth tracking.

    14. We set it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark.

      This line gives an air of unnaturalness to the Moonstone, with the image of shutting natural light out just for it to "awfully" create its own light. The light does not illuminate the darkness but instead coexists with it, reinforcing this characterization.

    15. nd when you wonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it means a taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history. Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for hours together in spoiling a pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosity to know what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or its scent any sweeter, when you do know?

      Demonstrates aristocracy's sense of entitlement to everything in the world around them, as well as how natural excess is to them. Due to Betteredge's working class background, he wishes to preserve natural beauties like flowers. He sees it as a waste to take it apart, while the children's rich parents see their behavior as promising signs of future paths; the flowers and creatures that get dissected are nothing more than disposable tools.

    16. How seriously, you will understand, when I tell you that, in his opinion, “It” meant the Moonstone.

      Will the moonstone be predominantly referred to as "the Moonstone/Diamond" or "It"? Using an avoidance register for the moonstone implies that the characters who do so have ascribed mythological/supernatural power to it; tracking what words get used to describe a single object is probably well suited to computational literary analysis

    17. The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.

      The idea/concept of innocence and whether an innocent motive/character really matters or not in regards to characters' fates could be worth keeping track of. Are people innocent of wrongdoing if they did not know their actions could bring harm?

    18. And I declare, on my word of honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and literally, the truth.

      Sounds reminiscent of the oath witnesses take on the stand: "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Since The Moonstone is described as a detective novel, this kind of language and the conflict with the narrator's cousin suggest that the plot may be concerned with finding out the truth from the narrator and cousin's (presumably) conflicting accounts of events.