Midterm Meta-Post

This is the second English course in which we had to do blogging and it is something I really find challenging but enjoy. I most value that the blog allows us to pick our topic to focus on because it makes it easy to write about the plays when you are affected by what you have read. The blog is an excellent exchange of ideas with classmates as they respond to your blog post. Lastly the blog gives you the opportunity to voice something you might not have wanted to in class or you thought of after class discussion.

 

After re-reading my blogs, I noticed I mainly focused on female characters. For blog 1 & 2, I focused my thoughts on powerful women in Shakespeare's plays. I feel like I am drawn to women characters because I am a lover of women's literature. Also I tend to focus my reading and writing from the lens of wife and mother.

I was struck by how characters such as Hermia, Helena and Beatrice surpassed the expected role of women of Shakespeare's time. I was surprised that Shakespeare portrayed these women as he did in the plays but I also question his motivation for their representation. I thought these first two blogs were very similar in their theme.

For the third blog, I shifted my writing to focus on the villain Iago inOthello. My shift was based on the dislike I felt toward this despicable character who had the luck of everything falling into place in his scheme against Othello. Although I focused on Iago, I also went back to my reference to female characters. I was again drawn to Shakespeare characterization of women especially in the role of a wife. I felt that Iago's wife Emilia represented the “good” wife of Shakespeare's time. Her actions are probably what a dutiful wife did during that time.

Although I have been satisfied with my grading for my blogs, I know I could push myself more to write more focused and sophisticated blogs. I feel I need to push myself to broaden my focus away from women characters to write about the elements of literature. Rather than focus on character I should aim to focus on style, voice and language used in the writing of the plays.