The Importance of Names : Final Blog Post

The big question : what kind of affect does an name actually have on someone? When asked to reflect on our Women’s Literature course and all of the material that we read, this is the question that kept coming back to me. Naming a character in a novel, short story poem or even naming your own child is very important. Names allow people to exist. Names can allow humans to be someone. Names can even make you so uncomfortable that you avoid saying it all together. Then there is naming things and then not naming things, and what that means? The names of things or characters of the novels we have read have a strong affect on their everyday lives, and this was very apparent in three of the novels we read this semester.

As I spoke about before in a previous blog post titled “Cat”, naming someone or something allows that person to exists. In The Handmaid’s Tale, there is a common theme of not giving people or things names in order to dehumanize them. The first example from this novel is when the husband of the main character realizes that they cannot bring their pet cat along with them to escape. The main character, Offred says, “and because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.” The husband knew that if he referred to the cat by its name, the situation would be much more depressing for the family. The other example is when one of the handmaid’s, Ofglen, decides to kill herself.  Soon after, a new handmaid is presented to Offred. When Offred asks where Ofglen is, she responds with, “I am Ofglen.” Offred thinks to herself soon after, “that is how you can get lost, in a sea of names. It wouldn’t be easy to find her now.” Because Ofglen never shared her real name, we never knew who she truly was, and there for she cannot exist. This entire story shows that a name is what makes us human, which is very important in itself. Without a name, we cannot exist in this world.

Now, The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler is another story. This is a novel that is to make women view their vagina’s as they should be, beautiful. Her whole goal is to first make us comfortable saying the name for the body part, then making us realize how wonderful it truly is and to be proud of it. As we should be. She starts off the novel by saying, “I’m from the down there generation,” and goes on to say how no one would say the word “Vagina.” Its amazing to me that the name Vaginia makes people so uncomfortable that people just forget about it completely. There is a women that claims to have forgotten how to use it. Its crazy too me.

Then we have the novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee. This women had three names, Joyti, Jasmine and Jane. These names gave her the power to be three different people. Jasmine was born in India and believed in reincarnation. So for her, through out the different periods of her life when her name changed, she felt like the old her died and a new Jasmine was reborn. She says on page 76 that, “I felt suspended between two world.” And the on the next page goes on to say, “He wanted to break down the Jyoti I’d been in Hasnapur and make me a new kind of city women. To break off the past, he gave me a new name. Jasmine. He said, “You are small and sweet and heady, my Jasmine. You’ll quicken the whole world with your perfume.” Joyti, Jasmine: I shuttled between identities.” And the concludes the novel going describing every person that she has been and wondering what person is to come with her move to California. “Tie will tell if I am a tornado, rubble-maker, arising from nowhere and diapering into a cloud. I am out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless from hope.” It once again amazes me, the power that the names given to Jasmine through out the book allow her to be three completely different people. 

To answer the big question: whether a name is the cause of your existence, makes you uncomfortable or allows you to be many different persons in one body, the importance of a name plays a big part in not only the daily life of the main characters in all three of these novels that we have read in Women’s Literature, but also our daily lives.

A Beautiful Life

Death is a topic that scares some and not others. Personally, death terrifies me. Even being raised in a Christian home and believing in Heaven, it is still is a terrifying subject to me. These past few English classes we have been focusing on the novel, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, but also watching a film called The Hours. The Hours is a very dark but terrific film that shows the lives of three women, Virginia Woolf, a wife who is currently reading Mrs. Dalloway, and a modern day Clarissa Dalloway, whose lives are all connected by the novel Mrs. Dalloway. These women are all faced with some sort of suicide in their lives or the attempt of a suicide.

At first this movie was a bit hard to follow. But as the story went on, it became much more easier to follow. Not to mention it made reading the actual novel a lot more easy. In the novel and in the movie there is a common theme of life and death. The fear or death, but also learning from death, and taking life for what it is, making it mean something and cherishing it.

I think that is the problem with today’s society. We aren’t living or valuing the life we are given. In the movie, Virginia Woolf’s husband asks why someone had to die in the novel. She replied with, “someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It’s contrast.” We shouldn’t have to have someone die in order for us to value life. We should value it from the beginning. We should protect it with all our strength.

A small example of this for myself is fake tanning. I am a girl and yes I will admit that before Prom and other events I will go to the tanning bed once or twice to get a bit of color. So many times has my father told me to stop because I could get skin cancer, but do I listen? No. But now that my father has a cancer scare, it’s made me rethink the entire idea of fake tanning. Why do something that causes something so awful, when it is preventable? It’s sad because skin cancer is so preventable, but it shows that I don’t value my life as much as I should.

We shouldn’t have to learn from death in order to live. Life is beautiful and short. Its a gift given to us and we should cherish it. I am going to end this post with a quote spoke by Virginia Woolf. It is in the form of a letter that she leaves her husband.

“Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours” (The Hours)

"Solving The Girl Problem II" (17)

I realize that there has been at least 20 posts about the article that was in the last edition of The Standard titled, “The Girl Problem”. It’s been a few weeks since our class meeting where a panel sat in front of the entire high school and discussed some of the issues that they had with statements made in the article. Ever since then it is still a classroom, lunch table and after school topic.
Today, when someone called a male out for objectifying women, he took back his comment and immediately regretted it. It then made me realize that people don’t even realize that they are doing it, which may be a point that everyone realized already. It just took a real life example for me to realize it. How do we keep people from thinking things like this? And are we going to have to constantly remind people that the comments they make are not okay? I do realize however that it is not just boys that objectify women but also women that objectify eachother. Its something we need to work on as a group, but I think that once people become more aware we will begin to see a change in the way men view women.

Dependence on Men in Jasmine (16)

How often do we question our dependence on other people. Depending on someone can be a positive thing or a negative thing. Dependence is what makes a marriage. Dependence is what allows us to have a President, or anyone in an authority position. But dependence can also make us week and vulnerable. It can cause us to make decisions that we can never say we made “on our own”, but that the decision was made subconsciously because of dependence on someone or something.



In Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee the main character, Jasmine has been dependent on the many men in her life at that point in time. Once we all had finished the novel we began discussing Jasmine’s final decision to move to California with Taylor. Was this decision her own? Or will Jasmine go to California to cling onto Du and his new life there.

I see both sides of the argument, although I agree with only one. Certain arguments that were made in class were that she finally made the decision for herself, and she is incredibly proud of it, which is very apparent with the things she says. Things like,

“It isn’t guilt that I feel, its relief. I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane. Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows. Watch me re-position the stars, I whisper to the astrologer who flats corss-legged above my kitchen stove (240).”

This passage goes back to when in the first chapter when the astrologer fortold her of her widowhood and exile. This is her making a statement, that when he said “Fate is fate,” that that is not true, and that fate is in her own hands. Another instance is when she has made the decision to leave with taylor, “I am out the door and in potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless from hope.” (241) Both of these statements that Jasmine makes before she leaves make it sound like she is finally doing something for herself, and she is very proud of it.

But listening to her make her decision about why she should move to California makes you wonder why she is really moving out there. When Taylor first comes to her house and asks her to move to California with him she reponds with, “What am I to do? I back off toward the window. The window’s caulking crumbles as I pick at it. The chilly sparkle of afternoon light temps. ‘I have family in California.’ “ (239) No ony do we hear a reponse filled with uncertainty, but we can observe her nervous habit of picking the window’s caulking crumbles and hear her thought process. Its interesting to see how uneasy she feels about the whole thing. And then at the end of the line when she says, “I have family in California.” As if she needs a reason to go. Why not just go because she wants a new life? Because she felt restricted by Bud, her handicapped husband. She then goes on later to say, “I have to see Du.” Another man to depend on.

After reading this post I am sure that you can tell which argument I agree with. I believe that you can’t change who you are just because you want too. Jasmine has always been dependent on men, and she will continue to be. It will take time to distance herself from that, but I do believe that when she goes to California she will cling to Du along with his new life, which will in the end cripple her.


*When looking through Jasmine at quotes while writing my final blog post, I came along a passage on page 78 that I realized fit in with this perfectly. It says, "He was twenty-four and I was fifteen, a village fifteen, ready to be led."

"Solving The Girl Problem" (15)

It’s been a few weeks since the article, “Solving The Girl Problem” was published in the Standard, our school newspaper. At first it caused quite the uproar, from both males and females. After a few days’ things seemed to clam down, until today during our class meeting a panel of six seniors, mixed gender, gathered to discuss the issues of the article and also answer any questions anyone had. The author of the article, was also on the panel, began the meeting by clarifying some things that he did not mean to sound they way they did, but also standing behind some of the things that he did. From that moment on the recent prom stories did not seem to matter, this was the topic of the day.

It was interesting to hear what people all over the school thought about the meeting and the article. I had the pleasure of sitting with Ms. Talley, my Women’s Literature teacher, and a small group of other girls in my grade during lunch, and we had the chance to discuss our thoughts. I am the type to sit back and listen to other’s points, but this is one thing that really frustrates me when it comes to this article. In the conclusion of the article the author says, “girls need to stop thinking of themselves as objects of desire, and start taking themselves seriously.”

We think of ourselves as objects of desire, because men view us as objects of desire. Do you think that I, or any other woman willingly wants to stress about how they look every second of every day? Yes there is also the point that you don’t have to care, but we are human, and we look for admiration. This whole “viewing ourselves of objects of desire” idea is not a one-way thing. I’ve been with my guy friends when I hear what they say about girl. Things like, “She gained so much weight in college” and “Why does he like her? She is so ugly.” Well guys, we have ears. We hear a lot more than you think we do. No one wants to be on the other side of those comments, so we bend over backwards not to be. So next time someone wants to place blame on a woman for thinking of herself as an, “object of desire” beware of the things that you might be saying to make her feel that way.

Another thing I would like to add is something that one of my close friends said today. She was talking about the meeting and said something that I found very interesting and something that I agree with 100%. She said, “I wake up every morning and put on nice clothes and wear make up because I want too. It makes me feel confident, so then I go into school with confidence, which then allows me to go through my day confident. I do it for myself.” I completely agree and I think that if you talked to most of the girls in our school they feel the same way.

Mothers (14)

Today in America everyone is celebrating mother’s day. This day is an entire day dedicated to honoring your mother. Our mothers do so much for us that we often forget to realize to be thankful. Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues and Jasmine, the main character from our new novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee are thankful for their mothers even though some of the things they said or did are not things that any child would want to hear about. They are two honorable women that see the compassion in their mother’s actions and have a positive outlook on life.

Eve Ensler was sexually abused by her father at a very young age. Her other two siblings and her mother remained untouched. In a recent interview with Eve Ensler that we watched in our Women’s Literature class, she explained that her mother had once told her that Ensler was her “sacrifice.” She then spoke about how she understood why her mother did that and as most children would be terribly angry with their mother, she was not. She said that her mother came from a very poor family and was not really going to be able to do much with her life, until she met Ensler’s father, whom saved her from her old life. She said that it would have been nearly impossible for her mother to leave everything and go back to the life she had once lived. Hearing Ensler speak so compassionately about her mother after knowing something like that is incredible.

Jasmine, a character in our new book was telling a mother with the name of Wylie and her son the story of when her mother tried to kill her. She said, “When the midwife carried me out, my sisters tell me, I had a ruby red chocker of bruised around my throat and sapphire fingerprints on my collar bone.” When Wylie hears this she hugs her child closer to her. Jasmine then goes on to say, “My mother was a sniper. She wanted to spare me the pain of a dowrylessbride. My mother wanted a happy life for me.” The Jasmine goes on to tell Wylie how much her mother loves her, and that her actions after Jasmine’s birth were done because Jasmine’s mother wanted her to be re-born into a better life.

These two women, Ensler and Jasmine, are two of the most honorable women. They notice the love behind their mother’s actions, even troubling ones. As humans we are so quick to assume that everything is done with bad intentions, when most of the time they are not, it just tends to come off that way to us. These women have a positive outlook on life and I think that they are all examples of women that we should want to be.

"My Vagina Was My Village II" (13)

The focus of my last blog post was that the issues around the world that we are presented with should not be dismissed just because they do not happen to us, because we did not choose the life we were given. It is something that is completely out of our control. You could have easily been born as a dragonfly and have a life span of twenty-four hours.

From a very young age, Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, was sexually abused by her father. Her two siblings and her mother were never touched. During an interview that we watched in our Women's Literature class the other day, Eve Ensler talked about it very a very calm and upbeat tone. She mentioned that she lived in a middle class, all white neighbourhood. Bad things don't happen in areas like that right? Wrong. She was being abused by her father, and everyone was in such denial that they dismissed it all together, even though many of the neighbours knew what was going on behind closed doors.

I am guilty of this exact thing. Not under those circumstances, but there have been many things that I have seen or heard that I have dismissed because I was in denial that they actually happened. That is not okay. We are meant to make a difference for someone who can't, and we are failing at our job. So after watching a video about the work that Eve Ensler was doing in the DRC, there were many dropped jaws. We quickly moved on from the video and had a more upbeat discussion about the book that we were reading. But after class my close friend Simone asked if we could talk about it. We talked about how it was one of the most powerful video's that we had seen in a long time and we didn't just want to move away from the subject. So recently we have gotten a few people from our english class together to do something about this issue going on in the DRC. In two weeks, our two Women's Literature english classes are combining and holding a week long bake sale to raise money for the women in the DRC.

Its sad that we had to watched such a horrifying video in order to want to do something, but it definitely had an affect on all of us. I think that we should all try and do something to help those who need it, because we are part of this world, and we should act as if everyone is our brother or sister.