Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Correspondence
I enjoyed the structure of this reading. I liked the journal entries to and from Rahel toVeit. The reader is able to see just how a person feels and or is affected by being Jewish (in this case). Rahel talks candidly about feeling inferior by being both Jewish and a woman. I thought it was interesting how she compares her Jewish birth to that of a curse/physical deformity. Some of the things she wrote in her letters led me to compare her language to that of a feminist. On page 57 she says, "A powerless being that is supposed to sit at home like this without it mattering...to stay nicely at home...and has to swallow all sorts of reproaches that are made with raisons." In this time period I know women were expected to just be housewives and not comment on situations, etc. Being Jewish may add to that in making her feel even more deprived.
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This reading was generally pretty depressing. It was kind of funny though, because while I was reading the top of page 61, I kept thinking "Dude, it can't be that bad" and then about two sentences later, Rahel wrote "they ignore his steps, because it's not they who are taking them; they find them horrible because they see him, and they don't sumpathize with him, because his struggles don't affect them, and it's their own struggles they find terrible." And then I felt ridiculously guilty.
At first I didn't sympathize with her because I have never felt the way that she feels, and then I realized that I was exactly the person she was talking about. It was interesting to read someone write about such a personal topic with such passion.
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