Although Kitty criticizes Margaret’s unattractive animalistic nature, Kitty is herself equally animalistic and is represented as a bastardized animal. Nothing short of an anthropomorphized cat, Kitty, bearing her animality in her very name, wails (West 5, 7) and moans (15) incessantly like a mewing cat. In 1916, Edward Forbush described the domestic cat, which can be similarly applied to Kitty, as “the inmate of … humble homes” who has “elegance of form … [and] daintiness of habit” (7). However, the domestic cat leads a “dual existence” by also embodying the role of the wild hunter (7). Like a feral cat trapped inside a house, Kitty is trapped within Baldry Court unable to express her natural desires. Having never truly known nature’s splendour
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Domesticity reigns over Baldry Court from the gardens to the house itself. Like a bomb strike, domesticity’s intensity diffuses towards the edges yet remains potent at the epicentre. For Baldry Court, this epicentre, Chris and Kitty’s deceased son Oliver’s nursery, emanates domestic fallout over Baldry Court. In a contradictory way, Oliver’s nursery, the house’s most domestic space, contains the novel’s most blatant animal representations. The nursery is the epitome of domestic life, as it symbolizes the birth of domestic man. However, despite the room’s obvious representations of nature, such pastoral descriptions juxtapose the demise of human innocence: the death of an infant. Within Oliver’s room, the reality of domestic life, and death, is placed alongside mock representations of nature to express the state of modernity. In the room, “[s]unlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with strange beasts” (West 5). These “strange beasts” include a “loved print of the snarling tiger”, a teddy bear, a chimpanzee, a “woolly white dog”, and a “black cat with eyes that roll” (5). Modern life has …show more content…
In reference to Kitty, Chris states that “this sad mask meant nothing to him” (West 21), and that he “would show to [Kitty’s] squalid mask just such a blank face as he had shown to Kitty’s piteous mask the night before” (45). Additionally, Jenny says, “I was too busy reassuring [Chris] by showing a steady, undistorted profile crowned by a neat, proud sweep of hair instead of the tear darkened mask” (51). The mask is symbolic of how modernity and humanness cover over the reality of human existence, which itself is not wholly human but a paradoxical amalgamation of human and animal. Modernity’s mask, like Oliver’s painted animals, negates nature in order to conceal the ‘wild’ reality of modern human existence, such as violence, war, and uncertainty, and thus “allows [a person] to pass into human society but only within certain narrow corridors defined by the faciality of [their] face” (Bruns 712). Yet, as shown in Chris and Jenny’s perception of faces as masks, the mask’s falsity is obvious, showing the wartime disillusionment the characters are experiencing. To express the symbolic action of removing modernity’s mask, Monkey Island’s importance as a setting must be explained by discussing its historical context. Sometime after 1723, the third Duke of Marlborough constructed a building on the island called the Pavilion and decorated it with artwork, by Andieu de
Domesticity reigns over Baldry Court from the gardens to the house itself. Like a bomb strike, domesticity’s intensity diffuses towards the edges yet remains potent at the epicentre. For Baldry Court, this epicentre, Chris and Kitty’s deceased son Oliver’s nursery, emanates domestic fallout over Baldry Court. In a contradictory way, Oliver’s nursery, the house’s most domestic space, contains the novel’s most blatant animal representations. The nursery is the epitome of domestic life, as it symbolizes the birth of domestic man. However, despite the room’s obvious representations of nature, such pastoral descriptions juxtapose the demise of human innocence: the death of an infant. Within Oliver’s room, the reality of domestic life, and death, is placed alongside mock representations of nature to express the state of modernity. In the room, “[s]unlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with strange beasts” (West 5). These “strange beasts” include a “loved print of the snarling tiger”, a teddy bear, a chimpanzee, a “woolly white dog”, and a “black cat with eyes that roll” (5). Modern life has …show more content…
In reference to Kitty, Chris states that “this sad mask meant nothing to him” (West 21), and that he “would show to [Kitty’s] squalid mask just such a blank face as he had shown to Kitty’s piteous mask the night before” (45). Additionally, Jenny says, “I was too busy reassuring [Chris] by showing a steady, undistorted profile crowned by a neat, proud sweep of hair instead of the tear darkened mask” (51). The mask is symbolic of how modernity and humanness cover over the reality of human existence, which itself is not wholly human but a paradoxical amalgamation of human and animal. Modernity’s mask, like Oliver’s painted animals, negates nature in order to conceal the ‘wild’ reality of modern human existence, such as violence, war, and uncertainty, and thus “allows [a person] to pass into human society but only within certain narrow corridors defined by the faciality of [their] face” (Bruns 712). Yet, as shown in Chris and Jenny’s perception of faces as masks, the mask’s falsity is obvious, showing the wartime disillusionment the characters are experiencing. To express the symbolic action of removing modernity’s mask, Monkey Island’s importance as a setting must be explained by discussing its historical context. Sometime after 1723, the third Duke of Marlborough constructed a building on the island called the Pavilion and decorated it with artwork, by Andieu de