Friday, May 31, 2019

Gay Marriage Essay -- Same-Sex Marriage Essays

A large majority of tidy sum in the United States wholeow say that they are in favor of equal rights for transgendereds. They will all agree that homosexuals should have the alike(p) rights in housing, jobs, public accommodations, and should have equal gate to government benefits, equal protection of the law, and other rights granted to US citizens. However, when the topic of marriage arises, all the talk of equality ceases. Over fifty percent of all people in the United States oppose homosexual marriage, despite the fact that most are otherwise supportive of homosexual rights. This means that m both of the same people who are even passionately in favor of homosexual rights oppose homosexuals on this one issue. This is because there is a lot of misunderstanding active what homosexuality really is, as well as the erroneous assumption that homosexual people enjoy the same civil rights protections as everyone else. For the reasons of ending affectionate injustice, the sparing and social benefits of allowing homosexuals to marry, and the constitution, homosexual marriages should be a legalized institution.Homosexuals are often treated unjustly socially. Homosexual people and couples are treated as lowly to that of heterosexuals. The values that homosexual couples exhibit in their daily lives are often indistinguishable from those of their straight neighbors. Theyre loyal to their mates, and are devoted partners. Many of the reasons offered for opposing homosexual marriage are based on the assumption that homosexuals have a choice in which they can feel attracted to, and the reality is quite different. Many people actually believe that homosexuals could simply choose to be heterosexual if they wished. But the reality is that very few do have a choice any more than very few heterosexuals could choose which sex to find them attracted to. Additionally, many people continue to believe the propaganda from right-wing religious organizations that homosexuality i s about nix but sex, considering it to be merely a sexual perversion. Homosexual relationships are just like heterosexual ones, and are much more about hump and affection than they are about sex. And this is what homosexual relationships are based on mutual attraction, love and affection. Sex, in a committed homosexual relationship, is merely a means of expressing that love, just the same ... ...o deny that the right to marriage whomever you may choose is constitutionally guaranteed.Homosexuals, targets of discrimination and social injustice, deserve to have equal opportunities and rights as every other person in America, homosexual or straight. Homosexual marriages are accepted already by the Constitution, and they offer nothing but economic and social benefits if legalized, therefore there is no real reason as to why homosexual marriages should not be legalized.Legg, Joshua. Interview. 17 May 2004. 23 Nov. 2004.Cooperman, Alan. Christian Groups Say They Wont Give Up. The Washin gton Post. Jul. 15, 2004. .Q&A Same-Sex Marriage. The Washington Post. Mar. 10, 2004. .Rauch, Jonathan. Gay Marriage Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights,and Good for America. New York Times Books, 2004. 1-224.Baird, Robert M., and Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Same-Sex Marriage The honorable andLegal Debate. Amherst, New York Prometheus Books, 1997. 1-242.Nieves, Evelyn. Same-Sex Marriage Issue Fires Up Gays. The Washington Post. Nov. 1, 2004. .Civil Rights Brown v. Board of Education I (1954). 12 Jan. 2005. National Center for cosmos Policy Research. 24 Jan. 2005 .

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Be Careful When You Sell an Existing eBusiness :: Sell Websites Buy Web Sites

Be Careful When You Sell an Existing eBusinessReprinted with permission of VotanWeb.comYou should never provide a potential buyer with sketchy or incomplete information after that youll play catch up the entire time and the buyer will most likely lose trust in you. Once trust is lost, it is seldom regained. It is non wise to assume you will sell your website fast, for each cash and for full price. Plan on being flexible somewhere and also plan on negotiating with any serious buyer. Dont confide your own hype a serious buyer certainly will not. Dont waste your breath telling a buyer a website could be worth millions in a short period of time. Most serious website buyers will not pay for promise unless their analysis indicates promise. It is self-defeating to trust that every piece of information you have is priceless and cant be shared. If you will not share information then you will not sell your website.Of course, you should not share any information that truly is valuable un til you have a serious buyer that can buy, has signed an NDA, and is moving fore with the purchase. Never waste your time with buyers that waste yours.For larger transactions, it is unwise to assume you will be able to handle all facets of the sale by yourself. The capital you spend on attorneys and accountants could save you much more. Never turn over control to the buyer until you have signed contracts and the money in your account. You will exact to use an escrow service to hold the website along with the buyers money while the transaction is in process. Dont attempt to sell quadruplicate copies of the same website under different domain names. You will find that all the money you earn will be spent on legal fees argue yourself from unhappy buyers.

Soil Erosion and The Erosion of Civilizations :: Soil Erosion

Soil erosion began with the dawn of agriculture, when people abandoned their hunter-gatherer lifestyles and began using the land for intense agriculture, thus removing the protective vegetation cover and growing food crops on disturbed soil surfaces. For many civilizations, it is believed that surface wash erosion, that can occur unperceived until it is too late, was a main contributing factor for their demise. Soil erosion and other degradative processes concur destroyed, over the millennia, as much arable land as is now cultivated. The Phoenicians, the Roman Empire, Mesopotamia, and ancient peoples of present-day Syria and Lebanon are all believed to have collapsed as a result of de timbreation, erosion, and salination in the Middle East. In the Indus valley civilizations have suffered the same fate. The collapse of a 1700-year-old Mayan civilization in Guatemala around 900 A.D. is also attributed to accelerated soil erosion. Mollisols developed on limestone bedrock were easily eroded when the forest was cleared. As the population increased, soil depletion set in and the Maya culture speedily declined. Soils of south and Central America supported thriving civilization long originally the European settlers discovered the new world. Incas conserved soil and water by constructing stone-walled bench terraces such as those at Machu Picchu, Peru. The thin topsoil was rapidly washed away, however, once maintenance of the terrace system was neglected. Much of Latin Americas export-oriented economy was imposed by violence at the fourth dimension of conquest.

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Essay --

Merging Bharat with India (Banking the UNBANKED)IntroductionIndia is very well positioned for a new term of growth. It has a young demography, an abundance of entrepreneurial vigour, a highly competitive and agile services sector, significant potential in burgeoning industries and massive untapped consumer inquire in its rural worlds. The banking industry has also shown tremendous growth in volume and complexity since the advent of 1991 reforms in India. Despite making significant improvements in all the areas relating to financial and economical viability, profitability, governance and competitiveness, there are concerns that banks give up not been able to reach and bring vast chunk of the population, especially the tribe touted to be at the bottom of the pyramid into the fold of basic banking services. This brings us to the overmuch discussed and deliberated topic of financial inclusion.What exactly is Financial Inclusion? Dr K C Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India defines Financial Inclusion in these words, Financial Inclusion is the process of ensuring access to appropriate financial products and services needed by all sections of the society at an affordable cost in a fair and transparent manner by mainstream institutional players.Current ScenarioAs we have moved forward on the path of reforms, we have moved away from the main objective i.e - social equity. The focus on the aam aadmi is extremely important in our country as he is usually the neglected one. Even after 20 years of banking sector privatisation, today only 35% of the Indian population has formal bank accounts compared to an average of 41% in developing economies. In a country where nearly 70% of the population lives in villages, the numb... ... to be set because the financial system can grow only as fast as the rest of our economy. With the present Indias income levels, it is neither doing much worse nor much better than its peers as far as key parameters of financial i nclusion are taken into consideration. A cross-country survey done by the beingness Bank shows that 7% of Indians reported taking a loan from a financial institution in the past year and 11% reported preservation at a formal financial institution. These figures were found to be similar to the average of lower middle-income range countries. The percentage of persons taking formal financial loans is near the same across the developing countries.The journey could be long and arduous but we have embarked in the right direction. The road will finally die to a place where Bharat WILL merge and there will be one entity, one nation, one INDIA.

Communication within groups Essay -- essays research papers

There are many different kinds of groups that exist between college students that deal with communion they range from sports teams to many community or social groups. The showcase of governments that are mostly found in many colleges today are Greek letter organizations. In this paper I will exploring communication within the realm of sororities. First, I am going to start with the history of Sororities, then I am going to write about how important it communication is during what sororities make the pledge process. Furthermore I am going to tell about the different things that sororities have, such as the symbols, colors and different things that may deal with communication. tied(p) though all sororities have different representations for their symbols and colors, they all have them and they mean certain things.                                  &n bsp           Before sororities came about they only had fraternities which dated back the colonial generation then later in the mid 19th century sororities came about due to the decrease in popularity (Encarta). During that period, colleges focused almost exclusively on article of faith the classics (Greek and Latin literature) and promoting religious piety, rather than liberal arts (science, history, and literature) or applications of learning such as engineering and agriculture. In response, students created their own outlets to debate the intellectual and political ideas of their time. The early debating societies took on names that reflected classical thinkers or ideas( Encarta).                               Until the 20th century, most fraternities and sororities excluded African American students. The movement t o create organizations for African American students began in 1906 with the alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at Cornell University. Two years later, the first sorority for African American women, Alpha Kappa Alpha, was established at Howard University. Members of African American Greek-letter organizations sought to tending other black students develop to the... ...e so they have what we have to say. Back then it was a way of saying their pain so they wouldnt engage in trouble. They couldnt say anything negative so it was a kind of a code that they had used( www.dailybruin.ucla.edu).     In conclusion sororities like other groups have communication which is important for them to survive. Throught communication sororities are able to continue the legacy and reaffirm the goals set forth by their founders, as well as help the organization to grow. In this paper I have talked about sororities history of how they started and also the things that they do as forms of commu nication in order to survive in the group.                "Fraternities and Sororities," Microsoft Encarta Online encyclopaedia 2004http//encarta.msn.com 1997-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights ReservedValues and Organizations. Chicago Rand Mcnally & Company, 1965. 92-93. Top of Form 3 fuck of Form 3Top of Form 4     Bottom of Form 4               

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Homeless Assistance :: essays research papers fc

a. Issue Should the roofless aid design in Sacramento be ameliorate to give more money to the homeless while allowing them to apply to the course more than once?b. FactsCurrently in Sacramento, the homeless can apply for homeless assistance only once in their lifetime except for certain extenuating situations. The current program is a success. The make expose of people in the program living below the poverty line has fallen 21% in the last seven years. Since 2000, the amount of families applying for the program has dropped 69%. Experts claim the fall in numbers comes from the fact that people cant apply more than once. In 1996, the homeless were allowed to apply for assistance more than once in their lifetime, but this was qualifyingd as the experts fancy there were too many abuses. Now the only time one can get assistance more than once is if the family finds itself homeless again because of home(prenominal) violence, the sudden inhabitability of their home, or certain ph ysical or mental illnesses. While these exceptions are good and cover a good deal, they dont get most of the homeless. The program also comes with certain snags. One of these is that the rent of the housing the assistance goes to must be less than 80% of the maximum amount CalWORKS gives for a family of the same size. The amount of money families have to pay after the assistance to keep the housing usually comes out to about 2/3 of the salary. With the rising housing prices, analysts portend that it is going to be increasingly harder for the homeless to get housing, first time or not.c. ArgumentsThis issue pretty much breaks down into two sides. Those who wish to change the system (the homeless and their advocates) versus those who defend the status quo (the government). The governments side is simple. This program is a success right now and many people are getting out of poverty. The state also recognizes that California isin a massive debt. Funding for the program, while possible , is not fiscally responsible. As for not allowing the homeless to apply for assistance multiple times, the government holds that there were too many abuses. I could not find any numbers as to how many abuses there have been. evidently the number was rather high. In the governments eyes, this program is a success and doesnt need to be tampered with.

Homeless Assistance :: essays research papers fc

a. Issue Should the homeless assistance program in Sacramento be reformed to give more silver to the homeless while allowing them to apply to the program more than erst?b. FactsCurrently in Sacramento, the homeless can apply for homeless assistance only once in their lifetime except for original extenuating situations. The current program is a success. The amount of people in the program living below the mendicancy line has fallen 21% in the last seven years. Since 2000, the amount of families applying for the program has dropped 69%. Experts claim the fall in numbers comes from the fact that people cant apply more than once. In 1996, the homeless were allowed to apply for assistance more than once in their lifetime, but this was changed as the experts thought thither were too some(prenominal) abuses. Now the only time one can get assistance more than once is if the family finds itself homeless again because of domestic violence, the sudden inhabitability of their home, or cer tain physical or mental illnesses. While these exceptions are good and cover a good deal, they dont get most of the homeless. The program also comes with certain snags. wizard of these is that the rent of the housing the assistance goes to must be less than 80% of the maximum amount CalWORKS gives for a family of the same size. The amount of money families have to bear after the assistance to keep the housing usually comes out to about 2/3 of the salary. With the rising housing prices, analysts predict that it is going to be more and more harder for the homeless to get housing, first time or not.c. ArgumentsThis issue pretty much breaks down into two sides. Those who wish to change the system (the homeless and their advocates) versus those who match the status quo (the government). The governments side is simple. This program is a success right now and many people are getting out of poverty. The state also recognizes that calcium isin a massive debt. Funding for the program, whi le possible, is not fiscally responsible. As for not allowing the homeless to apply for assistance multiple times, the government holds that there were too many abuses. I could not find any numbers as to how many abuses there have been. Apparently the number was rather high. In the governments eyes, this program is a success and doesnt need to be tampered with.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Good Will Hunting Essay

Sometimes our past can cause pain that doesnt allow us to trust others. People we trust can cause us to put up a wall and look to other things for comfort. In the movie, leave Hunting found his comfort in books. for demoralize Hunting needed a real friendship to help him open up his learning ability in order to discover that there is more to sustenance than living through the books he reads. In the movie, there are four main characters, each(prenominal) different in many ways, that form individual friendships in the movie. One of the characters, Will Hunting works as a janitor at a momma Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a foster child and is living life through his experience in books and lacks real life knowledge. This is holding him sticker from becoming intimate with anyone. While working there he sometimes writes on the schools math department blackboard and is concisely ascertained as a genius. Will gets caught fighting and is arrested and in leau of incarceration is put under the supervision of Gerald Lambeau, who attended and is now a professor at MIT. under(a) his supervision, per court order he must see a therapist and stay out of any trouble. Sean Maguire is a professor at a topical anaesthetic community college and also grew up in the same town as Will and went to MIT.He is Wills therapist and in the sessions challenges him to open up and stop living life through a book. A friendship develops and Sean tries to guide him to break his fear of intimacy. Chuckie Sullivan is a character in the movie that Will refers to as his brother. Chuckie is a nice guy with an aggressive attitude from being brought up in the rough side of Southie, Boston. Then there is a young woman named Skylar, cute with a British accent and goes to Harvard University. She gets involved with Will Hunting and soon asks him to move with her to California where she will be attending at Stanfords medical school program. Unfortunately, fear of intimacy prevents him from fo rming a relationship with her and breaks this friendship apart. Eventually, Will starts to see his true friendships with Chuckie, Sean and Skylar and starts to open up.He begins to trust others and expects a risk of exposure at experiencing life first hand outside the covers of a book. Will Hunting came from poverty, raised as a foster child in Southie. He didnt trust people because he always looked at every angle of the relationship and assumed that in the end they wouldnt be there for him. Professor Gerald Lambeau, who took pride in himself because of a Field Medals award which granted him public status, comes around to try to build a friendship with Will. Will soon realizes that Gerald is using him to get through social status, public recognition and to solve his difficult math problems. He then ends his relationship with Gerald because of his intensions. Then Sean, seeing what his former classmate, Gerald, was up to, soon becomes more than moreover Wills therapist. Sean beco mes a friend and tries to prevent Will from taking the same path as Gerald by except wanting social recognition.As Wills Friend, Sean didnt want him to fail. He wanted Will to succeed in life and take a chance and not just live it through a book. The doctor-patient relationship soon becomes a very close friendship. Towards the end of the movie Will leaves a note for Sean, I had to see about a girl, this was a quote from Seans story of his courtship with his wife. This lets Sean know he had decided to take a chance on life and to attempt to form a lasting relationship with someone he could trust. Wills brother Chuckie, who is really Wills best friend, also wanted him to succeed in life. He tries to encourage Will to take a chance in living a real life and tells Will, You know what the best part of my day is? Its for about ten seconds when I pull up to the curb to when I get to your door.Because I think maybe Ill get up there and Ill knock on the door and you wont be there. No goodby e, no see you later, no nothing. Just left. I dont know much, but I know that. Will then sees that Chuckie might save a point and takes his friends advice. A few people come into Wills life, some for real friendships and some just to gain public status. After discovering his true friendships, Will begins to enjoy their company and wants them in his life. He begins to build relationships he can count on. He is willing to take a chance and succeed in life and relationships, no longer needing books to fulfill this for him. He finally decides to trust and to look at the positive things life has to offer. On his 21st birthday, with the car, Chuckie and his other friends gave him, he packs up to head to California to pursue life. In the end, Will finds true friendships and decides to live his life outside of just a book.

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Maddy Yo

Charles dearest From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation, search For some other uses, see Charles Lamb (disambiguation). Charles Lamb Born 10 February 1775 Inner Temple, London, England Died 27 December 1834 (aged59) Edmonton, London, England Causeof closing Erysipelas Knownfor Essays of Elia Tales from Shakespeare Relatives Mary Lamb (sister), John Lamb (brother) Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, best cognize for his Essays of Elia and for the childrens book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb (17641847).Lamb has been referred to by E. V. Lucas, his principal biographer, as the almost lov equal figure in English literature. 1 content * 1 Youth and instructing * 2 Family tragedy * 3 Work * 4 Legacy * 5 Quotations * 6 Selected works * 7 Biographical references * 8 References * 9 External links Youth and schooling Portrait plaque of Lamb sculpted by George Frampton Lamb was born in London, the son of Elizabeth sphere of influence and John Lamb.Lamb was the youngest child, with an 11 year older sister Mary, an even older brother John, and 4 other siblings who did not survive their infancy. John Lamb ( buzz off), who was a lawyers clerk, spent most of his professional deportment as the assistant and servant to a barrister by the yell of Samuel Salt who lived in the Inner Temple in London. It was there in the Inner Temple in Crown Office Row that Charles Lamb was born and spent his youth. Lamb created a portrait of his father in his Elia on the out of date Benchers under the name Lovel.Lambs older brother was too more than his senior to be a youthful fellow to the boy but his sister Mary, being born eleven years before him, was probably his closest playmate. Lamb was similarly cared for by his paternal auntie Hetty, who seems to be possessed of had a particular fondness for him. A number of writings by both Charles and Mary suggest that the conflict between Aun t Hetty and her sister-in-law created a certain degree of tension in the Lamb household. However, Charles speaks fondly of her and her presence in the house seems to discombobulate brought a great deal of comfort to him.Some of Lambs fondest puerility memories were of conviction spent with Mrs. Field, his maternal grandmother, who was for many years a servant to the Plummer family, who owned a large country house called Blakesware, near Widford, Hertfordshire. After the goal of Mrs. Plummer, Lambs grandmother was in sole charge of the large home and, as Mr. Plummer was often absent, Charles had free rein of the place during his visits. A picture of these visits can be glimpsed in the Elia essay Blakesmoor in Hshire. Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it.The tapestried bed-rooms tapestry so much better than painting not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as qu ickly) to exercise its tender bravery in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. 2 Little is know about Charless smell before the age of seven. We know that Mary taught him to read at a very earliest age and he read voraciously.It is believed that he suffered from smallpox during his early years which forced him into a long period of convalescence. After this period of recovery Lamb began to take lessons from Mrs. Reynolds, a woman who lived in the Temple and is believed to have been the former wife of a lawyer. Mrs. Reynolds must have been a sympathetic schoolmistress because Lamb maintained a family with her throughout his life and she is known to have attended dinner parties held by Mary and Charles in the 1820s. E. V. Lucas suggests that sometime in 1781 Charles leave Mrs.Reynolds and began to study at the Academy of William Bird. 3 His time with William Bird did not s tand firm long, however, because by October 1782 Lamb was enrolled in Christs Hospital, a charity boarding school chartered by King Edward VI in 1552. Christs Hospital was a traditional English boarding school bleak and full of violence. The headmaster, Mr. Boyer, has become famous for his teaching in Latin and Greek, but also for his brutality. A arrant(a) record of Christs Hospital in Several essays by Lamb as well as the Autobiography ofLeigh Hunt and the Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom Charles developed a friendship that would last for their entire lives. Despite the brutality Lamb got along well at Christs Hospital, due in part, perhaps, to the fact that his home was not far distant therefrom enabling him, unlike many other boys, to return often to the safety of home. Years later, in his essay Christs Hospital Five and cardinal Years Ago, Lamb described these situations, speaking of himself in the third person as L. I remember L. t school and ca n well bring forward that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and other of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction, which was denied to us. 4 Portrait of Charles Lamb by William Hazlitt, 1804 Christs Hospital was a typical English boarding school and many students later wrote of the terrible violence they suffered there. The upper master of the school from 1778 to 1799 was Reverend James Boyer, a man renowned for his unpredictable and capricious temper.In unrivaled famous story Boyer was said to have knocked one of Leigh Hunts teeth out by throwing a copy of Homer at him from across the room. Lamb seemed to have escaped much of this brutality, in part because of his amiable personality and in part because Samuel Salt, his fathers employer and Lambs sponsor at the school was one of the institutes Governors. Charles Lamb suffered f rom a bobble and this an inconquerable impediment in his speech deprived him of Grecian status at Christs Hospital and thus disqualifying him for a clerical career.While Coleridge and other scholarly boys were able to go on to Cambridge, Lamb left school at fourteen and was forced to find a more prosaic career. For a short time he worked in the office of Joseph Paice, a London merchant and then, for 23 weeks, until 8 February 1792, held a small post in the Examiners Office of the South sea House. Its subsequent downfall in a pyramid scheme after Lamb left would be contrasted to the companys prosperity in the first Elia essay. On 5 April 1792 he went to work in the Accountants Office for British East India Company, the death of his fathers employer having ruined the familys fortunes.Charles would continue to work there for 25 years, until his retirement with pension. In 1792 while tending to his grandmother, Mary Field, in Hertfordshire, Charles Lamb fell in love with a young woman named Ann Simmons. Although no epistolary record exists of the relationship between the two, Lamb seems to have spent years wooing Miss Simmons. The record of the love exists in several accounts of Lambs writing. Rosamund Gray is a story of a young man named Allen Clare who loves Rosamund Gray but their relationship comes to nothing because of the sudden death of Miss Gray.Miss Simmons also appears in several Elia essays under the name Alice M. The essays Dream Children, sunrise(prenominal) Years Eve, and several others, speak of the many years that Lamb spent pursuing his love that ultimately failed. Miss Simmons eventually went on to get hitched with a silversmith by the name of Bartram and Lamb called the failure of the affair his great disappointment. Family tragedy Charles and his sister Mary both suffered periods of mental illness. Charles spent cardinal weeks in a psychiatric hospital during 1795. He was, however, already making his name as a poet.On 22 September 1796, a terrible event occurred Mary, worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her mother at night, was seized with acuate mania and stabbed her mother to the heart with a table knife. Although there was no legal status of insanity at the time, a jury returned a verdict of Lunacy and hence freed her from guilt of willful murder. With the help of friends Lamb succeeded in obtaining his sisters release from what would otherwise have been womb-to-tomb imprisonment, on the condition that he take personal office for her safekeeping.Lamb used a large part of his relatively meagre income to keep his beloved sister in a private madhouse in Islington called Fisher House. The 1799 death of John Lamb was something of a relief to Charles because his father had been mentally incapacitated for a number of years since suffering a stroke. The death of his father also meant that Mary could come to live again with him in Pentonville, and in 1800 they set u p a shared home at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple, where they lived until 1809. Monument to Charles Lamb at Watch House on Giltspur Street, London.Despite Lambs bouts of melancholia and alcoholism, both he and his sister enjoyed an active and rich social life. Their London quarters became a kind of weekly salon for many of the most outstanding theatrical and literary figures of the day. Charles Lamb, having been to school with Samuel Coleridge, counted Coleridge as perhaps his closest, and certainly his oldest, friend. On his deathbed, Coleridge had a trouble ring sent to Lamb and his sister. Fortuitously, Lambs first publication was in 1796, when four sonnets by Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House appeared in Coleridges Poems on Various Subjects.In 1797 he contributed superfluous blank verse to the second edition, and met the Wordsworths, William and Dorothy, on his short summer holiday with Coleridge at Nether Stowey, thereby also striking up a lifelong friendship with Will iam. In London, Lamb became familiar with a group of young redeemrs who favoured political reform, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. Lamb continued to clerk for the East India Company and doubled as a writer in various genres, his tragedy, John Woodvil, being published in 1802. His farce, Mr H, was performed at Drury Lane in 1807, where it was roundly booed.In the same year, Tales from Shakespeare (Charles handled the tragedies his sister Mary, the comedies) was published, and became a best seller for William Godwins Childrens Library. In 1819, at age 44, Lamb, who, because of family commitments, had never married, fell in love with an actress, Fanny Kelly, of Covent Garden, and proposed marriage. She refused him, and he died a bachelor. His collected essays, under the title Essays of Elia, were published in 1823 (Elia being the pen name Lamb used as a contributor to the London Magazine).A further collection was published ten years or so later, sho rtly before Lambs death. He died of a streptococcal infection, erysipelas, contracted from a minor graze on his facial expression sustained after slipping in the street, on 27 December 1834, just a few months after Coleridge. He was 59. From 1833 till their deaths Charles and Mary lived at Bay Cottage, Church Street, Edmonton north of London (now part of the London Borough of Enfield. 5 Lamb is buried in All Saints Churchyard, Edmonton. His sister, who was ten years his senior, survived him for more than a cardinal years.She is buried beside him. Work Lambs first publication was the inclusion of four sonnets in the Coleridges Poems on Various Subjects published in 1796 by Joseph Cottle. The sonnets were significantly influenced by the poems of destroy and the sonnets of William Bowles, a largely forgotten poet of the late 18th century. His poems garnered little attention and are seldom read today. Lambs contributions to the second edition of the Poems showed significant growth as a poet. These poems included The Tomb of Douglas and A Vision of Repentance.Because of a temporary fall-out with Coleridge, Lambs poems were to be excluded in the third edition of the Poems. As it turned out, a third edition never emerged. Instead, Coleridges next publication was the monumentally influential Lyrical Ballads co-published with Wordsworth. Lamb, on the other hand, published a book entitled Blank Verse with Charles Lloyd, the mentally unstable son of the founder of Lloyds Bank. Lambs most famous poem was written at this time entitled The Old Familiar Faces. Like most of Lambs poems it is particularly sentimental but it is still remembered and widely read, often included in Poetic Collections.Of particular interest to Lambarians is the opening verse of the original version of The Old Familiar Faces which is concerned with Lambs mother. It was a verse that Lamb chose to remove from the edition of his Collected Work published in 1818. I had a mother, but she died, and le ft me, Died prematurely in a day of horrors All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. From a fairly young age Lamb desired to be a poet but never gained the success that he had hoped. Lamb lived under the poetic shadow of his friend Coleridge.In the final years of the 18th century Lamb began to work on prose with the novella entitled Rosamund Gray, a story of a young girl who was horizon to be inspired by Ann Simmonds, with whom Charles Lamb was thought to be in love. Although the story is not particularly successful as a narrative because of Lambs poor sense of plot, it was well thought of by Lambs coevals and led Shelley to observe what a lovely thing is Rosamund Gray How much knowledge of the sweetest part of our nature in it (Quoted in Barnett, page 50) Charles and Mary Lambs rub Lambs cottage, Edmonton, LondonIn the first years of the 19th century Lamb began his fruitful literary cooperation with his sister Mary. Together they wrote at least three books for William Godwin s Juvenile Library. The most successful of these was of course Tales From Shakespeare which ran through two editions for Godwin and has now been published dozens of times in countless editions, many of them illustrated. Lamb also contributed a footer to Shakespearean studies at this time with his essay On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, in which he argues that Shakespeare should be read rather than performed in order to gain the proper proceeds of his dramatic genius.Beside contributing to Shakespeare studies with his book Tales From Shakespeare, Lamb also contributed to the popularization of Shakespeares contemporaries with his book Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare. Although he did not write his first Elia essay until 1820, Lambs gradual perfection of the essay form for which he eventually became famous began as early 1802 in a series of open letters to Leigh Hunts Reflector. The most famous of these is called The Londoner in which Lamb famously derides the contemporary fascination with nature and the countryside. LegacyAnne Fadiman notes regretfully that Lamb is not widely read in modern times I do not understand why so few other readers are clamoring for his company he is kept alive largely through the tenuous resuscitations of university English departments. 6 Lamb was honoured by The Latymer School, a grammar school in Edmonton, a suburb of London where he lived for a time it has six houses, one of which, Lamb, is named after Charles. 7 Quotations * Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. features in the preface of To Kill a Mockingbird. * valet is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other. features in the Essays of Elia, 1823. Selected works * Blank Verse, poetry, 1798 * A Tale of Rosamund Gray, and old blind Margaret, 1798 * John Woodvil, poetic drama, 1802 * Tales from Shakespeare, 1807 * The Adventures of Ulysses, 1808 * Specimens of English Dramatic poets who li ved about the time of Shakespeare, 1808 * On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, 1811 * Witches and Other Night Fears, 1821 * The Pawnbrokers Daughter, 1825 * Eliana, 1867 * Essays of Elia, 1823 * The Last Essays of Elia, 1833 Biographical references * bearing of Charles Lamb by E. V. Lucas, G. P. Putman & Sons, London, 1905. * Charles Lamb and the Lloyds by E.V. Lucas Smith, Elder & Company, London, 1898. * Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries, by Edmund Blunden, Cambridge University Press, 1933. * Companion to Charles Lamb, by Claude Prance, Mansell Publishing, London, 1938. * Charles Lamb A Memoir, by Barry Cornwall aka Bryan Procter, Edward Moxon, London, 1866. * Young Charles Lamb, by Winifred Courtney, New York University Press, 1982. * Portrait of Charles Lamb, by David Cecil, Constable, London, 1983. * Charles Lamb, by George Barnett, Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1976. * A Double Life A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb by Sarah Burton, Viking, 1993. The Lambs Their Lives, Their Fr iends, and Their Correspondence by William Carew Hazlitt, C. Scribners Sons, 1897. References 1. Lucas, Edward Verrall Lamb, John (1905). The life of Charles Lamb. 1. London G. P. Putnams Sons. p. xvii. OCLC361094. 2. Last Essays of Elia page 7 3. Lucas, Life of Lamb page 41 4. The Essays of Elia page 23 5. Literary Enfield Retrieved 04 June 2008 6. Fadiman, Anne. The Unfuzzy Lamb. At Large and At Small Familiar Essays. pp. 2627. 7. Lamb, Charles Best Letters of Charles Lamb. Best Letters of Charles Lamb (2006) 1. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 1 Nov. 2009.

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Direct Marketing Memorandum

This memo is with regard to the flow rate problem as to the proposed shift in marketing strategy for ships bon ton products. As you have all been made aware, a recommendation was recently submitted to the Vice President for Marketing with the suggestion being to establish a direct-marketing system for the company in order to increase sales and productivity levels.Furthermore, the rationale behind this line of thinking was that a direct marketing model would better correct the companys capability to reach out to customers directly, and being able to address their needs and wants quickly and efficiently. This however, is now being contested by approximately of the major retailer clients in our distribution network, especially since it is their perception that this will essentially lessen their own sales and marketing initiatives.Not only will it wet reduced orders and client patronizing on their end, it will also effectively deprive them of profits and financial sustainability. I t becomes therefore the position of this memo that a compromise must be arrived at, since the needs of both parties in this scenario must be taken into careful account. The new recommendation then is as follows the establishment of a modified direct marketing system similar in nature to the model currently in use by Hewlett-Packard Corp.Instead of accepting orders on the company set and depriving retailers of their major function, decentralization to a certain degree will be done by forwarding all orders or requests on the site to the retailer systems for processing. While this model reduces outright profits on the part of the company, as opposed to the original direct marketing one, it would still retain the party favor of the retailers in our distribution network, which basically amount to roughly 60% of all sales operations. This is believed to be the best option for the company to take given the current circumstances.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Fast Food Contain Harmful Food Additives Essay

In America, fast provender chains argon a signifi arseholet symbol of the American traditional food trends which expand widely and grow fast all over the world. Thus, a large number of Americans eat fast food as their daily diet. However, these bitterish fast foods argon highly processed foods which are filled with plenty of chemical substances, leaveitives and preservatives. By adding these additives and bionic flavorings into fast foods, so the food is attractive and also tasty. steady food companies, like McDonald, attract customers attention by using various advertisements to make their products look good and also selling these delicious foods at depleted prices. Many people do not legitimateize the banish side of those un powerful and processed fast food meals that contain lots of unsafe additives, which can lead to bad health effects and shorter life. For instance, all the burgers and beverages that people consume in the fast food restaurant are risky to peoples health b ecause of food additives.According to Fast Food Nation, Without this flavor industry, todays fast food industry could not exist (Schlosser 120). It is significant that artificial flavor is unrivalled essential element which use in the fast food industry and helps to operate fast food business successfully and permanently. afterward World War II, a vast flavor industry invented processed food that was popular and widely used by American. The flavor additives create to a greater extent demand since it benefits both consumer and businessman in some ways.For example, most food additives are cheap and functional so that companies are willing to buy and add it into food to reduce the cost of product and gain ofttimes business benefit. Because of the low cost, the company is able to lower the price of fast food in severalise to appeal more customers to buy. As a result, many customers choose to consume more fast food in decree to save funds Fast food companies added various chemical flavors and manufactured coloring additives into diverse foods and beverages. Chicken McNugget is one of the popular foods serviced in the McDonald meal.The fair outward appearance, crispy strip and tender meat of Chicken McNuggets are a big part of what makes people feel more enjoyable to eat it. The chicken nugget is not simply a piece of fried chicken but more than that. So what is really in the chicken nuggets in McDonald? To answer this question, we might look at the great amount of ingredients of chicken nuggets. It is surprising to see that there are not only chicken but numerous other components which are roughly unfamiliar with us, such as sodium aluminum phosphate, TBHQ and bleaching wheat flour.Basically, this small piece of Chicken McNugget only has 50% of what is called the real chicken, and chemical and additives make up the other half. Many additional additives are used in Chicken McNuggets ingredient now, and I would show only a few of the most viridity ones her e. First of all, sodium aluminum phosphate and sodium sour pyrophosphate are the primary components of a baking power as chemical leavening agents. They are food additives that are mostly and widely used in food industry for many baked products.It accelerates food to yeast faster in order to save time, as well as affects the final texture, flavor and moisture of food. (Longe P43) Sodium aluminum phosphate is released slowly during the fermentation period, which enhancing the properties of the formula ingredients. (Leavening Agents) Sodium acid pyrophosphate is also a slower reacting acid and is used in refrigerated biscuit dough recipe. (Longe P45) As a result, the product will have a crispy taste and fine texture. Likewise, McDonald Company adds these chemical materials into Chicken McNugget to make it taste better.However, both of these agents are harmful to peoples health. For instance, Sodium atomic number 13 Phosphate is a toxic drug that could cause peoples mental problem, such as memory loss, and confusion. A direct possible force of eating these additive-containing foods frequently may lead to Alzheimers disease and osteoporosis. Second, the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is TBHQ, which is an anti-oxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed promptly on the nugget for keeping its shelf time longer. (Pollan P113) Moreover, TBHQ helps the food to maintain its freshness, minimize nutritional losses in edible oils, and preserve the present color of urge on and metal complexes. (Shree Additives) Obviously, the effective functions of TBHQ makes fast food industry often use this artificial additive in thousand food products.Chicken McNuggets are fairish one of the fast foods that contain TBHQ. The result from consuming processing foods with TBHQ can lightly cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse. (Pollan P114) It can correct lead to death if you ingest too much fast food wit h TBHQ. Last but not least, McNuggets also contain bleaching wheat flour which is one of the ingredients often used in McNugget and other productions. As we know, flour is used to improve the gluten baking quality. The food industry adds flour bleaching agent in order to make the product appear whiter and fresher. Also, the function of this agent is to maintain the foods stability, food color and improve the structure forming capacity, allowing the product produce higher proportions of gluten and sugar. Flour Bleaching Agent)During the bleaching processing, most nutrients are destroyed and removed from the grain, and then produce amounts of alloxan. The fact of alloxan is a product of the decomposition of uric acid which is used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals, so as to help researchers to study diabetes treatments in the lab. (The Little-Known Secrets about Bleaching Flour ) It turns out that the nutritional value of food has been lost and we are genuinely eat ing the sugar what cause us fat and led to diabetes.According to recent research, alloxan is also a poison which may lead to the countrys diabetes epidemic and other chronic diseases in America. Even though this bleaching agent has a great impact on food industry, we still cannot neglect the negative effect of this additive. Base on the ingredients in McNugget I mentioned above, it would be easy to think that McNugget as final product has been processed through many chemical mechanics and scientific methods which change the actual meaning of the chicken nugget.In other words, it is hard to tell how much actual chicken goes into a real nugget. We have such tasty chicken nuggets available for us anytime because of these food additives. These nasty ingredients and harmful chemicals make people fat and cause serious malady or even death. Imagine how much chemicals and additives are contained in a little piece of Chicken McNugget that could easily endanger peoples health. So I wonder if other fast foods may contain the same dangerous or more harmful additives in its ingredient which lead to more health problems.In conclusion, fast food chains play a vital role in the U. Ss health problems, people should to be up in arms with our government in order to fight against these hazardous chemicals to be used in fast food restaurants. Fast foods are rich in food additives that can badly affect peoples health as it cause cancer, nervous system damage, birth defects, and much more. From my point view, I think that we should avoid the fast food, and especially the overconsumption of fast food, in order to pursue a healthy life style.

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Markowitz Portfolio Optimization Essay

IntroductionMarkowitz (1952, 1956) pioneered the development of a quantitative method that takes the diversification benefits of portfolio parceling into account. Modern portfolio theory is the result of his work on portfolio optimization. Ideally, in a mean-variance optimization model, the complete investment opport star set, i.e. all pluss, should be considered simultaneously. However, in practice, closely investors distinguish betwixt contrary plus classes within their portfolio- apportionment frameworks. In our summary, we view the process of asset allocation as a four-step exercise like Bodie, Kane and Marcus (2005).It consists of choosing the asset classes under consideration, moving forward to establishing capital market expectations, followed by deriving the businesslike verge until finding the best asset mix. We take the perspective of an asset-only investor in search of the optimal portfolio. An asset-only investor does not take liabilities into account. The inve stment horizon is 5 10 years and the opportunity set consists of twelve asset classes. The investor pursues wealth maximization and no other particular investment goals be considered. We solve the asset-allocation problem using a mean-variance optimization based on excess recollects.The goal is to maximize the Sharpe ratio (risk-adjusted return) of the portfolio, bounded by the restriction that the exposure to any risky asset class is greater than or equal to zero and that the sum of the weights adds up to one. The focus is on the relative allocation to risky assets in the optimal portfolio. In the mean-variance analytic thinking, we use arithmetic excess returns.Geometric returns be not suited in a mean-variance framework. The weighted average of geometric returns does not equal the geometric return of a simulated portfolio with the same composition. The observed difference batch be explained by the diversification benefits of the portfolio allocation. We derive the arithme tic returns from the geometric returns and the volatility.a) The CIO has sent some of the results you put on done above to the IPC. After the members of the IPC perused the results, some of them asked the CIO to explain wherefore the equal-weighted portfolio underperformed the mean-variance optimal portfolio for the periods studied. Explain to the CIO using only the whole period results.First, lets quickly look at some of the values of the fields that are used to draw the capital allocation line. As an example to my explanation lets go by 2 possible capital allocation lines from the risk-free rate (rf = 3.5%).The first possible CAL is drawn for naively diversified portfolio for the whole period with rf = 3.5%. The judge return for this portfolio is 0.006224053, and its standard deviation is 0.025002148, the reward-to-volatility ratio, which is the gear of the CAL is 0.132284095.The second CAL is drawn for the Optimal portfolio for the whole period with rf = 3.5%. The expected r eturn for this portfolio is 0.009508282, and its standard deviation is 0.00734826, the re- reward-to-volatility ratio is 0.897030832.We can see from the numbers that the optimal portfolio does better than the naively diversified portfolio because the RTV is higher for the optimal portfolio. The reason for that is that weve identified the optimal portfolio of risky assets by finding the portfolio weights that result in steepest CAL. The CAL that is supported by the optimal portfolio is tangent to the efficient frontier.The bottom line is that we have chosen the optimal portfolio that has the portfolio weights that lie on the capital allocation line that is tangent to the efficient frontier. Which means a portfolio of risky assets that provides the lowest risk for the expected return and thus this selected portfolio is bound to divulgeperform the naively diversified.b) The IPC has noticed that the optimal allocations of sub-period 1 and sub-period 2 are very different (based on diffe rent scenarios of target returns and investment limits). They asked why. Would you please explain (using the set of results for 3.5% risk free rate)? This entails an analysis of the economic conditions for different periods.The most important insight we get is that in a diversified portfolio, the contri hardlyion to portfolio risk of a particular security will depend on the covariance of that securitys return with those of other securities.If you see the coefficient of correlation matrix for the 2 sub periods, we can see that the economic-wide risk factors have imparted positive correlations among the root returns for Sub Period 2 (03 10). This was the time of economic crisis (08-10) and since most of the risk was economic, the optimal portfolio incorporates less risky assets.While the sub period 1 (95 03) went through a healthy growth period, had mostly firm specific risk and lesser economic risk.c) The CIO wants to propose investment limits on certain asset classes to the IPC for consideration, but the CIO may not be aware of the likely impact on the performance of the Fund. Since you have run some analysis above based on the proposed limits, present your analysis and make a recommendation regarding investment limits for the historical arithmetic average (target) return and the 6% p.a. target return.The fundamental concept groundwork MPT is that the assets in an investment portfolio should not be selected individually, each on their receive merits. Rather, it is important to consider how each asset lurchs in price relative to how any other asset in the portfolio changes in price.The optimal portfolios derived from the analysis are tangency portfolios and represents the combination offering the best possible expected return for disposed risk level. If we change the investment limits it could result in sub-optimal portfolios.This can be easily from the tables from (comparing nave allocation to optimal allocation)Optimal PortfolioWhen we draw the CAL a nd the efficient frontier using the above values, we see that the weights in the optimal portfolio result in the highest slope of the CAL. We can see this with the improved reward-to-volatility ratio of the portfolios.We also saw from the analysis where we constrained the portfolio return to 6% pa, the weights of the optimal portfolio changed and the RTV was lower than the un constrained optimal portfolio.ConstrainedUnconstrainedd) The CIO would like to test the aesthesia of the mean-variance optimization to a change in the portfolio target return. Since you have done some runs using the historical arithmetic average return and 6% p.a. target return, present what youve learned from your analysis to the CIO using your results.We have tested the sensitivity of the mean-variance analysis to the input parameters. Table below shows the impact on the optimal portfolio of an increase and a decrease in the expected volatility of an asset, all other things being equal. Note that a change in volatility affects both the arithmetic return and the covariance matrix. Again, this table demonstrates the sensitivity of a mean-variance analysis to the input parameters. An increase in expected volatility leads to a lower allocation to that asset class.High yield even vanishes solely from the optimal portfolio. It is noteworthy that commodities are hardly affected by a higher standard deviation. A decrease in volatility mostly leads to a higher allocation. Government bonds, despite their expected zero risk premium, add value due to the strong diversification benefit. In this analysis, they appear to be deadened to a change in their expected volatility. Credits and bonds are quite similar asset classes and, in a mean-variance context, the optimal portfolio tends to incline towards one or the other. In short, the mean-variance analysis suggests that adding real estate, stocks and high yield to the traditional asset mix of stocks and bonds creates most value for investors.Assets Optimal Portfolio Optimal Portfolio (6%)SPTR magnate 0 0RTY Index 0 0MXEA Index 0 0.747626014MXEU Index 0 0MXEF Index 0 0SPGSCITR Index 0 0FNCOTR Index 0.862665445 0.179140105H15T3M Index 0 0.05WOG1 0 0C0A0 0 0H0A0 0 0G0Q0 0.137334555 0.023233881e) Could we use the optimal weights from a previous period, say sub-period 1 or sub-period 2 or the whole period, as the recommended asset allocation for the next 5 or 10 years? Explain your answer with the out-of-sample test results you have done.No, we cannot recommend asset allocation based on the out-of-sample test results. The in-sample MV efficient frontiers overestimate the return associated with portfolio optimization not only with respect to resampled might but importantly with respect to out-of-sample investment performance. Even with good inputs, MV efficiency error maximizes the risk and returns inputs, creates upward biased estimates of future performance, and substantially underperforms resampled efficiency.f) base on the ab ove analyses, what lessons and implications can be learned from your analysis on the mean-variance portfolio optimization?Key lessonsThe fundamental goal of portfolio theory is to optimally allocate your investments between different assets. Mean variance optimization (MVO) is a quantitative gumshoe which allows you to make this allocation by considering the trade-off between risk and return.Markowitz Portfolio OptimizationThe star period Markowitz algorithm solves the following problemSingle Period Problem* Inputs* The expected return for each asset* The standard deviation of each asset (a measure of risk) * The correlation matrix between these assets* Output* The efficient frontier, i.e. the set of portfolios with expected return greater than any other with the same or lesser risk, and lesser risk than any other with the same or greater return. The Markowitz algorithm is intended as a single period analysis tool in which the inputs provided by the user represent his/her probabil ity beliefs about the upcoming period. The expected return, standard deviation, and correlation matrix are computed using standard statistical formulae.The expected return represents the simple (probability weighted) average of the possible returns for each asset, and the standard deviation represents the uncertainty about the outcome. The correlation matrix is a symmetric matrix, with unity on the diagonal, and all other elements between -1 and +1. A positive correlation between two assets A and B indicates that when the return of asset A turns out to be above (below) its expected value, then the return of asset B is likely also to be above (below) its expected value. A negative correlation suggests that when As return is above its expected value, and then Bs will be below its expected value, and vice versa.Input entropy IssuesA major issue for the methodology is the selection of input data. The use of historical data provides a very convenient means of providing the inputs to the MVO algorithm, but in that respect are a number of reasons why this may not be the optimal way to proceed. All these reasons have to do with the question of whether this method authentically provides a valid statistical picture of the upcoming period. The most right problem concerns the expected returns, because these control the actual return which is assigned to each portfolio. ruin of underlying hypothesisWhen you use historical data to provide the MVO inputs, you are implicitly assuming that * The returns in the different periods are independent.* The returns in the different periods are drawn from the same statistical distribution. * The N periods of available data provide a sample of this distribution. These hypotheses may simply not be true. The most serious inaccuracies arise from a phenomenon called mean reversion, in which a period, or periods, of superior (inferior) performance of a particular asset tend to be followed by a period, or periods, of inferior (superior) p erformance.Suppose, for example, you have used 5 years of historical data as MVO inputs for the upcoming year. The outputs of the algorithm will favor those assets with high expected return, which are those which have performed well over the past 5 years. Yet if mean reversion is in effect, these assets may well turn out to be those that perform most poorly in the upcoming year.Error in the estimated meanEven if you believe that the returns in the different periods are independent and identically distributed, you are of necessity using the available data to estimate the properties of this statistical distribution. In particular, you will take the expected return for a given asset to be the simple average R of the N historical values, and the standard deviation to be the root mean square deviation from this average value. whence elementary statistics tells us that the one standard deviation error in the value R as an estimate of the mean is the standard deviation separate by the sq uare root of N. If N is not very large, then this error can distort the results of the MVO analysis considerably.SummaryThe above discussion does not mean to imply that the Markowitz algorithm is incorrect, but simply to point out the dangers of using historical data as inputs to a optimization strategy. If you make your own estimates of the MVO inputs, based on your own beliefs about the upcoming period, single period MVO can be an entirely appropriate means of balancing the risk and return in your portfolio.

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Animals of Wonderland

TITLE The Animals of Wonderland Tenniel as Carrolls Reader SOURCE Criticism 45 no4 383-415 F every last(predicate) 2003 The magazine publisher is the right of first publication holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To cont do work the publisher http//wsupress. wayne. edu/ ROSE LOVELL-SMITH WHEN JOHN TENNIEL was providing 42 cases for Alices Ad adventures in Wonderland in 1864 he was in his mid-forties, an established illustrator and a Punch car in additionnist.At that time C. L. Dodgson and Lewis Carroll were equall(a)y unkn witness as authors, for adults or children. Tenniel, on the otherwise hand, already had a victor understanding of the visual codes and illustrative techniques of his day, and already had an audiencean adult preferably than a child audiencewho would expect from him a certain level of proficient proficiency, humor, and social nous.Tenniels illustrations s hould t herefore interest us today non just for their remarkable and continuing success as a felicitous adjunct to Carrolls text edition, tho as well as as the firstarguably, the bestVictorian read or interpretation of Carrolls text. After all, as a reader Tenniel enjoyed considerable advantages, including his personal placement and experience, his access to the authors own illustrations to the manuscript version of the story, and access to the author himself.In his study of illustration in childrens literature, Words ab verboten Pictures, Perry Nodelman has argued that the pictures in a sequence act as schemata for from each virtuoso otherthat is, all the expectations, understanding, and in unionis feedion we bring to reading an illustrated book, and all the information we accumulate as our reading proceeds, makes a schema for each new page of words and each new picture as we continue through start a book. (FN1) If this is so, all Tenniels options relating to subject matte r, size, position, and style of illustration moldiness come to operate, as we proceed through Alice in Wonderland, as a kind of guide to reading Carrolls text. An examination of Tenniels opening sequence of illustrations as they appe atomic number 18d on the page in the 1866 edition of Alice in Wonderland(FN2) will therefore begin to reveal Tenniels preoccupations, the kind of interpretation of Carrolls text he is nterested in making. As William Empson show uped by in 1935, two aspects of Alice are traditional in childrens stories the appraisal of characters of unusual size (miniatures and giants) and the idea of the talking beast. (FN3) Tenniels opening drawing, the White Rabbit at the transport of chapter 1, draws on both these traditions. The run occupies a point surrounded by animal and humanity, simultaneously both these things and neither of them, an importation hardly made so firm by Carrolls text.The rabbitness of the rabbit is emphasized by the meadow setting, th e absence of trousers, and the accusationful attention paid to anatomy and proportion. nevertheless the rabbit is slightly distorted towards the human by his upright posture, his clothing and accessories, his pose, and his human eye and hand. Less obviously, Tenniel also extends Carrolls text by offering information approximately the size of the rabbit. From the grass and blowball clock (a visual joke) in the background the reader grasps the rabbit as rather larger than normal bunny size about the size of a toddler or small child, perhaps.As this illustration was invented by Tenniel (Carrolls headpiece illustration shows Alice, her sister, and the book), the contrast is clear amidst Carroll, whose picture draws attention to the frame of the story, to the affectionate kindred of sisters, and thereby to Alices membership of the human family, and Tenniel, who selects a traditional story idea that shifts the focus a nonher way, toward a mediation between distinct kinds familiar f rom those more(prenominal) forms of art in which animal behavior is used to represent human behavior.In further illustrations, Tenniel offers more images indicateive of unusual telling size. The second picture, page 8, shows Alice too large to go through the niggling door. On page 10 she holds the bottle labeled DRINK ME which will shrink her on page 15 she is growing taller, with the text elongated to match. Then comes page 18, where the frame and larger size suggest that here is an important picture. In it the human/animal rabbit and the idea of Alices unusual size occur together.Alice looks gigantic in relation to the hallway, and the White Rabbit, normal size for the hallway (it appears) solo perhaps (in that case) outsize for a rabbit, is much reduced from the importance he assumed in the first illustration and is shown fleeing from her terrifying figure. The pool of tears illustration on page 26 also relates to these motions. Here a fully clad human, Alice, is depicted much the same size as the unclothed mouse with which she swims.Note, too, that in the text, Alice frightens the mouse out as she had previously frightened the rabbit, although this time it is by talking about her pet, her cat Dinah. The reader who ponders this opening sequence of illustrations might consult that Alice would also be frightened of Dinah if she met her while still mouse-sized. The schemata, then, direct the reader towards a cluster of ideas in which animal fears and anxieties about survival are connected with images of lesser or greater relative size. FN4) Tenniel appears to have arrived at this interpretation independently while he does frequently follow Carrolls designs closely in the subject and overall flack to an illustration (Michael Hancher provides some useful opportunities to affect comparisons),(FN5) of the pictures just discussed unless the one of Alice growing taller at the head of chapter 2 real much resembles a agree drawing in Carrolls manuscript .Moreover, when Tenniel does follow Carroll in choice of subject he usually makes significant changes in treatment Tenniels Alice, for instance, having slipped into the pool of tears, is very much more alarmed than Carrolls Alice. (FN6) Edward Hodnett, who reviewed Tenniels work for the Alice books picture by picture, makes rather slighting remarks about several of the designs in this opening sequence those on pages 8 and 10 are too matter-of-fact to be necessary, the elongated Alice stands merely look round-eyed, and the second vignette of Alice swimming with the mouse makes the first superfluous. (FN7) Hodnett seems to me to have missed the point. These designs are in my view extremely consistent in seeking and developing a particular nexus of ideas. Despite the evident connection between many another(prenominal) Tenniel illustrations and Carrolls own illustrations, then, this is clearly Tenniels own interpretation. tho if this is so, what is to be made of it?My thesis in this p imitater is that through his animal drawings, Tenniel offers a visual angle on the text of Alice in Wonderland that evokes the life sciences, cancel explanation, and Darwinian ideas about evolution, ideas closely related by Tenniel to Alices size changes, and to how these affect the animals she meets. (FN8) As I will show, this is partly a matter of Tenniels drawing out an underlying field of reference in Carrolls text. I will also argue, however, that when Tenniels approach to his animal subjects is compared to that in earlier and modern illustrated pictorial istory books, the viewer is certain of resemblances which indicate that Tenniels pictures are best situated and read in that context. The effect of the initial sequence described above, for instance, is that as chapter 3 unfolds Alices encounters with various different creatures, the illustrations begin to re-create Alice itself as a kind of zany native memoir for children. Our post-Freudian view of Alice in Wonderland tends to be of a private, heavily encoded, inward exploration or adventure.But Tenniels reading, I would argue, offers us an outward-looking text, a public adventure, a jocular reflection on the natural history hysterical neurosis, on reading about natural history, and on Darwins controversial new scheme of natural selection. I will return to Tenniel as reader later, and in allege to establish that this interpretation is no mere add-on but a genuine response to the text, I essential first deal with science, natural history, and evolutionary ideas as themes that Carroll himself originates.Interest in contemporary ideas about the animal kingdom is signaled early on in Alice in Wonderland, in chapter 2, when Alice finds that the well-known childrens recitation piece How doth the little busy bee has been mysteriously ousted from her mind by new verses that celebrate a pirana, the crocodile. Carrolls parody of Isaac Wattss pious poetry for children(FN9) thereby establishes his b ooks reference to a newer, more scientific view of natureapproaching a controversially Darwinist view.It does this by mocking and displacing the fieldview often called natural theology. According to natural theology, a set of convictions much touted in childrens reading, Gods existence can be deduced from the wondrous design of his creation. The universe is benign and meaningful, a book of signs (like the industrious bee) of Gods benevolent and educative intentions just waiting to be read by humans. Carrolls crocodile, all tooth and claw, signifies other things amorality, the struggle for existence, predation of the weaker by the faster.Readers of Alice in Wonderland are also likely to notice that the animal characters do not behave or talk much like animals in traditional fairy tales or captions. They are neither helpers nor donors nor monsters nor prophetic truth-tellers, the main narrative functions of animals in traditional fairy tales,(FN10) but nor are they the exemplary fi gures illustrative of human fallibilities and moralities familiar from fables. They do not teach lessons about kindness to animals, as animals in childrens stories often did, and they do not much resemble the creatures in nursery rhymes or jingles or Edward Lears nonsensical poems either.Instead, they talk, chopping logic, competing with Alice and each other, and often mentioning things natural animals might be imagined to talk about, like fear, death, and being eaten. I think Denis Crutch is also roughly right when he points out that there is in Alice a hierarchy of animals analogous to the Victorian class system but also suggesting a competitive model of nature the white rabbit, caterpillar, and March Hare seem to be gentlemen, anuran and fish are footmen, Bill the lizard is bullied by everybody, hedgehogs and flamingos are made use of, and the dormouse and the guinea pigs are victimized by larger animals and by humans. FN11) William Empsons 1935 probe notes how Carrolls ideas and manuscript illustrations associate evolutionary theories with Alice in Wonderland. (FN12) This is a crucial point and, I believe, the best explanation for the presence of so many animals in Wonderland. It was aft(prenominal) all Carroll who put a dodo, best known for being extinct, into the text,(FN13) and Carroll who first included an ape, that key symbol of evolutionary debate, in his drawing of the motley conference of beasts in the pool of tears.But Carrolls evolutionary reference is much more extensive than Empson found it, for a Darwinist view of life as competitive struggle is also promoted by Alice, whoapparently unconsciously, as if she really cannot help itrepeatedly reminds us that in life one must either eat or be eaten. Alice will keep talking about Dinah to the little creatures she meets who are the natural victims of cats (26-27), she has to admit to the pigeon that she herself has eaten eggs (73), and in the Mock Turtle scene she has to check herself rather th an reveal that she has eaten lobster and whiting (148, 152).The Mock Turtle, of course, is a very creature of the table, while Dinah the predator, the surface cat, has a place maintained for her in Wonderland by the Cheshire Cat, a lucky but slightly sinister appearing and disappearing cat whose virtually significant body part is his grinning, tooth-filled mouth (he grins like the crocodile, as Nina Auerbach has noted). (FN14) The little bright-eyed terrier of which the aboveground Alice is so fond (27) also has other-selves in Wonderland, Fury in the Mouses Tale, the puppy in chapter 4.Moreover, the Mouses Talethe next poem in the book after the crocodile poemtalks about predation as if it were a legal process. The reader should therefore take the hint and connect the animal eat or be eaten melodic theme elsewhere in the story with the trial scene in the last stage of the book. Carroll has the White Rabbit make this association of ideas when he mutters The Duchess The Duchess Oh my dear pawsOh my fur and whiskers Shell get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets (41). This is one of those moments when Alice reveals its ferocious under certain. The White Rabbit here anticipates legal execution as simultaneous with the process of being prepared for table that is, these civilized human behaviors are proffered by Carroll as analogous to predation by a natural enemy, ferrets.Alice herself, by kicking Bill the Lizard up the chimney (an incident memorably illustrated by Tenniel in a very funny picture) and by looking on approvingly while the guinea pigs are so unkindly treated in court, inverts the theme of kindness to animals established in more Orthodox childrens literature like Maria Edge costs tale of Simple Susan, where a girls pet lamb is saved from the slaughterers knife. FN15) In Alice in Wonderland there is humorous delight in the misappropriation of the creatures in the croquet scene, and there are many other versions of a cruel carnival in the book for instance, Alice imagines herself being set to view a mousehole by her own cat. She also resents being ordered about by mice and rabbits (46)a phrase that suggests the world upside down of carnival but which might also be taken as summing up the new evolutionary predicament of humanity.Fallen down the rabbit hole from her lordly position at the top of the Great Chain of Being, Alice instead finds herself, through a series of size changes, continually being repositioned in the pabulum chain. The importance of the theme of predation, the motif of eating and being eaten, is such that it has attracted a number of commentaries. It is fully described by Margaret Boe Birns in Solving the Mad Hatters Riddle and by Nina Auerbach in Alice and Wonderland A Curious Child. (FN16) Birns remarks in opening her essay that Most of the creatures in Wonderland are relentless carnivores, and they eat creatures who, save for some outer physical divergences, are very like themselves, united, i n fact, by a common humanity. Birns therefore even cites a crocodile-eating fish as a case of cannibalism,(FN17) quoting in support of this idea Alices Nurse Do lets pretend that Im a hungry hyaena and youre a bone (Looking-Glass, 8). She also remarks that Wonderland contains creatures whose all degree of self-definition is expressing a desire to be eaten or drunk, and offers other comments on scenes in Through the Looking-Glass where, as she puts it, food can become human, human beings can become food. (FN18) I do not continuously find cannibal readings supported by the parts of the text in question.Auerbach also makes claims about cannibalism, but a little differently, referring the idea of eat or be eaten back to Alice, her subtly cannibalistic hunger,(FN19) the unconscious cannibalism involved in the very fact of eating and the desire to eat. (FN20) Auerbach associates this interpretation with Dodgsons own attitude to food. But textual support for the quality Auerbach calls A lices cannibalism seems lacking. Alice does not really eye the other animals in her pool of tears with a strange hunger as Auerbach suggests,(FN21) nor do the Hatter and the Duchess sing savage songs about eating as Auerbach claims. FN22) To describe a panther eating an owl as cannibalism, Auerbach(FN23) must assume (like Birns) that the creatures in Alice are definitely to be read as humans in fur and feathers. My path of work is that they need not be so read the point might be their and Alices animal nature. Nor does the food at Queen Alices dinner party at the end of Through the Looking-Glass begin to eat the guests(FN24) as Auerbach claims, although food does misbehave in Looking-Glass and the Pudding might have this in mind (Looking-Glass, 206).Overall, however, in my view the preoccupation of Alice in Wonderland with creatures eating other creatures is much discontinue accounted for by the more sinister and Darwinian aspects of nature(FN25) which Auerbach and Birns(FN26) al so recognize as a part of the Alice books. I now return to my main business, that Tenniels illustrations weft up on but also extend this Darwinist and natural history field of reference in Carrolls text.As already noted, Tenniels drawings of animals do not stylistically suggest a childrens fairy tale(FN27) but rather produce Alice as a kind of natural history by resembling those in the plentiful and luxuriously illustrated habitual natural histories of the day (see figs. 1 and 2). My argument therefore differs from Michael Hanchers, which emphasizes social and satirical contexts by comparing pictures of various Wonderland and Looking-Glass creatures to those in Tenniels and others Punch cartoons. FN28) While Hancher establishes the human kindred with Punch as an important one, however, the most convincing animal resemblances he reproduces from Alice in Wonderland (I am not here concerned with Through the Looking-Glass) amount to besides two pictures, the Cheshire Cat in a tre e resembling the Up a Tree cartoon of a raccoon,(FN29) and the ape on page 35 of Alice resembling the ape in Bombas Big Brother,(FN30) Tenniels frog footman and fish footman are Grandvillian figures with animal heads but human bodies, and also evidently suggest social commentary.But they stand apart from the argument I am presenting here because no effort is made by Tenniel to present them as animals. The satiric side of Tenniels animal illustrations in Alice, hinted at by echoes of Punch, is never very dominant, then, and should not be seen as precluding another field of reference in natural history reading.The scope, persistence, eccentricity, and variety of the natural history crazeor rather, series of crazesthat swept Britain between 1820 and 1870 are described for the general reader by Lynn Barber in The Heyday of congenital account statement and by others in more specialized publications, and need not be redescribed here. (FN31) The importance of illustration in contemporary natural history publishing, however, is central to my argument and must be touched on briefly.Even in the midcentury climate of Victorian self-improvement and self-education, the volume of this well-established branch of publishing is impressive the standard of illustration in popular periodicals and books was high, and sales were also impressively high in Victorian terms. Rev. John George Wood, according to his son and biographer Theodore Wood, a pioneer in writing natural history in nontechnical language, had reasonable sales for his one-volume The Illustrated Natural History in 1851 and very good sales for Common Objects of the Sea Shore in 1857.But when Routledge brought out his lavishly illustrated Common Objects of the Country in 1858 it sold 100,000 copies within a week of publication, and the first edition was followed by many others, a figure deserving comparing with Darwins more modest first-edition sell-out of 1,250 copiesor, indeed, with Dickenss sales of Bleak House ( 1852), which were 35,000 in the first two years.The result of Woods success was a much grander publishing venture by Routledge, Wain and Routledge, a three-volume The Illustrated Natural History with new drawings including some by Joseph Wolf volume 1 (1859) was on mammals, volume 2 (1862) on birdsthe frontispiece is reproduced in figure 2and volume 3 (1863) on reptiles, fish, and mollusks. FN32) Woods astonishingly prolific career as a popularizer, however, of which I have described only a tiny fraction (he was dashing off such productions as Anecdotes of Animal Life, Every Boys Book, and Feathered Friends in this decade as well), is in line with much other more or less theologically inclined and intellectually respectable natural history publishing in the 1850s and 1860s, often by clergymen.Children were important consumers of such books and periodicals and sometimes are obviously their main market, and a number of fictional works, such as Charles Kingsleys The Water-Babies (1863) and Margaret Gattys Parables from reputation, of which the first four series appeared between 1855 and 1864 (that is, in the decade prior to Carrolls publication of Alice in Wonderland), capitalize on the contemporary conviction that natural history was a subject especially allow for for children. (FN33) Tenniel connects his Alice and natural history illustration by a number of stylistic allusions.He borrows the stodgy techniques of realism, such as the cross-hatching and fine lines used to suggest light, shade, and solidity of form in the Mock Turtles shell and flippers, or the crabs and lobsters claws. Accuracy in proportion and a high level of anatomical detail are equally important. As can be seen by comparing figures 1 and 2, too, the grouping of subjects may also be suggestivea point first noted by Narda Schwartz, who also drew attention to the resemblance between the etching of the dodo in Woods three-volume natural history and Tenniels dodo. FN34) Also significant is the way Tenniels design wake the creatures recently emerged from the pool of tears includes a rather furry-haired Alice among, and on a level with, the beasts and birds. Carrolls own pictures for the pool of tears sequence have the quite different effect of separating Alice from the animal world, a point 1 will return to. Another Tenniel habit that suggests natural history illustration is his provision of sketchy but realistic and appropriate backgrounds.Here Tenniels viewpoint sometimes miniaturizes the reader, setting the viewpoint low and thus letting us in on the ground level of a woodland world magnified for our information (compare figs. 3 and 4). When Alice stands on tiptoe to peep over the edge of a mushroom, when she carries the pig baby in the timberland or talks to the Cheshire Cat, Tenniel uses a typical natural history technique, placing a familiar woodland flowera foxglovein the background in such away as to remind the reader of Alices size at that time.Similarly, Tenni el makes use of the difference between vignettes for simple or single subjects, and framed illustrations, including full-page illustrations, for larger-scale and more important and complex subjects, in a way that very closely resembles a akin(predicate) distinction in natural history illustrationpopular natural histories like Woods tend to use large, framed illustrations to make generalized statements, showing, for instance, a group of different kinds of rodent, while vignettes present an individual of one species.And above all, although Tenniel certainly endows his creatures with personality and facial expressions, his animals, unlike his humans, are never grotesques. In fact, nineteenth-century natural history illustration also delights in endowing the most solidly realistic creatures with near-human personality or expressiveness, a quality that Tenniel builds on to good effect, for instance, in his depiction of the lawyer-parrots, which remind one of Edward Lears magnificent ma caws (see figs. 5, 6, and 7).Thus while Tenniels animal portraits reflect the Victorians pleasure in their expanding knowledge of the variety of creatures in the world, they also faithfully reproduce the contemporary assimilation of this variety to familiar human social types, a sleight of hand of which Audubon, for example, is a master his Great Blue Heron manages also to subtly suggest a sly old gentleman, likely shortsighted, and with side-whiskers. In the visual world inhabited by Tenniel, then, the differing works of Audubon and Grandville (the latter could depict a heron as a priest merely by give the bird spectacles) slide together.Where few of Tenniels successors have been able to resist the temptation to turn the animals in Alice in Wonderland into cartoon or humorous creations, though, it is Tenniels triumph that he drew his creatures straight, or almost straight the Times review of Alice in Wonderland (December 26, 1865) particularly noted for praise Tenniels truthfulne ss in the delineation of animal forms. (FN35) It was, indeed, his accomplishment in drawing animals that first established his reputation as an illustrator, when he provided illustrations for Rev. Thomas Jamess Aesops Fables in 1848. FN36) Can sources for Tenniels remarkable animal drawings be more scarce identified? An early biographer of Tenniel records his acknowledgment that he liked to spend time observing the animals at the Zoo. (FN37) However, comparisons between pictures reveal that in addition Tenniel almost certainly consulted scientific illustrations or recalled them for his Alice in Wonderland drawings. For example, in the mid-eighteenth century George Edwards produced a hand-colored engraving of a dodo which, he wrote, he had copied from a painting of a rest dodo brought from Mauritius to Holland.The original painting was acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, passed on to Edwards, and given by him to the British Museum. (FN38) In 1847 C. A. Marlborough painted a picture of a dodo, which is now in the Ashmolean Museum (it was reproduced on the cover of the magazine Oxford Today in 1999). And in 1862 the second volume of J. G. Woods The Illustrated Natural History includes a picture of a dodo. (FN39) Compare all these with Tenniels dodo (figs. 8, 9, 10, and 11) they surely either have a common ancestor or are copies one from the other. The dodo is a special case in that Tenniel could hardly have studied one at the London zoo.But I wish to put forward a claim that Woods 1851 one-volume and, later, expanded three-volume Illustrated Natural History were very probably familiar to Carroll and the small Liddells and also to Tenniel, not only because Woods dodo illustration is a attainable source for Tenniels but because these volumes also scupper smiling crocodiles, baby eagles in their nest, and the lory,(FN40) as well as illustrations of numerous more familiar animals that appear in the words and/or pictures of Alice, including the edible crab, the lobster , the frog, the dormouse, guinea pigs, flamingos, varieties of fancy pigeon, and so forth.Given the compendious nature of Woods works, this is hardly surprising, of course. But Wood must be favored as the source of animal drawings most probably known to Tenniel for the further reason that Wood illustrations often quite strongly resemble Tenniel illustrations, as readers may judge by comparing figures 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, to the toucan, eagle, and crab from Alice (see fig. 1) and the lobster and dormouse (see Alice in Wonderland, 157 and 97). (FN41) No matter how good Tenniels famous visual memory, he is unlikely to have drawn such a menagerie without some research.Hancher noted the strong resemblance between a Bewick hedgehog (from the General History of Quadrupeds, 1790, often reprinted) and the evasive croquet-ball hedgehog at Alices feet on page 121. (FN42) Bewicks hedgehog, however, had already been recycled by William Harvey for Woods one-volume Illustrated Natural History w here Tenniel is equally likely to have seen and remembered it all three hedgehogs have the same dragging rear foot (see figs. 17, 18, and 19). This is another case, like that of the dodo, where scientific natural history illustrations have been copied, recopied, or reworked for reprinting.A similar argument could be presented about the large number of depictions of sinuous flamingos that Tenniel might have consulted. The volume of contemporary natural history publishing for children and adults, the evident contemporary interest in illustrations of animals, and the resemblance between Tenniels and contemporary natural history drawings have important implications the resemblance indicates that Tenniel is here creating the context within which he wants his pictures to be read.He shows us that he saw (and wanted the viewer to be able to see) Carrolls animals as real animals, like those that were the objects of current scientific study and theories, at least as much as he saw them as Gra ndville or Punch-type instruments of social satire, or fairy-tale or fable talking beasts. (FN43) In line with his scientific interpretation, then, Tenniel in illustrating Alice in Wonderland intensifies Carrolls reference to Darwins theory of evolution by carrying out his own visual editing of the Carroll illustrations in the manuscript.Tenniel makes the ape appear in two consecutive illustrations in the second, it stares thoughtfully into the eyes of the readerappearing to claim kinship. Tenniel includes among the creatures in these illustrations on pages 29 and 35 a fancy pigeon, perhaps a fantail or a pouter, which should in my view be taken as a direct reference to Darwins argument from the selective breeding of fancy pigeon varieties in chapter 1 of The Origin of Species. FN44) A visual detail that Tenniel introduced into the book, the glass dome in the background to the royal tend scene on page 117, looks like the dome at the old Surrey Zoological Gardens(FN45) and therefore constitutes another reference to the study of animals. And as already noted, Tenniel does not reproduce Carrolls rather lonely image of Alice abandoned by the animals, which would have had the effect of separating her human figure from the animal ones and thus emphasizing Alices difference from them.Instead, Tenniel provides two images of Alice among, and almost of, the animal world, developing a radical implication of Carrolls text of which Carroll himself was possibly unaware. On the other hand, Carrolls interest in predation, in the motif of eat or be eaten, is not one on which Tenniel expands. No doubt it would have been thought too frightening for children one must recall the care taken by Carroll over the positioning of the Jabberwocky illustration in Through the Looking-Glass. FN46) But while Carrolls text here develops emphaticallyalbeit peripherallysome ideas that Tenniel could only leave aside, Tenniels recognition of the importance of such themes is strongly demonstrated by the puppy picture. This illustration is a particularly large one, dominating the page (55) on which it appears. It is framed, and therefore gives an impression of completion and independent significance, very different from that given by the more common vignette with its intimate and fluid relationship to the text.These things make it probable that the puppy scene and its illustration were especially important in Tenniels reading of Alice in Wonderland. Yet commentaries on Alice in Wonderland tend to ignore the puppy scene, perhaps because critics are often most interested by Carrolls verbal nonsense, and the puppy is speechless. Indeed, Denis Crutch disapproves of the puppy as an intruder from the real world and Goldthwaite takes up this point, commenting that the puppy was Carrolls most glaring aesthetic mistake in Aliceneither seems to have noticed that the hedgehogs and flamingos are also not talking beasts. (FN47) Another reader of Tenniels illustrations, Isabelle Nieres, t akes a similar line, remarking that the full-page illustration is perhaps placing too much emphasis on Alices encounter with the puppy. (FN48) But what Tenniels puppy illustration encapsulates, in my view, is the theme of the importance of relative size. Here is Alices fearful moment of uncertainty about whether she is meeting a predator or a pet. As reader and Alice will discover, the puppy only wants to play.But Alice is terribly frightened all the time at the thought it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her coaxing (54), and Tenniels illustration with the thistle in the foreground towering over the tiny Alice, like many of his memorable illustrations, primarily signifies her anxiety. Later, too, Tenniels choice of the lobster as the subject of a drawing is a visual reminder of the transformation of animals into meat it brings the viewer uncomfortably close to recognition of kinship with the devoured, so human is the lobster and s o warily is his eye fixed on the viewers.The lobster is another illustration that Hodnett found an inexplicable presence in the text the song in the text provides insufficient excuse for an illustration, he remarks. (FN49) My analysis of Tenniels composite verbal/visual Alice in Wonderland is very different. Possibly going well beyond Carrolls conscious intentions, Tenniel offers a Wonderland that concurs with the evolutionist view of creation by showing animals and humans as a continuum within which the stronger or larger prey upon the smaller or weaker.The implicationone many readers of Darwin were most reluctant to acceptis that if animals are semihuman, humans may conversely be nothing but evolved animals. Alices extraordinary size changesin which Tenniel is so interestedtherefore play a significant role in this new world, for as I already pointed out, it is through her series of size changes that Alice finds herself continually being repositioned in the food chain.Wonderland is truly the place of reversals its theme of a world upside down is traditional, as Ronald Reichertz has reminded us in an lighten study that positions Alice in Wonderland in relation to earlier childrens reading. (FN50) Size changes can represent the topsy-turvy, of course. But while Alice has some recognizably Jack-in-Giant-land experienceslike struggling to draw close up the leg of a tableand some Tom Thumb experienceslike hiding behind a thistlewhat is so weird or Wonderlandish about her story is not her sudden growth spurts but that she transforms rapidly from the small to the large and vice versa. FN51) Alices body changes at times suggest being outsize and aggressivefor example, when she is trapped in the White Rabbits house and terrifies the little creatures outside, or when she is accused of being an egg-stealing serpent or predator by the pigeon. But she is undersized and therefore vulnerable when she slips into the pool of tears or when she meets the puppy. (FN52) The si ze changes connect back to eat or be eaten where the dangers of large and small size, a theme especially horrifying to children, is a traditional one, found in tales of giants and ogres, Hop-o my Thumb or Mally Whuppie. FN53) But as we have seen, the Tenniel/Carroll Alice in Wonderland links forward to ideas of predator and prey, eat or be eaten, and the animal nature of humanity, all recently given new urgency by Darwin. A contemporary illustration worth pondering that deals with these important ideas (it appeared at almost exactly the time of the publication of Alice in Wonderland) is the cover of Hardwickes Science-Gossip A Monthly Medium of Interchange & Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature (January 1866).This cover represents (see fig. 20) the scientific technology that interested Carroll, as well as, more sentimentally, the small creatures and plants of woodland and seashore that are a part of the natural history background. These subjects, however, make a mere frame to th e central illustration, both grisly and amusing, which is a depiction of the chain of predation, eat or be eaten, in action. wizard could hardly ask for a more succinct visual summary of this important element in the contemporary contexts of Alice.Recognition of this theme will, as well as accounting for lobster and puppy illustrations, also account for the otherwise somewhat puzzling centrality of Dinah and the Cheshire Cat in Carrolls text. Nina Auerbach quotes Florence Becker Lennons insight that the Cheshire Cat is Dinahs dream-self, and certainly one or the other is more or less ever-where in Wonderland. (FN54) I think the reason for this must be that this familiar household pet best emphasizes the paradoxical difference between being large, in which state the cat is a delightful little furry companion, and being small, in which state the cat might stamp out you and eat you.In the Darwinian world, size can be the key to survival. And yet, Carroll selected a smiling crocodile to stand for the new view of creation. The cruelty of the Darwinian world is, in his view, somehow inseparable from delight. To suggest a context for this unexpected but quintessentially nineteenth-century state of mind,(FN55) a comparison may be made here between Carrolls poetic vision of his particular predator and Henry de la Beches 1830 cartoon of life in A More Ancient Dorset or, Durior Antiquior (see fig. 1). De la Beche was English disrespect his name, and was the first director of the British Geological Survey. According to Stephen Jay Gould, who includes it in his preface to The Book of Life, de la Beches spirited cartoon, simultaneously grim and humorous, was reproduced endlessly (in both consistent and pirated editions) and is an important model, becoming the canonical figure of ancient life at the inception of this genre. (FN56) In short, this is the first dinosaur picture.Victorian paintings of nature (showing a similar pleasure to Carrolls in his crocodile) do tend t o center on hunting and predationsee The Stag at Bayand de la Beches influential image, Gould explains, became a thoroughly conventional depiction of prehistory, first, in showing a pond unnaturally crowded with wildlife (rather like Carrolls pool of tears), and second, in depicting virtually every creature in it as either a feaster or a meal(FN57)something one may also feel about Carrolls characters.Particularly striking is the gusto, the pleasurably half-horrified enjoyment of crashing(a) prehistory, in de la Beches cartoon, which in my view is very comparable to the enjoyment of the image of the devouring crocodile in Lewiss brilliant little parody. A slightly acid gusto also animates Alice in Wonderland, a book that fairly crackles with energy although the energy has always been rather hard to account for.While on the official levels of his reason Carroll stood apart from the theological storms of the time,(FN58) is it possible that the news of evolution through natural selec tion was, on another level of his mind, good news to him as to many other Victorians, coming as a kind of mental liberation? Humanity might well have found crushing, at times, the requirements of moral office and constant self-improvement imposed by mid-Victorian ideals of Christian duty.Alice, for one, young as she is, has already thoroughly internalized many rules of conduct, and Alices creator, equipped as he was with what Donald Rackin has called a do for standards and order,(FN59) revels in the oversetting of order (as well as disowning this oversetting thoroughly when Alice awakens from her dream). The exhilaration of an amoral anti-society in Alice in Wonderland may be, therefore, in part the exhilaration of a Darwinist dream, of selfishness without restraint.As we all know, Alices route out of Wonderland is to grow out of it. In closing this essay a final suggestion may be made about Carroll and his self-depiction in Wonderland. If the book is full of expressions of anxiet y about relative sizeand the dangers of largeness and smallnessthis may not merely be because a new theory of evolution by natural selection had enlivened this ancient theme. Possibly Carroll had adapted this theory as a private way of symbolizing for himself the anxieties and dangers of his relationship withAlice and the other Liddell children. In Morton N. Cohens archives Lewis Carroll, a table numbers the occurrences of guilty self-reproach and resolves to amend in Carrolls diaries and shows how these peaked at the time of his deepest involvement with the Liddell family. (FN60) Is it possible that Carroll, far from suffering a repressed interest in little girls, consciously acknowledged and wrestled in private prayer with his own impossible desires?It seems to become ever more difficult, rather than easier, to read this aspect of Carrolls life. In a recent Times Literary Supplement (February 8, 2002), Karoline Leach argues that Carrolls friendships with children were emphasized in his nephew Stuart Collingwoods biography to distract attention from the potentially more scandalous fact of the older Carrolls friendships with mature women.A letter in response by Jenny Woolf, on February 15, points out that Carrolls sisters continued to recognize Carrolls women friends, so obviously perceived these friendships as chaste, but reminds us of the possibility that Dodgson may have cultivated girl children as friends because of their innocence, because they were sexually safe to him, rather than because they were dangerously enticing.A response to this position, of course, would be that the assiduity with which Carroll cultivated friendships with small girls seems out of proportion to such a purpose. Whatever the truth of these matters, it appears to me that Carroll, inconvenience by the emotional battles documented in his diary, might well have developd a set of imaginative scenarios in which a little girls growing up or down is reversible according to her own desi re this offers one kind of explanation of some of the more mysterious events of Wonderland.The dangerous but lift up aspects of Carrolls relationship with his little friends seems to fit neatly into a tooth and claw model of society, too, for each party to such a friendship, although acting in innocence and affection, has a kind of reserve capacity to destroy, to switch from pet to predator. Carroll might even have dramatized himself as a beast in a Darwinian world in relation to these little girls who are never the right size for him.At times he is only the peta romping, anxious-to-please, but oversized puppy. But there are other times when he might fear becoming the predator, a crocodile whose welcoming smile masks the potential to devour. And conversely, of course, Carrolls beloved little friends had the unreasonable capacity to destroy him, morally and socially, if he should ever overstep the boundaries of decency and trust.Tenniel, presumably unaware of any secret underside t o Carrolls life, was anyway debarred by Victorian figure for children as viewers from depicting the savage underside of Alice. But by referring the reader outward to current controversies and current interests in the natural sciences, he has succeeded toppingly in rendering in art both Carrolls, and his own, grasp of the importance of a new worldview, and of the explosive anxiety and exhilaration to which it gave birth. ADDED MATERIAL ROSE LOVELL-SMITH