Arcadia Pre-Reading Homework Plan

The first part of your holiday materials for Arcadia is some supplemental reading that you may find useful while reading or before reading the text. There are two different summaries of the text and then a selection of some of the major allusions in the text that will save you time in having to Google or search these ideas yourself.

Read This First Read This Next – It’s shorter Finally, Read This – It’s long but it’s stuff you need to know

about

Now, don’t freak out. There is not six hours of work to do. Some of this material is the homework for the first two weeks of the unit. I would however suggest that doing as much of this now, when your time is a bit flexible, will give you time to undertake more study and passage analysis practice during the unit. Doing it early will also mean that you have a far better understanding of the text as we do our close study in class.

The Big Ideas (4 hours – that’s 30 minutes per idea) The Detail (2 hours – that’s a little over 20 minutes per

image)

Remember that this is the unit where you are assessed by undertaking passage analysis. This means it is the best chance you have to perfect your skills for the essay. This means the more time you can dedicate to practice the better your study score will be. So, the more of the work you get done in the break the more time you will have for this practice. Trust me – this investment now will pay off in the end.

Read this first!

It helps with this story to have an overview so here is a good one:

Scene 1

Who knew early-nineteenth-century English country houses could be such hotbeds of sex, gossip, and mathematics? It's 1809 at Sidley Park, and thirteen-year-old Thomasina is learning about more from her tutor Septimus than algebra and Latin. Rest assured, however, this isn't too dodgey: Septimus has been sleeping with one Mrs. Chater, wife to the not-so-bright (not to mention poetry-challenged) poet, Ezra Chater. Unfortunately for Septimus and Mrs. Chater, one of their escapades in the gazebo has been spotted by Mr. Noakes, the landscape architect.

Of course, Noakes reports this interesting fact to Mr. Chater, whose note requesting a duel interrupts the conversation Thomasina and Septimus are having about sex, math, time, and free will. Chater wants a duel with Septimus to defend his wife's honor, but Septimus manages to get him to believe that Mrs. Chater slept with Septimus only to ensure that he would write a good review of Mr. Chater's latest poem. Chater is so pleased with this take on the affair that he writes a grateful inscription in Septimus's copy of his book.

Lady Croom enters with the hapless Mr. Noakes and her brother, Captain Brice. Their discussion of the gazebo leads Septimus to think that they, too, are aware of his fling with Mrs. Chater. However, it turns out Lady Croom is more concerned with the fate of her garden, which Mr. Noakes is ripping up to turn into something that looks like a Dracula movie. Noakes has made a series of sketches in a book detailing what he wants the garden to look like. Thomasina makes her own addition to this book: a drawing of a hermit, to go with the proposed hermitage (which is both a place where hermits live and, more generally, a hideaway).

Scene 2

The action shifts to the present day in the same place (the same room, even). Living in the house are: the current Lord and Lady Croom, the latter of whom is still obsessed with gardening, and their children, mathematician Valentine, boy-crazy Chloë, and silent Gus. They also have a visitor, a scholar named Hannah Jarvis, who is doing research for a book about the garden and its hermit.

Bernard Nightingale arrives, looking for Hannah. For some reason, he doesn't want Hannah to know his real name – Chloë introduces him as Mr. Peacock. Hannah does not take kindly to his slightly slimy manner, but she is more or less civil in helping him with his quest: he's trying to find out about poet Ezra Chater. Nightingale has found the book that Chater inscribed to Septimus, which has led Nightingale to Sidley Park.

Hannah also talks about her own research, including her most recent book on Caroline Lamb (one of the English poet Lord Byron's lovers), which was torn apart in the press by Byron scholars – especially one Professor Bernard Nightingale. Hannah's current work takes the Sidley Park mad hermit (as illustrated by Thomasina, but also mentioned elsewhere) as a symbol for the disintegration of eighteenth-century rational Enlightenment ideals into nineteenth-century Romantic

excess.

When Chloë slips up with the name game and Hannah discovers "Peacock" is really Nightingale, Hannah is ready to kick him out of the house. But Bernard explains his real aim: he's convinced that Byron killed Chater in a duel at Sidley Park, and he wants to find any evidence that will support his claim. Hannah laughs off this idea, but Bernard is hooked when she mentions that Septimus was at college with Byron.

Scene 3

Back to 1809. Thomasina's lesson for the day is Latin translation, but she's more interested in discussing one of their current houseguests, Lord Byron, and his flirtation with her mother. She's also excited about the new kind of geometry she's trying to figure out: she's bored with the regular shapes Septimus is teaching her, and wants to figure out how to use math to describe the more complex forms of nature. They're interrupted again by Chater, who has discovered, through Byron, that Septimus wrote a snarky review of his last poem. Chater, supported by Captain Brice, challenges Septimus to a duel, and a weary Septimus agrees to a face-off the next morning.

Scene 4

Flip over to the present day. Hannah has some of Thomasina's old math books, and is trying to figure out what the heck the girl was up to. According to Valentine (remember, Lady Croom's son?), what Thomasina was doing is somewhat similar to what Valentine's work trying to describe bird populations mathematically. Bernard interrupts them excitedly because he's found some penciled lines referring to Chater in a copy of a book by Byron in the estate library. Valentine offers another interesting tidbit: Byron is mentioned as a guest in one the gamebooks (records of birds shot by the house's hunting parties) he's using for his research data. Bernard goes off, and the earlier conversation resumes.

Valentine explains that whatever Thomasina was doing, it would never have amounted to a major discovery, because it takes too long doing these kinds of calculations by hand, without a computer – you would have to be crazy to try, which makes Hannah think of the mad hermit.

Scene 5

When we return, Bernard reads a newly written lecture about his Byron duel theory to Chloë, Valentine, and Gus. Hannah comes in with something to show Valentine, but ends up staying and objecting to Bernard's speech, pointing out all the gaps and flaws in his argument. When Bernard starts slamming her own book, however, Hannah decides to leave him to his doom. Valentine enters the fray, and he and Bernard argue about which is more trivial: personalities (who discovered what) or scientific knowledge (about things that have no real impact on day-to-day human lives). The Coverlys depart, and Bernard hits on Hannah, but she turns him down. He gives her a book that mentions the hermit, and she discovers that the hermit was born in the same year as Septimus.

Scene 6

It's early morning, and the butler, Jellaby, opens the door to let in Septimus, who spent the night in the boathouse. The house has been in an uproar: Mr. and Mrs. Chater have departed with Captain Brice, and Lord Byron has also gone off. Jellaby gives Septimus the behind-the-scenes version of

events: Lady Croom met Mrs. Chater on the threshold of Lord Byron's room, and all hell broke loose. At that point Lady Croom herself enters, and she is ready to send Septimus away because of his friendship with Byron and affair with Mrs. Chater. But Septimus tells Lady Croom that it's her he really loves, and Mrs. Chater was just a poor stand-in. Lady Croom invites him to her room. (We've got to give him props: this Septimus guy is a quick thinker.)

Scene 7

What's that? Why, it's the present day, popping up again! Except most of the characters are now dressed in Regency-era clothes (think Jane Austen movie outfits) for the evening's costume ball. Chloë is reading the press coverage of Bernard's Byron theory. Valentine uses his computer to expand Thomasina's math beyond what she could do by hand, and shows off the results to Hannah. Hannah reveals Thomasina's fate: she died in a fire in the house on the night before her seventeenth birthday.

The nineteenth century, not to be outdone, intrudes into the scene (1812 this time): Valentine and Hannah remain in the room, but Thomasina and her younger brother Augustus run in and join them. (Neither century notices the other is present.) Thomasina tries to explain her math – the same formulas that Valentine has expanded on his computer – to Septimus, as well as her crush on Lord Byron. Augustus leaves, and Thomasina reminds Septimus of his promise to teach her to waltz. Thomasina's interest turns to the book Septimus is reading, which challenges Newton's theories of physics.

Lady Croom enters the room and admires her dahlias, newly arrived from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, where the Chaters and Brice went after leaving Sidley Park. Mr. Chater died there from a monkey bite, and Mrs. Chater is now Mrs. Brice, making her Lady Croom's sister-in-law. Even though three years have passed, the Sidley Park garden is still under construction, and now Mr. Noakes has enlisted a steam engine to help with the work. Thomasina figures out, however, that the steam engine will never put out as much energy as you have to put into it to make it work. Septimus asks her to write down her explanation of this fact.

The nineteenth century walks out, and the present day walks back in. While Lady Croom was enthusing over her dahlias, Hannah was reading about their arrival in Martinique and the fate of Chater in her garden books. Hannah wastes no time in reporting to Bernard that it wasn't Byron who killed Chater, but rather, a particularly vicious monkey. Bernard is mortified that his public acclaim is going to turn into public mockery, and all exit.

It's now evening in 1812, and Septimus enters to grade Thomasina's homework. Thomasina herself follows him, and kisses him to remind him of his promised waltz lesson. While they wait for the music coming from the piano in the next room to be right for waltzing, they discuss Thomasina's work: Septimus is fascinated by Thomasina's ideas, but does not quite understand them.

In the present day, Hannah and Valentine come in, and Valentine explains Thomasina's diagram of the steam engine to Hannah. In past and present, both couples talk about how we're all doomed because the whole universe is running down like the steam engine, but Thomasina still wants to waltz. Finally the music is the right rhythm, so Septimus begins to teach her the dance. Bernard blows in, breaks up with Chloë, and blows out, followed by Valentine. Hannah remains behind, joined by Gus, who invites her to dance. The present joins the past in waltzing to the end.

Read this next – It’s shorter!

Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice. Since the play's two plots run parallel for most of the time, I'll identify each stage for each plot.

Initial Situation

1809 – Thomasina is interested in ‘carnal knowledge and shows a talent for complex mathematics and physics. These two qualities don’t seem to sit well together. Septimus's affair with Mrs. Chater is discovered.Present - Bernard, a visiting Byron scholar, joins Hannah, another scholar but at home at Sidley Park in research

This is where we come in: a cast of characters worthy of a murder mystery is established at an English country house, ready for hijinks to ensue.

Conflict

1809 - Mr. Chater confronts Septimus about his affair with Mrs. Chater and Lady Croom is unimpressed by the suggestion that she remodel the gardens of her home.

Present - Bernard and Hannah clash over Bernard's Byron theories which differ from her own. Their discoveries also present Valentine with a challenge to his sense of his intellect.

In the nineteenth-century stream of events, Mr. Chater wants to conflict – violently – with the man he thinks has seduced his wife. Over in the twentieth century, Bernard and Hannah's arguments over Bernard's theories demonstrate two contrasting ways of thinking about truth and proof.

Complication

1809 - After Septimus talks Mr. Chater down, Mr. Chater finds out from Byron that Septimus has made fun of his poem and so he and his companion Captain Bryce both challenge him to duels.

Present - Bernard finds some evidence to support his theory, this infuriates Hannah.

Septimus thinks he's talked himself out of a duel, but he finds it tougher to wriggle out of the situation when Byron fingers him for Chater's bad press, especially since the less-easily-swayed Captain Brice takes Chater's side. And while Hannah thinks Bernard's crackpot theories are unprovable, he does manage to turn up enough evidence to convince himself, if not her, to stay on the trail.

Climax

1809 - Lady Croom sends away the Byron-Chater-Brice love polygon and discovers that she herself is the torch Septimus has been carrying

Present - Bernard goes public with his theories

The night of reckoning, in which everyone's secrets come out, causes a giant shift not just in the sense of who stays and who goes. Once Bernard goes on television to promote his theories, there's no turning back: he's got to stand (or fall) by them, no matter what.

Suspense

1809 - Lady Croom finds another admirer, leaving Septimus in the cold

Present - Hannah continues her research, knowing that something is going to prove Bernard wrong sooner or later, hopefully sooner

At this point, everyone (in both centuries) is in a holding pattern: Septimus obviously still has feelings for Lady Croom, even though her attentions have turned elsewhere, and Bernard is trying to stretch out his 15 minutes of fame as long as possible.

Denouement

1809 - There's something going on between Septimus and Thomasina that involves kissing and waltzing

Present - Hannah discovers proof that Bernard is wrong

The kisses between Septimus and Thomasina seem innocent at first, but come to suggest something more – although the end of the play and the implied death of Thomasina prevent whatever it is (true love? Septimus finding another substitute for Lady Croom?) from developing very far. In any case, this a twist that suggests a possible conclusion to the suspense and sets up the conditions for the ending. Similarly, Hannah's discovery of the true fate of Mr. Chater brings about the end to Bernard's theories.

Conclusion

Everybody waltzes. The end.

Even though there are plenty of threads left untied at the end of the play, the concluding dance suggests that it's the process, the movement, that's more important than having all the facts wrapped up in a neat little package. It also sees all the characters embrace emotion over intellect at the conclusion of the play – something they have all resisted throughout the play.

Finally, read this – It’s long but it’s stuff you need to know about

This play is about exceptionally smart people talking about complicated stuff and they don’t really care if you get it or not. So here is a (not so brief) cheat sheet of some of the most important things they refer to – as you read you might like to have the collected knowledge of the universe at your disposal as well (by that I mean Wikipedia) so you can check out any other allusions I haven’t outlined here.

RomanticismRomanticism is an attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.

Lord ByronGeorge Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the short lyric "She Walks in Beauty." He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile. It has been speculated that he suffered from bipolar I disorder.

Newtonian Physics and DeterminismIn 1687, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), British physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher and theologian, wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia, stating the laws of motion and gravity that would become the basis for classical mechanics:

Newton’s First Law of MotionCorpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.

Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed. i.e. the law of inertia: an object at rest stays at rest or an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force

Newton’s Second Law of MotionMutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur. The change of momentum of a body is proportional to the impulse impressed on the body, and happens along the straight line on which that impulse is impressed. i.e. force equals mass times acceleration

Newton’s Third Law of MotionActioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi. For a force there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions. i.e. for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

According to the deterministic model of science, the universe unfolds in time like the workings of a perfect machine, without a shred of randomness or deviation from the predetermined laws. The person most closely associated with the establishment of determinism at the core of modern science is Isaac Newton…Newton discovered a concise set of principles, expressible in only a few sentences, which he showed could predict the motion in an astonishingly wide variety of systems to a very high degree of accuracy. Newton demonstrated that his three laws of motion, combined through the process of logic, could accurately predict the orbits in time of the planets around the sun, the shapes of the paths of projectiles on earth, and the schedule of the ocean tides throughout the month and year, among other things. Newton's laws are completely deterministic because they imply that anything that happens at any future time is completed determined by what happens now, and moreover that everything now was completely determined by what happened at any time in the past. Newton's three laws were so successful that for several centuries after his discovery, the science of physics consisted largely of demonstrating how his laws could account for the observed motion of nearly any imaginable physical process.

ThermodynamicsThermodynamics is the science of the relationship between heat, work, temperature, and energy. In broad terms, thermodynamics deals with the transfer of energy from one place to another and from one form to another. The key concept is that heat is a form of energy corresponding to a definite amount of mechanical work.Heat was not formally recognized as a form of energy until about 1798, when Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson), a British military engineer, noticed that limitless amounts of heat could be generated in the boring of cannon barrels and that the amount of heat generated is proportional to the work done in turning a blunt boring tool.Rumford's observation of the proportionality between heat generated and work done lies at the foundation of thermodynamics. Another pioneer was the French military engineer Sadi Carnot, who introduced the concept of the heat-engine cycle and the principle of reversibility in 1824. Carnot's work concerned the limitations on the maximum amount of work that can be obtained from a steam engine operating with a high-temperature heat transfer as its driving force. Later that century, these ideas were developed by Rudolf Clausius, a German mathematician and physicist, into the first and

second laws of thermodynamics, respectively…. thermodynamics developed rapidly during the 19th century in response to the need to optimize the performance of steam engines,

The First Law of ThermodynamicsThe change in a system's internal energy is equal to the difference between heat added to the system from its surroundings and work done by the system on its surroundings. i.e. law of conservation of energy. This was formulated in the early 19th century and formalized by James Joule in 1843 and Rudolph Clausius in 1850.

The Second Law of ThermodynamicsHeat does not flow spontaneously from a colder region to a hotter region; heat at a given temperature cannot be converted entirely into work. The entropy, or unavailable energy, of a closed system increases over time toward some maximum value; forward and backward processes are asymmetrical. i.e. the disorder of s system increases over time. This was introduced by Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot in 1824 and formalized by Clausius in 1850.

Chaos TheoryIn mechanics and mathematics, the study of apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. A more accurate term, “deterministic chaos,” suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability… it was commonly believed that the world is unpredictable because it is complicated. The second notion is that of deterministic motion, as that of a pendulum or a planet, which has been accepted since the time of Isaac Newton as exemplifying the success of science in rendering predictable that which is initially complex.

In recent decades, however, a diversity of systems have been studied that behave unpredictably despite their seeming simplicity and the fact that the forces involved are governed by well-understood physical laws. The common element in these systems is a very high degree of sensitivity to initial conditions and to the way in which they are set in motion. For example, the meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered that a simple model of heat convection possesses intrinsic unpredictability, a circumstance he called the “butterfly effect,” suggesting that the mere flapping of a butterfly's wing can change the weather. A more homely example is the pinball machine: the ball's movements are precisely governed by laws of gravitational rolling and elastic collisions—both fully understood—yet the final outcome is unpredictable.

In classical mechanics the behaviour of a dynamical system can be described geometrically as motion on an “attractor.” The mathematics of classical mechanics effectively recognized three types of attractor: single points (characterizing steady states), closed loops (periodic cycles), and tori (combinations of several cycles). In the 1960s a new class of “strange attractors” was discovered by the American mathematician Stephen Smale. On strange attractors the dynamics is chaotic. Later it was recognized that strange attractors have detailed structure on all scales of magnification; a direct result of this recognition was the development of the concept of the fractal (a class of complex geometric shapes that commonly exhibit the property of self-similarity), which led in turn to remarkable developments in computer graphics.

Fermat's Last Theorem In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two.This theorem was first conjectured by Pierre de Fermat in 1637, famously in the margin of a copy of Arithmetica where he claimed he had a proof that was too large to fit in the margin. No successful

proof was published until 1995 despite the efforts of countless mathematicians during the 358 intervening years. The unsolved problem stimulated the development of algebraic number theory in the 19th century and the proof of the modularity theorem in the 20th century. It is among the most famous theorems in the history of mathematics and prior to its 1995 proof was in the Guinness Book of World Records for "most difficult mathematical problems".

The Big Idea – Surprise, there’s lots!

Enough reading. Now to get to work!

For each core concepts below I have presented you with two activities.

The first, ‘Now Consider’ is a notation task. Think of the questions as sub-points that you could note under each big idea. Only write as much as you need to in order to remind yourself of your understanding of the concept and how it relates to the play or of your response and how it helps you understand a core idea in the play. A couple of points should do it in most cases.

The second, ‘Chew On This’, you are presented with an interpretation. My suggestion would be to decide which key moments in the play you could use to justify or explore the idea being indicated. This could be a useful way to develop your list for the kaleidoscope study activity but it also forces you to think deeply about the ideas in the play. Once you have done this briefly outline your response to the interpretation. Do this in a similar way to the viewpoints in our ‘In Cold Blood’ unit.

Wisdom and Knowledge

What's the point of knowledge? Sure, knowing stuff can get you good grades, but after you're out of school, what real use is most of what you've learned? After all, knowing the parts of a cell doesn't help you much unless you're a scientist, and being able to recite poetry from memory is a neat party trick but not much more. If that's the case, why bother to learn anything? Arcadia says that nope, most knowledge doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things...but that in itself isn't enough reason not be interested in the world, because it's the only one we've got.

Now Consider

1. How do you know that you know something in Arcadia? Does the play suggest that intuition is a good basis for knowledge, or is it better to have proof?

2. How does scientific knowledge differ from literary or historical knowledge, according to the play? Is one more "provable" than the other?

3. Do you agree with Hannah that the desire for knowledge is more important than being sure that you're right? Why or why not?

Chew on This

Arcadia shows us a bona fide scientist (Valentine), but no real poets (Chater doesn't count). By keeping poets offstage while showing the struggles Valentine faces in his analysis, Arcadia suggests that good poetry is the product of genius while good science results from hard work.

In using the language of art to explain scientific concepts, Arcadia suggests that art is immediately understandable in a way that science is not.

Literature and Writing

Barring a time machine, how do we know about the past? One big way is through texts – reading what people wrote about themselves and other people. But, as anyone who's kept a diary (or read someone else's) knows, people are not always the most accurate record-keepers, even when they're trying to be. And then there's the fact that paper has an unfortunate tendency to get destroyed or otherwise go missing. By bringing to life both a group of scholars and the period they're researching, Arcadia examines how we piece together the past from its writings – and where that process can break down.

Now Consider:

1. What kind of knowledge can we get from literature or other writing, according to the play? What can't we know?

2. In what ways is writing unreliable as a clue to what actually happened?3. Though the characters spend a lot of time talking about Lord Byron, he never appears on

stage. How might the play be different if we actually got to meet Byron?

Chew on This:

By portraying researchers who misunderstand the historical documents they're pursuing, Arcadia suggests that historical knowledge is always deeply problematic.

While Bernard promotes literary study as bringing about "self-knowledge" (2.5), his own lack of self-knowledge undermines his arguments emphasizing science over literature.

Science

Since science is the rational study of reality, it's independent of its historical context, right? Well, not exactly, according to Arcadia. While it may be true that the writings of the Ancient Greeks on physics still make sense today, available technology limited what they could do – and, more interestingly, what they could even think. By exploring how scientific possibility is the product of a particular historical moment, Arcadia invites us to think about what's just over the horizon for today's scientific thinkers – and how science might change in ways we can't even imagine.

Consider This:

1. How does Thomasina's approach to science compare to Septimus's? What about Valentine's?2. What is scientific genius, according to the play? Is Thomasina a genius? Why or why not?

Chew on This:

Through focusing on the history of science, Arcadia suggests that science is similar to literature in that it is subject to its historical context.

Many of Thomasina's ideas emerge independently after her demise, even though she did not live long enough to develop or publish them. The play uses Thomasina and her early death to show that genius is not necessary for the advancement of science.

Truth

Arcadia asks some big questions about truth: does it even exist? What gives us grounds for thinking something is true? Is reason the right way to go about seeking truth, or is it better to trust your gut instinct? Arcadia's double storyline, alternating between modern-day researchers and characters in the historical period they're trying to discover the truth about, allows us to see where and how the contemporary truth-seeking process disintegrates – and it's not always where you'd expect. In Arcadia, the "plain and simple truth" is rarely plain and never simple.

Consider This:

1. How do the characters make judgment calls as to whether something's true or not? What kinds of rules do they use for determining truth?

2. Does literary truth differ from scientific truth in the play? How? What do these two approaches to truth have in common? What might it mean for a poem to be "true"?

3. How do the nineteenth-century characters' attitudes towards truth compare to those of the modern-day characters?

Chew on This:

Hannah's hunch that Septimus is the hermit appears to be true, while Bernard's stubborn conviction that Byron shot Chater is false. The play uses this contrast to suggest that valuing logic in general makes a person's guesses more likely to be correct.

Through focusing on proving that Bernard's theory about Byron is wrong rather than on proving that any theory is right, Arcadia suggests that the process of seeking for truth is really about looking for falsehood.

Sex

One of Arcadia's characters calls sex "the attraction that Newton left out" (2.7), and she may not be so far off. Sex in Arcadia is an irrational force, bringing characters together and splitting them apart according to its own unscientific rules, with hilarious or tragic results. By frequently linking sex and science only to emphasize the ways in which they don't fit together, Arcadia suggests that a purely scientific world view is inadequate for explaining the full, crazy range of human behavior.

Consider This:

1. What kind of language does the play use to talk about sex? What kinds of metaphors and allusions surround sex in the play?

2. Do the characters tend to have different ideas about sex based on their gender? In what ways?

3. Do the nineteenth-century characters think about sex in a different way from the present-day characters? If so, how?

Chew on This:

Through linking sex and science, Arcadia suggests that all human knowledge has an emotional component.

Time

Arcadia links time to entropy – the idea that everything in the universe is getting more and more randomly distributed, until it's all total disorder (think about a bag of cookies in your backpack slowly getting crushed to crumbs – or what would happen to your room if you never cleaned it). No matter what we do to create order, in the long run it's doomed to be destroyed – so why do anything at all?

Consider This:

1. What effect does the alternation between historical periods have on how we make sense of Arcadia's story? How would the play be different if it were just set in the present day or in the past?

2. Based on what we see of the nineteenth century in the play, do you agree or disagree with Bernard's statement that "time was different" then (2.5)? In what sense could time be different?

Chew on This:

By showing the passage of time producing more and more disorder, Arcadia counters the narrative of continuous scientific progress.

Valentine says that "there's an order things can't happen in" (2.7), but the play's jumping between different historical periods suggests that order is more flexible when it comes to storytelling. Juxtaposing these different models of time suggests that order is an interpretation imposed on events rather than inherent in the events themselves.

Fate and Free Will

Arcadia takes on the age-old fate vs. free will argument from a scientific standpoint: if we can take a system and use the laws of physics to predict exactly what will happen in that system, why can't we do the same for our brains? And if the atoms in our brains are mindlessly knocking against each other like a bunch of Newtonian billiard balls, then where do we get off thinking we have free will? Of course, things get very complicated very quickly when the human brain is involved – but Arcadia is not a play to shy away from complication.

Consider This:

1. What are some of the ways the play defines "fate" and "free will"? In what kinds of situations do these terms come into play?

2. How does the play portray free will as shaped by fate, or vice versa?

Chew on This:

Arcadia portrays science as an attempt to figure out fate, while literature rebels against the idea of predetermination.

Arcadia represents "will" that is not "free": the characters' choices are always determined by their personalities and their historical situations.

Man and the Natural World

"Nature" is a tricky word in Arcadia – what appears natural on the surface is rarely so. Exhibit A is the garden of English manor house Sidley Park, whose style undergoes an extreme makeover as ideas of what "nature" is (or perhaps should be) change over time. Making "nature" subject to popular trends seems kind of, well, unnatural. But it also makes us wonder what other things thought of as "natural" might just happen to be in fashion at the present moment. Arcadia suggests that humans have a bigger role in shaping our understanding of what is and isn't considered natural than we might think.

Consider This:

1. Hannah says that, "the hermit was placed in the landscape exactly as one might place a pottery gnome" (1.2). Based on what we see of hermit-to-be Septimus, do you agree with her assessment of the hermit situation? If not, how does that affect Hannah's overall argument about the garden?

2. Do the characters most interested in science consider the natural world differently from those who are less concerned with scientific discovery? In what ways?

Chew on This:

Bernard's preference for beauty over fact regarding the natural world indicates the danger of looking at the world through a purely artistic lens.

The "natural" is that which is supposedly untouched by human interference. By showing how ideas of the "natural" are actually influenced by fashion, Arcadia questions the possibility of looking at nature objectively.

The Detail – By that I mean symbolism, imagery and allegory

This is the last bit of work – I promise. In the key images below I have left space at the right-hand side for you to annotate these ideas. All I want you to do is consider what you think of the assertions presented about the key symbols and images. You may annotate the text provided or simply dot point out your own thought. You may even indicate scenes that this commentary may help you explain and how.

The Garden

Even though we never directly see the garden of Sidley Park, its symbolic presence is felt throughout the play. Hannah, especially, has opinions about what the history of the garden means:

BERNARD: Lovely. The real England.HANNAH: You can stop being silly now, Bernard. English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look – Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. (1.2)

Hannah's main objection to the landscape is its triteness: it pretends to be natural, but really it's just riffing off of imaginary landscapes from the past or from literature (or from past literature). The so-called "real England" is actually a mash-up of French and Italian fantasies of what Ancient Greece was like.

The idea of coming up with an ideal natural landscape in order to make up stories about nonexistent past is a long tradition that usually goes by the name "pastoral." Pastoral art and literature imagines a green countryside populated by shepherds, shepherdesses, and very well-behaved sheep who pretty much take care of themselves so the shepherds and shepherdesses can spend all their time flirting with each other. The pastoral portrays a rural life where people survive just fine without doing any work – which, as anyone who's ever lived on a farm can tell you, is totally unrealistic.

The pastoral-life-magically-without-labor transforms into a landscape-magically-without-labor: Bernard calls it "the real England," as if it's what England would look like if no one did anything to it, when really it's the product of a bunch of gardeners and landscape architects working very hard to create the illusion that they didn't do anything at all (kind of like well-applied makeup).

Alongside the pastoral, we also get the picturesque, which is also a style of landscape that pretends to be natural while actually being totally made up. But the idea of nature behind the picturesque is very different. While the pastoral takes a Disneyland version of ancient Greece as its inspiration – green rolling hills and nicely-spaced trees – the picturesque takes a darker approach, with rugged crags and mossy ruins (all trucked in by order).

So what does this all mean for the garden as a symbol in Arcadia? One implication is that the landscape's changeability questions the very idea of the "natural" – what seems natural at first glance turns out to have been very carefully designed to create that effect. And this whole idea of erasing labor also connects to genius, the person who is struck by inspiration rather than having to work for it. If the labor-free landscape is an illusion, could genius work the same way?

Some space for a final thought:

The Couch of Eros

Ezra Chater's opus is by all accounts worse than the poetry we wrote in middle school and wish we could erase from the Internet's long memory. The exact content of his book matters less than 1) its mockable badness, which allows Septimus to exercise his wit in making fun of it, and 2) the things added to the book later: Chater's inscription and the two letters to Septimus. These three ephemeral (a fancy word that means things that usually get thrown in the trash) texts survive by a fluke of fate: Byron borrowed the book and neglected to return it, and it just so happens that circumstance led to circumstance and the book fell into Bernard's hands.

Does the element of chance matter? After all, the letters survived, didn't they? True. But Arcadia suggests that the fragility of paper is also the fragility of history: if this long sequence of events hadn't happened just so, Bernard & Co. would never have known that a guy named Ezra Chater ever existed, much less that he may or may not have fought a duel with Byron. Sticking these key plot points into letters in a book that no one had any particular interest in keeping makes us wonder how much hasn't survived – and how much we can trust the documents that have.

Some space for a final thought:

The Sidley Park Hermit

Hannah introduces the hermit as "a perfect symbol" (1.2) for all that's wrong with Romanticism: "A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion" (1.2). The reactions the hermit provokes in other people and in society at large are more important than the hermit is as an individual.

Once Hannah starts to suspect that the hermit and Septimus are the same person, her understanding of the hermit's symbolism shifts.

HANNAH: Don't you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect symbol. An idiot in the landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a hermit's hut! (2.5)

Hannah does a flip-flop here. Now that she thinks the hermit was actually on to something with his scribbling, he's become the misunderstood genius (an oddly Romantic notion) unappreciated by a stupid public. It's interesting that, even though Hannah's completely altered her reading of the hermit as symbol, the point she's trying to make through that symbol remains the same: Enlightenment rules, Romanticism drools. Does Hannah's ability to use two different symbols to prove the same thing indicate that her idea is true?

Some space for a final thought:

Classicism vs. Romanticism

Classic, Romantic...it's all just old stuff, right? Well, not for the inhabitants of Sidley Park in 1809. The switchover from 1700s to 1800s saw a knock-down battle between two ways of thinking about art, nature, and everything else. In one corner, those favoring Classicism went out swinging for reason, logic, symmetry, order, and science. Facing off with them were the new-fangled Romantics, who championed emotion, passion, irregularity, disorder, and sex. Needless to say, the Romantics thought the Classicists were stuffy old bores, while the Classicists turned up their noses at the wild Romantics' desire to let it all hang out.

Arcadia takes on this debate in both its centuries: the various feuds between Thomasina and Septimus, Lady Croom and Mr. Noakes, Hannah and Valentine, and Bernard and everyone else all more or less boil down to some version of this opposition, and strong arguments are made for both sides. Arcadia's translation of the old Classicism vs. Romanticism showdown

into present-day terms suggests that both impulses are still relevant to how we think about the world, and the play's examination of the more chaotic, disorderly elements of science makes us wonder if the two sides are so different after all.

Some space for a final thought:

Entropy and The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Entropy is physics-speak for mess: it's a measure of how much disorder is in a system. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the entropy of the universe is always increasing. Let's let Valentine explain:

VALENTINE: Your tea gets cold by itself, it doesn't get hot by itself. [...] Heat goes to cold. It's a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What's happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It'll take a while but we're all going to end up at room temperature. (2.7)

Scientists didn't figure this out till 1824, so for Thomasina to get it in 1812 means that she's well ahead of the game. But the Second Law isn't in Arcadia just to show off how smart Thomasina is: it's connected to time, which, like heat and jam in rice pudding, can't go backwards. The Second Law describes scientific observations, but it also resonates with emotions like regret and nostalgia, the impossible desire to go back and reorder the past, not to mention fear of a chaotic future. Arcadia's emphasis on the Second Law of Thermodynamics brings together Classical science and Romantic feeling in intriguing ways – not what you'd expect from a page in your physics textbook.

Some space for a final thought: