Enter the Aunts....

My title is taken from Chapter 7 of \u27Book First\u27 of The Mill on the Floss which describes the moment we first meet Aunts Glegg, Pullet and Deane in all their bustling, sharp-tongued, comic glory. The full title of the chapter is \u27Enter the Aunts and Uncles\u27 and the three redoubtable Dodson sisters are indeed accompanied by their husbands, the Uncles, as they descend upon Dorlcote Mill for a family summit about their nephew Tom Tulliver\u27s education. Yet while Messrs Glegg, Pullet and Deane subsequently play their individual parts in the unfolding of the novel\u27s plot, it is the Aunts who at this point elbow their menfolk out of the way and bustle to the front of the stage. With their brisk opinions on everything from the inadvisability of going to law to the design of teapot spouts, the three redoubtable women form a choric commentary on the unfolding action. (Tom\u27s \u27eddication\u27, of course, provides a starting point for one of the novel\u27s main plot strands as well as one of its key themes - the varying capacities and social roles of men and women in the early nineteenth century.) If proof were needed of the lasting impact of the Dodson Aunts on the reader, you have only to look at the way in which they have dominated subsequent film and television adaptations of the novel throughout the twentieth century. Typically played by leading character actresses of the day, including Athene Seyler and Martita Hunt (1937), and Barbara Hicks (1978) and Joanna David and Jessica Turner (1997) the Aunts continue to occupy an imaginative space in the British cultural imagination that is out of all proportion to the actual volume they occupy in either Eliot\u27s original text or in subsequent scripted versions. Given the Aunts\u27 impact both at the time (contemporary critics often picked out the Dodsons for special mention) and since, you might assume that literary sleuths had long since tracked down documentary details about the historical women on whom they were modelled. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. For while the publication of Eliot\u27s first two books, Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede, provoked a posse of biographical detectives into matching up characters to their real life counterparts, no such frenzy greeted The Mill on the Floss.3 By early 1860 the revelation that \u27George Eliot\u27 was actually Marian Evans, the common law wife of G. H. Lewes, was circulating widely in the novelist\u27s native Midlands, as well as in London where she now made her home. With this central mystery solved, it no longer seemed rewarding or even relevant to comb through her latest novel looking for real world correspondences. (Such reticence was, of course, not to last: once Eliot was dead her biographers, from Mathilde Blind onwards, insisted on conflating details of Maggie Tulliver\u27s childhood with that of Mary Ann Evans.4 We are still dealing with the damaging consequences of that elision today.

Review of Victorians Undone: Tales of the flesh in the age of decorum

This is a superb book, written with deep scholarship by one of our leading biographers, which breaks new ground in its attention to the physicality of its subjects. In her introduction Kathryn Hughes says that she has felt \u27chronically short-changed by the lack of physical detail in biography\u27. This book, she says, is \u27an experiment to see what new stories emerge when you use biography .... to put mouths, bellies and beards back into the nineteenth century\u27 by introducing \u27a certain lumpiness to canonical life narratives that have previously been rendered as smooth, symmetrical, and as strangely unconvincing as a death mask. For it is in lop-sidedness and open-endedness, in bulges, dips, hollows, oozes and itches, that we come closest to a sense of what it feels like to live in the solitude of a single body, both then and now.\u2

Effectiveness of Substance Use Disorder Education on Knowledge and Attitudes Among Entry-Level Obstetric Nurses

Background: Substance use disorder (SUD) among pregnant women is a significant public health concern in the United States, particularly in Kentucky. Nursing curriculum has not kept pace with the escalating public health crisis regarding SUD. Graduating nurses joining the obstetric field are often not prepared to meet the unique care needs of this vulnerable population. Purpose: The purpose of this DNP project was to pilot an educational intervention embedded with content regarding SUD with entry-level obstetric nurses that were enrolled in the nurse residency program at UK HealthCare. Methods: This project used a quasi-experimental pretest – posttest design. Participants completed a pretest, an educational intervention, and a posttest. The identical pretest and posttest included knowledge questions developed by the principal investigator (PI) and attitude questions derived from a validated tool, the Drug and Drug Problems Perceptions Questionnaire (DDPPQ). The tests comprised of multiple choice, true/false, and 7-point Likert scale questions to analyze participants’ knowledge and attitudes toward SUD. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to compare participants’ responses before and after the intervention. Results: The knowledge results showed clinical significance and improvement in the median score from pretest (Median = 50.0%) to posttest (Median = 60.0%), albeit not a statistically significant improvement (Z = -1.63, p = 0.102). The DDPPQ contains five subscales and all subscales showed clinical significance and improvement. Additionally, there was statistical improvement in the role adequacy (Z = -2.12, p = 0.034) and role support (Z = -2.07, p = 0.038) subscales. Conclusion: An educational intervention is an effective tool to improve entry-level obstetric nurses’ knowledge and attitudes toward patients with SUD. The results of the pretest and posttest could be used to implement similar educational interventions across services lines in the health care system. Further studies with more diverse participants are warranted to generalize conclusions

Wreath-laying in Poets\u27 Corner, Westminster Abbey 22 June 2010

It seems extraordinary to think that ISO years ago Mary Ann Evans, a young woman with very few resources apart from a strong conscience and an enquiring mind, almost ruined her life by revealing to her father that she was no longer certain that the Bible was the literal word of God. Might it not instead be the work of men, she wondered, reaching out to report their sense of God at work in their own lives? Was it not, in fact, a record of human rather than divine history? For this piece of heresy, as we know, Mary Ann endured a painful estrangement from her family which never really quite healed. Thirty years later, in the closing days of 1880, the Dean of Westminster made it discreetly but firmly clear that the Abbey could not receive her body, the resting place of so many other great literary artists including Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens. George Eliot, as she now was, had made a career - a great one - by creating a moral universe in her novels in which goodness was not dependent on belief in God. Instead, acts of kindness towards other people and an endurance of the pain and suffering that everyday life brings were, for her, the real spiritual teachers. In the years following Eliot\u27s death churchmen - from non-conformist backgrounds as well as Anglican - debated keenly whether or not she was in fact a Christian manqué. Her first cousin once removed, William Mottram, a Methodist turned Congregationalist minister, wrestled with the problem in a book he wrote in 1905, clearly wishing desperately that Eliot could be counted a Christian but, being also a man of strict conscience, having to admit regretfully that she was not. Still he was able to console himself with the thought that In her darkest hour of unbelief, I am of opinion that George Eliot was much more Christian than she knew, and that the influence of her past Christian experience was never entirely lost

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast to The Immortal Memory 1999

It is a tremendous honour to be talking to you today. When I first started work on my biography of George Eliot back in 1993 I never imagined that I would one day be celebrating her birthday with the people to whom her life and work mean so much, the members of the George Eliot Fellowship. Of course, when I began my research all those years ago, I knew that I would be learning about one of the greatest literary artists of the nineteenth century. But what I hadn\u27t anticipated was just how modem and relevant George Eliot\u27s work would turn out to be to the way we live now, in the closing weeks of the twentieth century. Only last week I saw an advertisement in the Times Higher Education Supplement which used Eliot\u27s suggestion that \u27the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice\u27 as a way of plugging a particular brand of computer software. Banal and even tasteless though this hi-jacking of Eliot\u27s moral authority might be, it does suggest how powerfully her work resonates in our own time. For while Eliot\u27s fiction was written well over a century ago, its subjects and sensibilities strike me as absolutely modem. Indeed, in those eight sublime novels, which stretch from Scenes of Clerical Life to Daniel Deronda, Eliot deals with nothing less than the universal business of being human. Take Scenes of Clerical Life, her first piece of fiction. Amos Barton is a man whom we have all met, a man who doesn\u27t realize how much he loves his wife until it is almost too late. And then there\u27s Caterina Sarti, a girl who can\u27 t help pursuing a man who is bad for her, even though a far kinder and more appropriate suitor is standing in the wings. And what could be more contemporary than the story of Janet Dempster, a woman struggling with both a violent husband and her own dependence on alcohol

Psychological aspects of criminal propensity

The psychological aspects of propensity to offend are considered. The relationship between attitude, personality, and reported offending is explored. Some literature considers how attitude influences offending; others look at the relationship between personality and offending. The present thesis proposes that there is a complex relationship between all three. The Attitude to Offending Style Scale measures preferences towards hypothetical offending styles. Shultzs’ FIRO-B explores the structure of interpersonal personality. Finally, an adaptation of Youngs’ D42 (D45) explores styles and level of reported offending. 254 members of the general public complete each of these self-report scales. An SSA-I tests the construct validity and structure of the scales stated above. Multiple regression analyses explore the relationship between attitude and personality, and how these influence level of reported offending. The moderating role of interpersonal personality is also considered. The findings reveal that Attitudes are categorized as: Instrumental or Expressive high risk, and Low risk. Shultzs’ FIRO-B scale has four facets: Expressed Inclusion Expressed Control, Received Inclusion and Received Control. Finally, reported offending is categorised as More or Less serious, Instrumental or Expressive, and target Person or Property. Results show that variations in attitude and personality styles are related to level of reported offending. Furthermore, it was found that the relationship between attitude and level of reported offending is moderated by level of ‘Received Control’. More specifically, when an individual shows a positive attitude towards Instrumental high risk crimes and feel ‘controlled by others’, their level of reported offending is also likely to be high. The presented research shows the value of considering attitudes towards offending, the moderating role of interpersonal personality, and how this relates to level of reported offending. The methods employed throughout the thesis demonstrate the strength and validity of self-report measures. Results are applicable to many areas, including direction and methods in future research. The findings can be applied to areas such as rehabilitation, interview techniques and preventative measures

The Global Movement and Tracking of Chemical Manufacturing Equipment: A Workshop Summary

This publication results from research supported by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC) via Assistance Grant/Agreement No. N00244-13-1-0028 awarded by the NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego (NAVSUP FLC San Diego).Supported by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC) via Assistance Grant/Agreement No. N00244-13-1-0028 awarded by the NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego (NAVSUP FLC San Diego)This publication results from research supported by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC) via Assistance Grant/Agreement No. N00244-13-1-0028 awarded by the NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego (NAVSUP FLC San Diego).This publication results from research supported by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC) via Assistance Grant/Agreement No. N00244-13-1-0028 awarded by the NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego (NAVSUP FLC San Diego)

Paul Scott\u27s The Jewel In The Crown : A Novelist\u27s Philosophy Of History And The End Of The British Raj

ABSTRACT This thesis is a study of Paul Scott’s best-known novel The Jewel in the Crown, published in 1966. Scott noted that much of the research and writing on the British Raj that ended in 1947, lacked an adequate understanding of the union that had endured for more than three centuries. Scott believed too that many interpretations of why the Raj ended relied too heavily on monolithic categories of “us and them” and that they over-emphasized the socio-political and economic influences of empire. He also believed that many scholars of the Raj ignored the love that existed among all the people who lived in India (including Hindu, Muslim, British, and Eurasian) and that, by failing to acknowledge the love, writers deprived their readers of the joy inherent in those memories. Therefore, they were unable to offer satisfactory explanations of why the Raj ended the way it did. With his skill as an author, Scott used his novel to explain his philosophy of history and to discuss the end of the British Raj by including the voices of the individuals who experienced the Raj, those who represented it in all its complexity. He placed his characters in a setting in northern India where they, and not the sociopolitical and economic climate, played center stage. Through their interpersonal exchanges, the characters revealed the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that explained why they acted as they did during this period. The places in which they did so retained their history and influenced the thoughts and behaviors of those who followed, connecting past to present and having an impact on the future. vii Scott used symbols and metaphors to reveal these connections, the two most prominent being the MacGregor House and Bibighar Gardens. Both reflected important aspects of Indo-British history, and they helped to explain the relationship that existed at the end of the Raj. By relating the actions of those who inhabited and visited these places, together with the histories of the places, Scott allowed his readers to experience the past and, thus, to understand, not only how the Raj had ended but, more significantly, why it had ended. Paul Scott not only used his unique philosophy of history to explain why the Raj ended the way it did, but also showed that decency and integrity were the acme of human interaction and that both could be found in all humans, no matter their race or their station in life. In his novel the characters revealed their intentions and character and Scott believed that both were foundational to history because the consequences at the nexus of personal interactions could not be predetermined. They could only be recorded by the places in which they occurred and then remembered by people in the future who frequented these places. Scott was not dogmatic in his approach, but he metaphorically guided his readers through the novel in order to explore, not only what had happened, but also why. By revealing his unique philosophy of history, he succeeded in sharing with his readers the joy of the Indo-British relationship, with all of its love, complexities, and concurrent difficulties

Innovation Engineering

A graduate and an undergraduate student reflect on their experiences in the University of Maine’s Innovation Engineering program

Innovation Engineering

A graduate and an undergraduate student reflect on their experiences in the University of Maine’s Innovation Engineering program