Mattie's Dilemma

I think that Mattie has a colossal dilemma.  She has been talking about going to college and learning to be a writer a lot, but she's also been talking about getting married and having somebody love her the way Jim loves Minnie...I think that the main cause of her dilemma is that she wants to be loved, but being married in this time meant being at home to cook, clean, take care of the kids etc. When she talks about going to college and living alone, she imagines a lonely, but free and liberating life.  She wants that free life, but she also wants love.  She wants to marry, but she wants a career.  The problem is that women who married in this time period had to take care of all the responsibilities that came with being a wife/mother, some of which are listed above.  They couldn't be independent and married at the same time.

Now (at least in our country), women can get married and raise children and have a career.  What do you think about Mattie's dilemma?  What other similarities or differences between the early 20th century and this time period have you guys noticed?

Emily Baxter

i decided to look up Emily Baxter because she is really cool and has some crazy ideas and just so you know, Emily Baxter is not a real person, which is sad because i would have really liked to read her poetry, and she had some amazing ideas. i just thought that was cool :) kylie

From the new reading assignment

I feel really bad for Minnie, and I'm afraid that this is going to happen to Mattie. It's so sad because she has so much talent and could be a really cool writer. I hate Jim and Royal, and Mattie needs to wake up from this pretty soon or she will regret it I think. These are my thoughts on some of this week's reading.

Anthony Comstock

Here the wiki page about the guy Emily's husband was yelling about. Remember him? Anthony Comstock? Well, in the book Emily's husband was yelling that she had disgraced the family and that Anthony Comstock had ruined so many people and now he was going to ruin her. Here's the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Comstock

Fun fact: Comstock claims that he drove fifteen people to suicide.

Some interesting things to think about/ that i found

Here is a website that has a lot of information about the Grace Brown Murder Case:

http://www.craigbrandon.com/Chester%20Gillette%20and%20Grace%20Brown.html

It shows a lot of pics of Chester, his family, his trial, and Grace Brown.

Here is another picture that shows where Chester and Grace stayed before they left to go out on the boat:

http://www.cortland.org/community/history/ArrowheadLodge.jpg

Also why do you guys think that their Uncle Fifty left to Utica without coming back? And why do you think that Mattie always has a word of the day?

SPOILER

I just love how Ms. Wilcox is standing there in the middle of the room, just standing and smoking

Mattie and Royal

I find it very interesting that Mattie seems to not believe that Royal and her are "sparking" or at least she doesn't seem like it is reality. She thinks that kisses from boys like Royal are for girls like Martha Miller. if he likes her so much to touch her in certain ways I think that she should believe it. her sisters think that she is being "sweet on him" but she doesn't admit that.

Theory about how Chester Gilette was planning to kill Grace Brown

I have a theory about Chester Gilettes plan to kill Grace Brown;

It says Gilette took his suitcase and a tennis racket with him, so maybe he was going to take Grace somewhere far off, kill her, then run. That way ,it'd take a while to find her body and if they do, it'd take so long that the evidence would be erased. But, one thing led to another, she started getting suspicious and asking questions like where they weer going, why they were out so far, so she suddenly figured it out, and he knew she was going to put on a fight, so he just threw her out of the boat and started hitting her with the tennis racket. I saw somewhere that she was less the 100 lbs, so for him, that would have been pretty easy to do..

What Mattie's mother probably died from and other common disease triggers in 1906.

The most common killers in the early 1900s, were pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diarrhea (< this one really surprised me!) About a third of the people died from these diseases. This is probably because of the lack of hygiene and medicine. It doesn’t say much about Mattie’s mother’s death, but I think that she died from one of these diseases. It seems pretty plausible. In the 1900s, there was also a huge problem contaminated food and water, so chances are she could have eaten bad food/water and gotten a disease that was incurable at the time. There was also a sewage disposal issue, which harbored bacteria of many kinds. Since she was at home all the time, there was probably a higher chance of her catching something from the air.

The sites where I got this amazing info... Check it out!! especially the second one.

http://stay-healthy-enjoy-life.blogspot.com/2008/04/causes-of-death-2005-versus-1900.html

http://www.uky.edu/Classes/PHI/350/cod.htm

Grace Brown

            After researching about Grace Brown who Sarah said was a real person I learned about the true story that A Northern Light was based on. I learned that Grace Brown lived in a rural area and moved in with her sister when she was older. When she lived with her sister she went to work at the Gillette skirt factory in Cortland and after around a year she met Chester Gillette the nephew of the boss. Soon after they started having an affair though he also had affairs with other woman at the time they were having one. In spring 1906 Grace learned that she was pregnant and wanted some kind of commitment, which he didn’t want to give her sending her back to her parents. After many letters showing that Grace was getting impatient and threatened to come back to Cortland he eventually agreed to take her on a trip, which she may have thought was a small marriage trip. They left on July 9, 1906 to various hotels and at each one Chester used allies for them both. After several hotels they stopped for a day (July 11, 1906) at Big Moose Lake to go boating. Chester used a fake name “Carl Grahm of Albany” but register her real name, Grace Brown of South Ostelic. Before that she sent out her suitcase containing her letters from Chester. At the lake Chester brought a suitcase and tennis racket and they went out boating to South Bay. The next day a search team found her body close to the overturned boat in the lake but no Chester. To find out more look at the links I posted below: (There have been several books and movies based on this story but the most famous is The American Tragedy by Theodor Dreiser)

Away from the sight of people

where nobody heard her last call,

or no one could tell how it happened…

But God - and Gillette - know all.

(A quote I found on the 2^nd link)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Brown

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/chester_gillette/index.html

Chester Gillette and Grace Browns Love letters

The so-called "love letters" that were exchanged by Chester and Grace in 1905 and 1906 were used at the trial by both the prosecution and the defense. Most of them were written by Grace during the time she was home in South Otselic, when she was pregnant and waiting for Chester to come and take her on their trip together. Chester’s letters back were short and less dramatic.

Ward found Chester’s letters to Grace in her trunk. He found most of Grace’s letters to Chester in his room in Cortland. However, the last and most famous letter, was not found until many weeks later when Chester’s landlady was tidying up the room. It was hidden in Chester’s collar box.

Ward read the letters in such a dramatic way during the trial that reporters claimed that every eye in the room was wet and they did much to paint exactly the picture of her that he wanted: the pleading pregnant girlfriend who wants to get married. However, the letters never mention pregnancy or even marriage. They do mention suicide and were used by the defense to back up Chester’s story that she committed suicide.

As a means of reconstructing the relationship, the letters are quite frustrating. They seem inconsistent and it could be that there were more letters that never got entered into the record. Ward’s own numbering system seems to imply that there are letters that are missing.

I found this at http://www.craigbrandon.com/cgfaq.html#2 I found this pretty interesting though. It shows that Chester Gillette could have been innocent. i can't imagine someone knocking someone else off a boat with a tennis racket. It just seems so stupid. If he wanted to murder her, he would have been much better off doing it with a knife or a gun... The way he supposedly did it, there was a whole lot of evidence against him.

Maybe at that time Barnard was worth less because the school didn't provide as much like food or housing or something...

-ELY

On the Barnard College website it says that there is financial aid for students. but I didn't see anything in the book about Mattie possibly getting financial aid.

hmm interesting...

Kale'a

Barnard fees

For this year it costs $58,078.00 to got to Barnard, which is roughly equivalent to $3000 during the time the book was set

8B Post

Hi Everyone,

I found this link to the actual trial case.

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/gillette.htm

Check it out!
Amanda

Andrea's Post

Hey, this was Andrea's post, not mine. I'm just moving it. Here it is:

Hey Guys,
I found a picture of Grace Brown and her boyfriend, Chester Gillette.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCXqBx1LRwXezXJJqtsXQiaN5-AcGtL53adauMtuNn-UI-eLHIzueVxMELRAJCRg6H4xF7IDrXuzRxyrXAIYh7WKMaQkkBCDSZVB4yMGF4b4MXvFz2V2nNDPS7HKgH85iIKWX3L0j1f-cZ/s400/Chester+and+Grace.jpg

Check it out!
Andrea

This is a test. Does this show up on the website for A Northern Light? Does it work? Also, I think that the website and post Andrea put should be here, if it works. If not, then ignore this...

A Northern Light!

Follow the north star to a blogging software that is functional.