1. Is Felicite a saint or a simple-minded servant? Or is she both? Or is she neither? Outline your perspective of her character as compared to Mme. Aubain’s. How do they differ?

I sort of think she is both a saint and a simple-minded servant. Everyone knows that nobody is really a saint, maybe even saints aren’t really saints, but there are people in life or in stories that sit well in your heart, and I feel like if there is ever a character like that it is Felicite. Her character is much more pure and simple compared to Mme. Aubain’s.

2. How are women imagined and characterized in the poems you read? What attitude is implied? Is it dual or contradictory? Does Baudelaire give similar weight to the description of men? What definitions of womanliness are depicted, affirmed, or criticized in his work?

I think Baudelaire’s work is pretty much obviously misogynystic as he writes women FOR the men, which belittles the characters of both sexes.

3. How are Chidam and Chandara distinct from Rama and Sita?

They differ in terms of levels of subserviency, which probably has to do with modernity.

4. Pick a Yeat’s poem and discuss what it communicates to you and why.

When You Are Old is short and sweet. For me it communicated a sense of gratitude that in life maybe I can appreciate that at some point my partner and I will be old and one of us will go first, and we can be thankful now that we were loved by the other in youth. I thought it was sweet. But I could have not interpreted it too well either.