When I started this commonplace book, I wasn’t totally sure what I wanted to do with it. Based on my personality, I knew I would end up picking a theme and sticking with it until the end, which did happen, but even as I completed entry after entry, I couldn’t quite find the words to describe what I was focusing on. It wasn’t until I sat down and actually tried to find the common thread running through all of my entries that I realized two things. First, all of my entries were centered around how the Victorian authors we read portrayed their monsters. I wanted to know what qualities made these monsters terrifying to their original and modern audiences. Second, but more importantly, trying to understand the things that frighten and unnerve us is something I’ve had a fascination with for a long time. It wasn’t until I reflected on my commonplace practice that I was finally able to recognize that.
[T]he practice of maintaining a commonplace book and exchanging texts with others also served as a form of self-definition: which poems or aphorisms you chose to copy into your book or to pass on to your correspondents said a lot about you, and the book as a whole was a reflection of your character and personality.
Tom Standage, “How Commonplace Books Were like Tumblr and Pinterest,” tomstandage.com, May 5, 2013, https://tomstandage.wordpress.com
According to Tom Standage, my realization is exactly the point of keeping a commonplace book. He asserts that through commonplacing, we define who we are by what we choose to include and how we choose to share it with others. It doesn’t really matter whether the book is a cohesive representation of one specific theme or a concoction of many wildly different ideas. Standage makes it clear that no matter how you approach commonplacing, the object you make is an expression of yourself. We often think that expressing ourselves through an art form is a way to help other people understand who we are, our interests, and anything else we might not dare to say out loud, but expression through art can also help us understand ourselves.
The first time I felt like I explored a topic that personally interested me was “Entry 3: The Monsters Within.” We were reading the section of Jane Eyre where we first got introduced to Bertha Mason, and I couldn’t help but notice how her physical description was described by Jane. From prior exposure to analyses of the novel, I knew many scholars had connected Bertha’s character with mental illness, so I decided to do some research. The history of treatment for the mentally ill is something that I’m curious about, and even though I know acceptance and kindness toward mentally ill patients is a recent development, I wanted to know when that shift happened.
According to the Westminster Review “the ‘disposition of the public’ towards the mentally ill was becoming ‘more enlightened and benevolent‘” and “that patients in mental asylums ought to be given ‘the benefit of a cheerful look-out on a pleasing prospect’” (Atherton, “The figure of Bertha Mason“). This makes Jane’s reaction to seeing Bertha strange, possibly to indicate that judgement is the true monster, not Mrs. Rochester.
From “Entry 3: The Monsters Within”
My purpose for doing this was to establish some historical context that would be beneficial in further readings of the novel, but I didn’t expect to fall down a rabbit hole. I was so interested in what I was learning that I decided to continue this line of research in “Entry 4: Discovering Primary Sources.” In that entry, I found an actual pamphlet, published around the time of Jane Eyre, that supported my point that people were beginning to be sympathetic toward the mentally ill which made Jane’s reaction to Bertha reflective of a previous way of thinking. I really enjoyed getting to follow this train of thought.
After working on this project for the entire semester, I was definitely leaning more toward things that interested me and media that I had personal connections with. My favorite commonplace book entry was “Entry 10: The Monster Enters Reality.” We were just starting Dracula, and since vampires have a complex background, I knew I had to bring it up in some way. I absolutely love reading and listening to folklore, legends, myths, and alleged true stories about supernatural creatures, and when I was in high school, I discovered a podcast, called Lore, that covered all of that. Funnily enough, I hadn’t listened to the podcast in several years, but I remembered that the first episode covered vampires in real life and related these stories to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Because of this podcast, I started looking into the history of vampires in reality because I felt like I could connect it to one of Cohen’s theses. What this entry and the previous entries demonstrate about me is how willing I am to dive deep into research when I have a genuine interest in the subject matter. I’m a person that truly enjoys learning for the sake of learning, and I think that’s what is highlighted in these examples.
I’m really glad I got the opportunity to engage in some commonplacing in this class. I had never heard of it before, but I would love to keep up with it and use it as a way to document my interests and learning over time. I start student teaching in a high school English classroom this fall, and I think keeping a commonplace book could be a good journaling exercise for me to reflect on how my teaching skills are improving. I also think it could be really cool to teach my students about commonplacing and utilize it as we read our novels. I personally found that my commonplace book allowed me to be more engaged in the readings because I was actively trying to find snippets that I could relate to, and I feel like more people should know about it.
Your book is beautiful, Kimberly! I’m so glad you found things to interest you.