So, I’ve been sitting down to write this thing, and after looking over the 30 pages worth of write-ups I think it’ll make most sense for me to do a reading of Butler’s Erewhon. Also, I found Butler’s article that the Book of Machines section is based on. Here’s the link: http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-ButFir-t1-g1-t1-g1-t4-body.html. I’ll leave Sister Carrie to my Merish paper.

I’m definitely going to talk about technology and enslavement. Also, C.S. Lewis’s critical essay on technology and how it enslaves man will be really helpful as well.  Okey dokey, that solved that.

Sue Zemka’s 2002 article, “Erewhon and the End of Utopian Humanism,” is really great, and I plan on using it in my paper. Here’s the link: http://0-www.jstor.org.library.lausys.georgetown.edu/stable/30032027?seq=4

After speaking with Macovski, it looks like I’m going to be changing the focus of my paper. He really liked the parts of my annotated bibliography that talk about bodies and machines (Harraway’s cyborg stuff; Fox’s stuff on “adapting to the machine;” Rhys’s background on Watt and the steam engine work ethic, etc) . While I will be discussing Luddism, the crux of the introductory section will discuss the history of the factory and how technological advances in the factories increasingly lead to the mechanization of the human body (think of the electrification of the factory, which now extends the day…those bodies which have yet to be replaced by machines are now expected to work longer hours, and hence begin to become like the machine). I then plan on connecting this to Sister Carrie. In the beginning of the novel, Carrie moves to Chicago in the hopes of finding a job. She wants to work at a department store, but because she has no previous job experience her only option is the factory. Carrie takes a job at a factory. The bodies of the workers are described as machines, but Carrie is having a hard time keeping up. Carrie finds the job at the factory disastifying because a) she does not enjoy the work, and b) because she does not make enough money to buy the commodites she wants. Here I could bring in the Peiss article from Merish’s class on working girls and how they often suplimented their incomes by giving sexual favors to men. Carrie does this at first with Drouet but eventually becomes a kept woman exclusively and leaves her job at the factory. She eventually becomes a successful actress and she resists adapting to the machine and instead finds success in another venue. So, Sister Carrie is then a neo-luddist novel, which represents Carrie’s rejection of this automized life. Also, Hurstwood’s failure would need to be discussed. It’s a novel about Carrie’s ascent and Hurstwood’s decsent. Why does Carrie succeed and Hurstwood fail?