Commonplace books are a storage of thought and knowledge, reflection and interpretation. When they were first being created, commonplace books were meant as a way to share new knowledge, and interpretations. From a modern lense, commonplace books are an example of past and current viewpoints merging to reflect the reader’s values and character. Tom Standage describes this concept and the art of keeping a commonplace book as “the 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.” No commonplace book is going to be the same as another because the creator puts parts of themselves into the book.
For the class Victorian Monster, we were expected to read six monster novels from the Victorian time period, and to create a commonplace book as a semester project. For my commonplace book I decided to create a physical book, similar to what would have been seen during the time period which we were reading from. For my book I took inspiration from bullet journals, which typically contain decorative lettering, colors, pictures, stickers, which are usually layered together to fit a certain theme or aesthetic. I took elements such as these, along with quotes from the text and outside sources, and my own opinion to form sections that analyzed themes found in the novels we read.
Compared to other ways that commonplace books can be made, I went for a much more artistic and visual representation. Each page was created to represent a theme from the novel, which I then spent time deciding what elements to include to accurately represent it. This included designing the layout that I wanted each page to have, picking colors that reflected the theme, finding photos and artwork of the novels, picking out quotes that fit, and looking to outside sources to further argue by claim. This process was not only fun for me, but I believe it is a reflection of myself. I am a very artistic person, I have been since I was little. Creating things has always been a hobby of mine, ranging from drawing, painting, sewing, crochet, and now scrapbooking (as I’ve been calling this process throughout the semester). This project allowed me to let loose, have fun, and be artistic; something that I cannot do often in my science heavy class load. The section that I think best represents the artistic side in me is the titled Queer. This section was meant to represent how there were queer and transgender themes throughout the novel Frankenstein, and how many transgender people see themelves and their experiences in the thoughts and treatment of Frankenstein’s creature. Aesthetically this page is one of my favorites, not only because the artwork photos that I used for it are extremely detailed and beautiful, but the layout and color scheme also turn out good too.
As mentioned previously, I looked outside the novel for sources that fit the themes that I was talking about. Often we would be given a literary paper to read for class, which I would pull from if it fit the theme that I wanted to talk about. Other times I would pull from other literary sources such as poems or other novels. Those cases were usually my favorite because often the source that I pulled from a literary source that I pulled from was one that I had read and liked previously. An example of this can be seen in my section LGBTQ and Art, which described how Basil used art as a way to represent his feelings towards Dorian. In this section I pulled a part from Sappho’s 31, which is about the love one woman has for another woman. Other times I would go out of my way to look for works that would fit. One of my favorite examples of this was in the section Desire and Sexuality, which was about how the creation of vampires was an outlet for the desire and sexuality that people, mainly women, were not allowed to feel during Victorian times. In it I found a poem called Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which is also about sexuality and desire. Through this process I found pieces that I would like to read in the future.
The themes that I chose to talk about were also an important part of my commonplace book. The themes that I chose were the themes that I thought were the most interesting, and most important to me. That being a reflection of my values and what I find important. The majority of the themes that I chose were pretty consistent with each other, mostly talking about how monsters were meant to reflect what was against the status quo, but for many groups of people ‘against the status quo’ was desirable and represented their experiences. This included themes such as, transgender experiences that was meantioned before, gender and worth, otherness, self expression, and desire and sexuality. These themes are so important to me because as a queer women I found myself relating to many of the experiences throughout the novels. Good representation of marginalized groups of people is an issue that many people are talking about nowadays because it is important for different types of people from different backgrounds to be seen. It is important not only for others to see different types of people, but for people to see themselves and their experiences. Even now people are still fighting for representation in tv shows, movies, and books, so I think it’s important that people can find representation in novels from over a century ago.
Though a commonplace book is meant to be a reflection of knowledge and thoughts, I think the window into the creator’s character is even more important. Just by looking through someone’s commonplace book allows that person’s values and beliefs to be seen. Even their interests can be seen through the content and format that the book is in
Such a beautiful book, Lizzie!