Personal Reflection

On brainstorming for our upcoming paper, I find that I can be any of the three demonstrated readers. I can have solely a personal reaction to a text, I can relate manuscripts to various other manuscripts, as well as put a text into a historical and societal framework. I don't know what level of a reader this makes me because I can either read a text in all three ways to varying degrees or I can read a text only in a single way. For instance, when it comes to Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale' I can easily read it as a social commentary on patriarchal society and can therefore compare it to other feminist texts. However, I can also read it from a very personal point of view seeing how I am female and see the treatment of female characters in the text absolutely abhorring. On the other hand, I can read a text like Gregory Spencer's 'The Welkening' from only a personal level because I can't get past the fact that his writing technique is completely inadequate. As a result, I can't put his novel in a social context or even compare it to other texts because it is beneath my personal standards. From such a hodgepodge of inconsistent literary reactions I find it very difficult to define myself as a reader.