Walked home from my Victorian seminar at half-past five, after the sun had set, and it was pitch dark; no one seems to have thought to light the Sidgwick site. The University Library was like a lantern, light streaming from the barred windows. For almost the first time it's cold enough to see your breath, and I've reluctantly turned on the radiator in my room.

I was the only person in the seminar besides the lecturer who talked - I think my college makes us used to class participation - and that of course made me feel like a jerk, but I seem to have made an ally anyway, a girl who asked me when the (other, this one compulsory) seminar was tomorrow and then talked after class about how difficult it is to feel as though you're doing anything even vaguely original with the Victorian paper. I said I would have to cultivate an interest in mesmerism; she said she'd try Calvinism.

There are interesting things to say, though, I think, though having just four big essays rather than seven smaller ones means I can't just snatch randomly at any idea that occurs to me. The lecturer mentioned the relation between hair colour and character traits in descriptions of women in Victorian fiction (and I guess more interesting than the "flimsy blonde, rational brunette" setup - which is reversed, anyway, with Becky and Amelia in "Vanity Fair", Becky being blonde and Amelia having light-brown hair - is the fact that women seem to occur in contrasting pairs so often: Becky and Amelia, Dorothea and Rosamund in "Middlemarch", Lucy and Ginevra in "Villette", Mary and Margaret, I suppose, in "Mary Barton". More thinking on this later), which was fortuitous because I'd just been thinking today about how revealing girls' attitudes to their hair are. But my laundry's probably getting soggy so I must go out in the cold and fetch it.

(AND. Caroline and Shirley in "Shirley", obviously. It's interesting how there's no contrast for Jane in "Jane Eyre"; I don't think Adele counts, and there are two Rivers sisters so that doesn't work. Helen is a potential contrast but, interestingly, she dies early on. I wonder if it has something to do with Jane being so self-actualized (horrible word, but I'm in a hurry and can think of nothing better) that she is in a way complete in herself. I remember in the tragedy paper we talked about how the sister of the heroine in Greek tragedy was often a kind of 'alternative', showing how the heroine could've acted but didn't. This is of interest to no one but me at this point, but I'm totally going to write an essay about this.)

LAUNDRY

(I CAN QUOTE VIRGINIA WOOLF, THAT THING ABOUT "CHLOE LIKED OLIVIA", ALTHOUGH IT IS OUT OF PERIOD)

LAUNDRY.