This is Nikkie LoPorto, posting for WEEK TWO, on the Doyle Reading

I agree that in first reading Doyle's text on pages 6 and 7 there was a different feel to it, then going back and hearing her speak out loud to the reader. When she reads it aloud, you get a feel for the tone that she is speaking with, making it flow easier because of the direct pauses that you tend to skip over when reading it rather than listening to it. While reading the text the words which stood out to me in the semantic field of Paula's happy home were the cot, the curtains, fire and and the sun on the wall and as Nikkie mentioned after listening to the audio these words along with others that I missed like the radio, mammy humming, and warm became more apparent in defining the semantic field in relation to Paula and what stood as her Happy home. ----(Laura O'Brien's notes) ----

In Chapter 4, Paula recalls her childhood. Her memories are both good and bad, and they differ significantly from those of her sisters, especially Carmel, who remembers nothing good. On these pages, Paula recalls her "happy home," and the words she uses create a small world, within a semantic field associated with the larger concept. What words contribute to this field?

“It was a happy home.”, “The sun was on the wall”, “I was warm.”, “because I always loved that noise, something about it, even now”, “When I think of happy and home together I see the curtain blowing and the sun on the wall and being snug and ready for the day, before I start thinking about it like an adult.”

The words that contribute to Paula’s semantic field surrounding her “happy home” include sun, warm, loved, happy, home, snug and ready.

After hearing the audio file, I noticed a few different words, and it was the reader’s tone and emphasis on certain words that broadened the semantic field for me.
“happy home”, “lying in my cot”, “blowing in and out over me", "flowers", “sun was on the wall”, “noises from downstairs”, “warm”,
There was a strange emphasis on “Carmel” – perhaps because of the accent
“coal”, “weekend”, “loved that noise”, “lovely big fire”, “fawn”, “together”


It seems that the contributing words of Paula's Happy Home are images of big fires, the fawn picture on the cot and the curtains that she remembers as a child. All of these are different words however, bring back specific memories to Paula and her happy home. (Laura)

My notes on this section of Doyle's story were similar. The "sun" on "the wall" seemed more significant within the text than on the audio file. Their were many adjectives that are part of the same semantic field, like "warm" and "lovely fire" all conjuring secure and happy memories of childhood- Chris Allen

Commenting on chapter 3 & 7 of Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Doyle, the use of eyes stood out. In both chapters the narrator mentions that someone is observing her, Charlo in 3 and the Doctor in 7. She explains that Charlo was worried and "his face was full of worry and love" (pg. 5). However, the eyes to me are one of the most intimate parts of our body, its a key way to communicate deeply and express feelings, so it was strange to me that Doyle explained that both characters in these chapters were so worried and interested in the main character, however neither once looked into her eyes. There is a strong symbolism for eyes in this novel, and the way Doyle chooses to portray it is interesting and intriguing.
-Stefanie Finocchio

Though it's never explained in the text exactly what the visit to the doctor's office in chapter 7 is preceded by, perhaps we don't really need to know. All we know is what she deems worth noting herself, which is that the doctor's action seem to indicate he doesn't see her as a person so much as a troubling subject, a "drunk" presumably. If we approach it from from the context of what happened at the tail end of chapter 6, maybe her rape in the field has led to her coming to the doctor's office to get checked out? It's hard to tell, really, but this does little to change our perception of what happens. She's still uncomfortable, still observant of the doctor's detatchement, and apparently caring about that. Is this indicative of shame? She had mentioned on p.22 that the day after she was thinking about it and "trying to make it nice" in her mind. The doctor's office is where she can't refute the evidence of what physically happened with a fabricated story.
- Jason.Duane001

SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2009

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I think it is interesting what Stefanie mentioned about the eyes not being met by both the doctor and Charlo in chapters three and seven. It is a concern of mine that this man who loves her so deeply skips looking into her eyes after she has obviously taken a serious fall, along with the doctor who for some reason is more interested in looking at the other parts of her body. To me this is a red flag that something suspicious is going on. She may be a possible drunk and abusing her body unintentionally or she is being hurt by someone else. The audio does give insight into the tone of the narrator speaking and I listened to ch. 2 and 3 to try and gain some better understanding through the tone of the narrator however, am still unclear as to what is going on. However, the girl is totally smitten by Charlo in ch 2 which is apparent by the language and tone I listened to on the audio so the change of narrator setting in chapter 3 is still confusing but suspicious. Laura O'Brien

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=Wednesday, September 30, 2009This is Nikkie LoPorto, posting for Week 3, Group 3, in response to Chapters 3 and 7 of Doyle.

The immediate situation context seemed immediately clear to me that Paula had fallen. I remembered that in a previous reading she had “swooned” and I put that known fact together with this new situation and understood that she had fallen. I also deduced that the look of “love” that Charlo gave Paula while searching her face, making sure that she was okay, was probably a look that she did not initially know was “love”, although perhaps she immediately knew due to the intense and strong feelings that she knew would last longer than a schoolgirl crush.


After listening to Chapter 3 and 7 and jotting down some thoughts, I listened again to Chapter 2 to fit this piece of the puzzle into the larger frame of the novel. It’s interesting that I had forgotten that after Paula had swooned, she had been fine and then subsequently danced with Charlo. There was, in fact, no indication in Chapter 2 at all that Paula had fallen, yet, in my mind, I associated the swooning with falling and put the two together in my mind, thus creating a connection where one did really not exist.

As for Chapter 7, I noticed that both in Chapter 3 and Chapter 7 there was the mention that both the Doctor and Charlo never looked at Paula’s eyes. Is this a coincidence, or perhaps a clue into something deeper that we do not know about Paula yet? It will be interesting to find out.


- nicole.loporto001 Nikkie LoPorto

WEEK 4----October 6th, 2009--------Laura O'Brien I believe in the conversation between Paula and her daughter Nicola, the purpose or intent on behalf of the speaker is to engage in a intimate conversation with her daughter Nicola. By asking her daughter about her relationship with the boy Tony and making relations to her husband she is trying to have a connected conversation between mother and daughter in talking about something they have in common. (their love interests) or something about them. Paula's intent in trying to tell her daughter the importance of remembering those beginning memories is lost or overlooked by her young, naive daughter. This interaction between Paula and Nicola shows the positive intent the mother had to engage her daughter in conversation as sort of a bonding method, and although the daughter engages, Paula realizes she may have been too young to have this conversation because the listener(Nicola) was still young and did not share the same experiences yet as her mother. Therefore, there was an initial intent to have a bonding conversation between the mother and daughter by the speaker (Paula), and the daughter unintentionally annoyed her mother without knowing it by her choice of words to make fun of her mother's memories of her father.
------------in relation to ch. 13 between the sisters there is a strong intent by Paula and Carmel to push their views and what they are saying about their father. I believe they are intentionally grilling their much quieter sister Denise into believing what each of them is saying. Carmel is trying to say that their father was a bastard like all men, and then Paula tries to persuade Denise in saying that their father was sometimes a good guy and not all guys are bastards. Even when Paula states to Denise that her husband is a good guy in saying "What about Harry? He's a lovely man? ( I didn't believe that; I think her Harry's a boneless little drip.) she has intentional purposes to lie to her sister even though she doesn't really believe what she said about him for her own purposes of proving a point. I think this makes obvious about their relationship that the two sisters Paula and Carmel disagree on a huge matter in their life(their father) and because of that disagreement they butt heads alot constantly leaving their other sister Denise in the middle trying to choose sides between them. ----Laura O'Brien

October 7, 2009 -- Alicia thinks -->
During the conversation between Nicola and Paula the purpose for Paula seems purely nostalgic. Her intention seems to be to teach her daughter a lesson about memory. She emphasizes the importance of detail in memory. Nicola does not seem to agree that such details are essential when recalling the past, but Paula believes this is because she is too young to fully appreciate the past. Nicola’s intention seems to be to gather information about her father when he was younger. Paula is reminiscing but she is also thinking about her life and how her past and present are connected. She says that Nicola can’t understand the importance of her past because it is too close to the present, when she is older she will be able to appreciate the details more, as Paula is doing now.
The conversation between Paula and her sisters brings up the idea of “creditability of narrator”. The reader is responsible for deciding how much of what the narrator says is actually true within the context of the novel. When Carmel accuses Paula of “rewriting history” the reader is invited to question all Paula’s memories. Are Paula’s memories so nostalgic that they represent her past as the way she wants to remember it, or what actually happened. Some readers find the inaccuracy of the narrator as a turn off. I think that since it is Paula’s story, she can tell it however she wants. I have faith that if Paula’s memories get too inaccurate, the author will interject in a way as to prove her false, and provide the reader with the truth; which is what seems to be happening here. Doyle brings Carmel and Denise into the conversation so that Paula does not glorify her father and family life. They provide the reader with an understanding of her childhood, but also a deeper understanding of Paula’s memory.
-Alicia Anzaldi

OCT 7 ch 12&13 Doyle:
I like that Alicia brought up "creditablilty of narrator," I think this is huge in this novel because the narrator talks to us in form of "story telling" so we have to assume on our own what really happened and what was altered or made up. Paula being acused to re-writing history (which is when she is recalling what the boy was wearing) we have to assume ourselves is that is infact true or made up based on the truth of the little recollection she may have. Agreeing with Alicia more I find this a positive tool in this story, it is in fact Paula's story she is telling it as a memory, so she can explain or tell it however she wants.

As far as the readings and then the audio, I found the audio helps to distinguish who is talking, especially in chapter 13. Doyle, unlike most writers does not use quotations to tell someone is speaking. However he just uses dashes, one after another, with that it begins to get difficult to distinguish who is saying what, especially when it is constant dialogue. Therefore, listening to it being read, the different tones from character to character made by the reader helps to distinguish. Although I don't think this is a major problem with Doyle's writing, and I can definitely read his work and gain a clear understanding of it, but when comparing the reading to audio this is what rings a bell.
-Stefanie Finocchio



WEEK FOUR POSTING - nicole.loporto001 Nikkie LoPorto
I listened to both audio files before reading them, as Ellie suggested. I found both conversations a little confusing because there were no line breaks and quotation marks to encompass when the speaker changes from Nicola to Paula to Paula’s sisters to Paula’s inner thoughts.

Paula’s intentions of explaining the synthesis of memories to Nicola is very interesting as well. Paula’s intentions are to guide Nicola in remembering little things about her beau, just as Paula remembered things about Charlo, but Nicola is less receptive than Paula thinks she should be. I found it a little ironic that Paula urges Nicola to create memories in light of the conversation that she has with her sisters, especially Carmel. The intentions of reminiscing in each scenario are extremely different and therefore get interpreted in completely different manners.

I agree with my peers assesment that the purpose of Paula is to conjure up good memories of their father and to stick to these memories as a way of forming a bond, perhaps even to convince Denise that their father wasn't a bad guy. The reading and the audio are quite a different experience. The reading is more suseptible to interpretation-whereas the audio has pauses and gaps that lead the listener directly to the purpose of the speaker. Another observation I had about the first section of reading (p. 50) was that in telling that she said "Does your ma call you that?" and then "he wasn't sure if I was slagging him" Paula is showing her tougher more outgoing side with the intention of proving that she is not so easily prone to sentamentality. - christopher_allen003


The bit that stuck out to me was the exchange on p.56-58, when it's clear that there's more being done here than a simple exchange of informations and opinions. "-He was nice. At home. Watchin' the tele. We were always laughin'. -Yeah, yeah, maybe -What do you think, Denise?" Paula's presenting information in a way with the aim of getting her viewpoint validated, in having someone else tell her that she's right. "-Yes, he was nice. Jesus, I felt good. That proved it, what Denise had just said; I wasn't just making it all up." Paula's own rejection of her father's worst traits, her desperate ploy to alter her own memories and forget the bad, hinge almost entirely in this moment of casual validation. That it has the convincing power it does is due - and this was what was intreguing - entirely on Denise's decision to go against the opinion of Carmel. When Denise voices an opinion, it is almost always one regurgiated from what Carmel has said. She doesn't think for herself, or at least, she doesn't speak her mind, she says what she believes Carmel wants to hear. Whether or not Denise truly believes Carmel to be right all the time, and thus, Carmel's judgement to be better than hers, the act of Denise disagreeing publicically and vocally with Carmel means that it is something she simply cannot pretend is true.

She believes her father to be a good person so much that she stands up to Carmel, which is never stated, but simply observed from her difference of opinion. If Paula hadn't set up the context of Denise's history of always deferring to Carmel, this Speech Act wouldn't be nearly as significant. Becuase Paula observes that Denise has acted in an unexpected manner, one that could potentially hurt her standing in Carmel's eyes, it seems incredibly genuine, and Paula is validated beyond doubt. The context of Denise's casual "-Yes, he was nice" was entirely what determined Paula's validation.
- Jason.Duane001

BEGINNING OF WEEK FIVE POSTING - nicole.loporto001 Nikkie LoPorto
After re-reading Chapter 1 of Doyle's "Woman", in relation to Grice's Maxims, I found myself having to refresh on exactly what the Cooperative Principle states and exactly what the Maxims entail, especially after reading Pratt's take on Grice.

Grice explains his Cooperative Principle thusly: "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged"

His Four Maxims are as follows:
1. Quality - Be truthful
2. Quantity - Take care of the quantity of information you are imparting
3. Relation - Be aware of the relevance of the information you are imparting
4. Manner - Be clear

Therefore, in relation to Doyle's "Woman", I believe that Paula violates all of these maxims. In the very short, less than two page chapter, Paula (and in turn Doyle) manages to violate all of the maxims! Here's how I think she does this:

1. Quality : Speaking about the bell, Paula says it "lifted [her] off the floor" and that it "shook the walls when anyone rang it" (Doyle 1). Clearly, this is an exaggeration. Also, she says that Nicola "rang the bell ten times a minute" and that in one instance "she [Nicola] rang the bell one Saturday morning [for] the hundredth time" (Doyle 1-2). Again, another clear exaggeration. Obviously, she is not "being truthful" as the Maxim of Quality commands.

2. Quantity - There is so much information pounded into this short chapter that my head reels from it. To cite a specific example, look at Pages 1 and 2 and note the sheer length of the information INSIDE the parentheses! In fact, the information inside the parentheses makes up for 75% of the chapter's entirety!

3. Relation - What is the relevance of the tidbit about hitting Nicola? I understand that it the reason she hit Nicola in the first place had to do with the bell ringing, which is slightly relevant because the chapter begins with a bell ringing, but why so much information (which again, brings up the violation of the Maxim of Quantity)? Although, I think that the answer has to do with the fact that Grice's maxims do not always agree or at least jive with literature. Doyle is using these little strays away from the Maxims to give us information about the characters and setting up the character development that will follow through the story.

4. Manner - The entire chapter is vague. It starts out with the young man that comes to tell Paula the bad news, but ends up mostly describing short viognettes about Paula and her family members. It ends with the young man sitting "in the kitchen with his hat still on [while he] told [Paula] all about his family" (Doyle 2). There is no clarity as to why the young man has rung the bell, nor any allusion to what he has to say, except that Paula thinks it's bad news.

I think that I need to re-read Pratt and figure out exactly what she's talking about with Gricean Maxims in relation to Literature. What does everyone else think??

END OF WEEK FIVE POSTING - nicole.loporto001 Nikkie LoPorto

Week 5---Laura O'Brien--- I believe that Doyle is trying to convey the significance of the bell and what underlying issue it represents in this first chapter. The part where Paula speaks about hitting Nicola also holds a significance because it is related to why Paula hates the bell so much and reveals her anger towards it, which is why she struck her daughter in the first place. The bell holds a real significance for Paula in that it represents all the bad problems that have come to her about her family. For example, she says on page 2 "The new bell was a nice bing-bong one but it made no difference. I still died a bit whenever someone rang it. The Guards looking for Charlo, teachers looking for John Paul, men looking for money. It's hard to hide in a house full of kids, to pretend there's no one there. Bing-bong. Only bad news came through that door"(Doyle 2). Therefore, it is not necessarily the bell because when they got a new one Paula still had those feelings of anxiety and of being scared. It is what the bell represents that is haunting her and her family. I believe that Nikkie did a great job in breaking down the chapter in relation to Grice's maxims however,I wonder for the maxim of quality how far one can go in order to stretch the truth or embellish a little. Nikkie brings up a good point about maxim of quality being truthful and in this first chapter Paula definately embellishes a little in her story however, I feel that it may be a necessary tactic to do in order to get the point across how it was intended to be read in relation to the bell and what it is supposed to stand for for Paula. End of Week 5.---Laura O'Brien---

I agree with the significance of the bell being a major implicature in this piece of work. Everything that happens in this section is related to the bell-therefore the maxim of quality seems to me to be intact. As far as quantity, I think the tone of the speaker implies that what she is speaking about conjures up bad memories and gives her anxiety, hence the sporatic phrases and different associations. It reads as if she is talking to a therapist about unpleasant pasts. And so because of this, I think the maxim of relation is violated perhaps a bit. But this is a necessary violation-because in the narrator's world this is all connected, even if the readers do not fully comprehend the significance of the visit from the guards and the daughter moving in and out of the house so often.- christopher_allen003

DOYLE ch 1.
Agreeing with christopher, the signifance of the bell is a major implicature in this piece of work. The bell is the center of this chapter, everything that happens, happens around the bell. Things happen because of the bell, because of the BING-BONG.
Orientation- our shared background knowledge is little at this point, seeing it is the first chapter and we do not know anything besides what we have read about the characters. However, what we do know is that the bell brings a sounds that creates anger to the narrarator.
Core Narrative- sequence of events. The bell goes off, the speaker gets angry. The bell continuously rings, the anger increases. Her daughter rings the bell, she hits her daughter.
Evaluation- These things all happen because of the dreaded sound of the bell. For example, she hits her daughter because of the bell, and she dreads the bell because it never means good news. Everytime the bell rings, some bad news awaits at the door.

Just as in every first chapter of a novel, or beginning of a book, the quantity is a bit low, meaning there is not enough information. However, we have to keep in mind that it is the opening so what we do not know, will be filled in as we read on. The quantity that lacked in this first chapter was the clarity of who everyone was, for example- Charlo, the guard, Misses Spenser.
-Stefanie Finocchio

Doyle intentionally shirks the maxims of conversation in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, starting with a quality violation in the first line: "I was told by a Guard who came to the door." -- told what? We humor her because we know that this is something important enough to get the law involved, and we want to know what it is, but it's not a statement that satisfies right off the bat. We're quick to perk up and ask ourselves what Doyle has done that's made this sentence unsatisfactory by itself, though it's not an annoyance, we know that Doyle will eventually answer the question. As Pratt discussed, we know that Doyle would not be allowed by his publisher to put in a completely nonsensical statement unless there was a larger reason for it. We trust him, because we know he cannot lie to us without reason. He's not allowed to.

This assumption cures us of the ambiguity we would feel in a real-world conversation, we're assured, and we feel intrigue and surprise rather than annoyance. The rest of the chapter is full of more "incomplete" statements, things she says that don't tell us enough about the bigger picture, but highlights more elements of her life than she intends. As a character, she isn't aware of her audience, so casually remarking that "" means much to us, even if she doesn't realize it does. This is intentional on the part of Doyle -- he wants to tell us a story in a way that will constantly keep us interested, and the only way to do this is through a restrictive presentation of information that's contrary to what we expect from CP.

In a one-on-one conversation, we would need to actively show or hide this surprise, however interested we were in her life. We would have to voice an opinion, which would require us to know her situation and understand it fully. Here, as passive readers, we don't need to know everything, there's nothing expected of us, so we're much more inclined to listen to the story as it's presented.

Without us having to Give, we're more comfortable with violations of Grice's maxims, because we know Doyle is going somewhere with this and we can just sit back and Take as he tells his story. (Jason)