Not being a morning person, I usually will go to great lengths to avoid waking up before 8am. However, I could not pass up the opportunity to see the inner workings of Middlebury’s Ross dining hall. Dining hall culture, especially at a school as small as Middlebury, is an integral part of student experience, and I was curious to see how the dining hall operated.
When my alarm went off at 5:45am I briefly regretted my decision, but this was quickly replaced with feelings of excitement and curiosity. As I walked into Ross, I immediately noticed it was being cleaned by a crew of several women. It appeared as though they had been working for a while. I realized that I had never even thought about who cleaned the space where I eat every single day. This probably remains a hidden space of work to many students, yet it impacts their daily living.
After Chris, the head chef of Ross, gave us a tour of the facility, we each paired off with a worker. I had the pleasure of working with Dave, making omelets and deep frying potatoes. At first I was very nervous about making conversation and felt uncomfortably aware of our differences. However, Dave was incredibly easy to talk to and conversation came naturally. We quickly bonded over our shared love of Nordic skiing and hiking.
Although my conversation with Dave ran the gamut from growing up in Vermont to our plans for Thanksgiving, it did tend to gravitate back towards his experience as a worker in the dining hall. Before coming to work for Middlebury four years ago, Dave worked in dining halls at Saint Michael’s College and Champlain College. He said that although Middlebury’s food is not perfect, it tends to be much fresher and more nutritious. Dave has a friend who works at the dining hall at Sterling College, a very small college in rural Vermont. Sterling College has only 100 students and farm work and producing food arean integral part of its curriculum. This led us to discuss the role of scale in dining systems, and reminded me of our class discussion about the Jackson article. We talked about the monetary realities and difficulty of creating change across large scales.
While touring the workspace, Chris noted the tightly spaced pathways and said that the work room often became quite crowded. Dave and I were working off in a side area. Even with just two of us in a small nook, I often found myself quickly side stepping to avoid colliding with the hot pans Dave was carrying. I was reminded of “Abolish Restaurants”. In my experience, the tight space did not cause much trouble, but I could see how conflict could easily arise in such conditions.
My morning in Ross was incredibly informative and rewarding. It certainly made me rethink my relationship with the workers and the space I interact with every single day.

I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Stern Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2000 novel Stern Men focuses on the life of Ruth Thomas, a young girl from a remote island off the coast of Maine. The lobster fishing industry dominates nearly every aspect of life on the island. Throughout the story, Ruth’s connection to the wealthy and powerful Ellis family is revealed. The Ellis Granite Company once ruled Fort Niles Island where Ruth lives, and at the time of the novel the family maintains a summer estate on the island. The Ellis family adopted Ruth’s grandmother Jane to serve as a playmate and servant to Vera Ellis. Jane and Ruth’s mother Mary both lived lives of servitude to the Ellis family. Ruth is similarly influenced by the Ellis family, who pays for her education at a private boarding school in Delaware and controls her fate in many ways. The novel focuses primarily on the summer after Ruth graduates from high school, but includes many historical flashbacks. As Ruth decides what to do with her life after graduation, she finds her own voice and power. Ultimately she unites Fort Niles and their rival island Courne Haven in an economic cooperative.

Stern Men is a highly entertaining novel that is pleasurable to read. However, it can be more fully appreciated when examined through a geographical lens. Geographic notions of space and place, in addition to inside and outside meaning, are particularly relevant to Stern Men and its themes.

Ruth’s life on Fort Niles and her connections to the lobster industry are brimming with inside meaning. Inside meaning is defined as the “daily life conditions of consumption” (Mintz 20). Ruth’s familial ties and friendships, in addition to her childhood memories, create inside meaning. Her experiences and relationships on Fort Niles give her a unique perspective and opinion of the island. Those who create inside meaning are “imparting significance to their own acts and the acts of those around them” (Mintz 20). Ruth’s steadfast determination to remain on Fort Niles is a reflection of the inside meaning she has created:

It was Ruth Thomas’s firm position that she belonged nowhere but on Fort Niles Island…It was important to Ruth in principle that she feel happy on Fort Niles, although, for the most part, she was pretty bored there…More than anything, Ruth’s passion for Fort Niles was an expression of protest. It was her resistance against those who would send her away, supposedly for her own good. (Gilbert 43)

The Ellis family, particularly its patriarch Lanford Ellis, insists on Ruth being educated away at boarding school in Delaware. While Ruth does not necessarily miss Fort Niles while at school, she does resent her loss of personal autonomy. Thus, her loyalty to Fort Niles is a demonstration of “imparting significance” to her actions. Ruth uses inside meaning to resist the Ellis family in many ways.

Although many of Fort Niles Island’s residents live in isolation and change is slow to come to the island, it is nonetheless affected by the greater world. Life on the island is also laden with outside meaning, which refers to the “environing economic, social, and political (even military) conditions” (Mintz 20). For much of the novel, Gilbert only makes passing references to the outside world. Much of the novel’s action is focused on Fort Niles itself and the neighboring island of Courne Haven. However, near the end of the novel, Gilbert introduces some outside context. Pastor Wishnell, who travels along the coast of Maine providing religious services to remote communities, speaks to Ruth about the harsh realities of Fort Niles’ place in the region, if not the world:

“Fort Niles is slow to act; your island is the last to embrace any change. Most of the men on Fort Niles still make their own traps, because, without reason, they’re suspicious of the wire ones…All over Maine, the lobstermen are starting to consider fiberglass boats…How long will it be before fiberglass comes to Fort Niles?” (Gilbert 229).

Suddenly, life and attitudes on Fort Niles are embedded in outside meaning. They are influenced by modernization and the necessity of keeping up with change. The global forces of change threaten economic prosperity in the small community. This conjures up ideas of scale, and as Jackson mentions, the connection between scales (Jackson 200). Rather than viewing Fort Niles in isolation, geographers will appreciate Gilbert’s expression of connections between the small island and larger forces of change.

Stern Men can also be examined through the geographic principles of space and place. As explored by Jackson, place can be defined as humanized space (199), or space infused with meaning. Ruth’s gender, familial history, and personal experiences all shape her ideas of space and place.

Females on Fort Niles are generally expected to live their lives as housewives and support their husbands’ careers as lobstermen. Fishing boats are a male space, while the home is a definitively female space. However, Ruth defies these traditional gender norms. Not only does Ruth achieve an education, she aspires to work in the lobster fishing industry and bring about change. Ruth’s mother is absent for much of her life, so her father does take on some traditionally female roles within the home, showing another departure from expected gender roles. However, from the beginning, Ruth’s relationship with her father is tense as a result of her gender: “He’d been expecting a boy, but he was polite enough to conceal his disappointment when he came home from fishing and met his little girl” (Gilbert 210). Ruth’s father does feel a fondness towards his daughter, but the relationship is not particularly warm or caring. The relationship with her father influences Ruth’s perception of home. Their family home does not hold many special or happy memories for Ruth. She tends to view her home as a place of boredom and discontent. In many ways, Ruth’s house with her father is more of a space than a place.

Ruth’s familial history of unpaid domestic labor is also closely linked to space and place. Ruth’s mother and grandmother both live in servitude to the wealthy Ellis family. According to Cox, “the labour of domestic workers facilitates conspicuous consumption by employers and helps them to maintain and enhance their social status” (Cox 824). Although this quote refers to paid domestic labor, it still holds true to the situation of Jane and Mary Thomas. The use of domestic labor helps the Ellis family, particularly Vera Ellis, maintain a certain lifestyle and power status. Ruth loathes the way her mother and grandmother are treated by the Ellis family. In the middle of the novel, Ruth goes to visit her mother in Concord, where she is living with Vera Ellis. She does not enjoy the visit: “Ruth was doing time in Concord. Getting it over with. Trying to stay sane. Because if she’d reacted to everything that galled her, she’d have been in a constant state of disgust and rage” (Gilbert 151). To Ruth, the place of the Ellis family home and Concord is infused with anger and resentment. Place does not necessarily come with positive associations. Ruth creates a sense of place in the Concord home through entirely negative emotions.

In conclusion, Stern Men is recommended for any geographer interested in examining space and place, in addition to inside and outside meaning. It is enriched by Gilbert’s exploration of gender, familial ties, identity, and power. Although the story is fictional, it humanizes work in the lobster fishing industry and those affected by said work. Ruth Thomas is a dynamic and nuanced character, who ultimately finds her own power in a place that has continually robbed her of freedom. Stern Men is an enlightening novel for all geographers.

I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.

WORKS CITED:

Cox, R. 2013. “House/Work: Home as Space of Work and Consumption” Geography Compass (7)12: 821-831.

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Stern Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.

Jackson, P. (2006) “Thinking Geographically” Geography 91(3).

Mintz, S. (1996) “Food and its relationship to concepts of power” Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power and the Past. Beacon: Boston.