I personally liked Houseman’s fairytales especially as they seemed very different from the other works we’ve read in class. It’s interesting to know that he’d been influenced not only by Oscar Wilde’s arrest but his sister’s participation in the women’s movement. I’ve personally always liked fairytales because they were this space that were catered to children (most of the time) but with Housman actively throwing in messages of shedding the constraints of traditional Victorian notions—it’s nice to see. Fairytales are often dubbed as being easy to remember or that they have common motifs in them. That being said, it's cool that Housman took that assumption of fairytales and turned it on its head - discussing active social issues through "simple" stories. Not to mention that he moves his almost "radical" (at the time) ideas through these seemingly innocent fairytales. I'm enjoying his method of pushing boundaries.

As I’ve needed to present this week, I found that leading discussions are pretty hard, at least for me - to think of a good question that’s engaging and both revealing something about the story. But through the other presenters, I’ve learned their insight on the works they’ve worked on and it was really interesting to see how they had all connected through transformation and Housman subtly challenging hegemonic relationships, marriage, gender and sex. They were fun readings, in my opinion.