I'd like to discuss the latter. The papers in Part of Your World focused on the impact of environment on an individual. Essentially, it addressed the latter part of the infamous "nature vs nurture" debate and analyzed each character with the assumption that they are largely a product of their environment. However, what happens when we make a different assumption and consider them to be driven by their natures? What, if anything changes about our understandings of a character, and is it even possible to analyze one if we just chalk everything up to human nature?
For example, Becca wrote on Eugenidies' work and claims that the Lisbon girls are, "manicured, regulated, and ultimately violated" because of the community's "sense of entitlement to and regulatory power over the area." What if the girls, by their own nature, chose to withdraw from the community because they were not comfortable in it? The narrators do tell us that the girls usually kept to themselves, and the boys' creepy fascination with them began long before any signs of trouble. Could it not be possible that the girls were naturally reclusive and wanted to get away from the attention? However, if we do use this lens, it seems that there is suddenly a whole lot less to analyze.
Similarly, if we consider J. Alfred Prufrock to be driven by his inner nature, then Eliot's poem becomes an almost comical narrative about the unfortunate (and nonexistent) love life of a very shy, indecisive man, instead of a criticism of modernity, as Lenara argues in her paper. I guess there was a good reason why all five members of this panel chose to focus on "nurture" instead of "nature."
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