Her oldest sister Laura is very tall and awkward. Laura acts like Ma, who died from birthing Mercy. Mercy is the youngest, who is a cute little girl that never knew her mother. Lorenzo is Pa’s favorite, no doubt. He thinks highly of himself, and is not very kind.
Janie’s grandmother is the first person who belittles Janie. Even though she has good intentions, Nanny is the reason it took so long for Janie to finally become independent. Janie fails to rise against her grandmother, and is forced to marry Logan. Each of her three husbands treats her in a way that forces her to grow, and she becomes stronger because of them. Logan is Janie’s first stop to becoming a strong, independent woman.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a novel about an African American woman named Janie and her struggle to find true love and meaning in her life. While Janie is the main character, her Grandmother Nanny is the person who sets Janie on her life’s journey to find happiness. However, Nanny’s decisions were based on her slave ideals and were not what Janie desired for her own life. As a former slave, Nanny had been raped by her white master and gave birth to her daughter who became Janie’s mom. When the white master is sent off to war, his jealous wife threatens to whip Nanny and to sell off her baby.
Now that’s growing up without a childhood. Jane Smiley seems like a great parent who cares about her children but to allow her daughters to put on makeup even entering their teenage years just isn’t right. Her girls where prematurely growing up, where behaving beyond their age, and with their only priority being beautiful at all times it seem to help them in the long run. As they burned off the “Barbie stage” and grew into more important things down their lives. Like for example Smiley talks about her older daughter, “Now she is planning to graduate school and law school and become an expert on woman’s health issues, perhaps adolescent health issues like anorexia and bulimia” (377).
Judith Halberstam’s 1995, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters novel includes a chapter entitled, “Making Monsters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” In this chapter Halberstam rethink’s Gothic horror in the sense of Frankenstein’s and the Monster’s motives and roles in Mary Shelley’s novel. Halberstam breaks down the chapter in six different sub-sections: “Monster Making,” “Monstrous Forms,” “Visual Horror and Narrative,” “Sexual Horror and Narrative,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Gothic Realism” (Halberstam 28-52). Theses six sub-sections have a similar theme. Halberstam tries to define the true meaning of monstrosity. She does this by dissecting the humanistic view of a monster and what kind of characteristics a creature needs to posses in order to be defined as a monster.
White Oleander by Janet Fitch demonstrates how the protagonist, Astrid Magnussen, encounters herself with many struggles and obstacles that she must overcome. The only source of family that Astrid has is her beloved mother Ingrid Magnussen, which shows her charisma in her own egotistic way. The type of affection expressed from mother to daughter causes Astrid to feel suffocated due to the fact that her mother sees her as an extension of herself rather than a particular individual. This provokes Astrid to experience a difficult time setting aside from her mother’s suffocation and outgrowing to become the individual she wants to be. Ingrid’s imprisonment causes Astrid to experience solitude when she is transferred to a foster home.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin By: Dionte Burley English 3 8th Period Ms.Hundley 2/20/13 “Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.” This famous quote is from the misinterpreted book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” written by Harriet Beecher Stowe over the life of a somewhat superior slave. She wrote this from a sort of provisional point of view. Her eyes seeing and feeling the horrors of slavery contribute greatly to her effort to attempt to influence the public to abolish slavery and change the ways of life. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, written during the mid-1800s, during slavery, Tom, a slave, experiences many trials because of his race.
In the novel Every Last One, by Anna Quindlen, she creates a portrait of a mother, a father, children and violent consequences. Mary Beth Latham, is a suburban, white women who is a mother of three teenaged children that had always came first, before her role as a wife to a doctor or even her career as a landscape gardener. Mary Beth cared deeply for her family and preserved their everyday life as sovereign. However, when Max, one of her sons, becomes very depressed, Mary Beth became focused on her son, and is blindsided by an outrageous act of violence when half of her family became murdered by her daughter Ruby's ex-boyfriend Kiernan, leaving her with only one son, Alex. Every Last One is a novel about a women having to face difficult situations in life while being emotionally and financially responsible for the rest of her family.
As a 1950s woman who the only dream she had was to make her family dreams come true, Rose stands out in the play as the defender and fighter person and the advisory column of the family. Rose has demonstrated that she has the authority to educate their offspring without being dominated by them: Rose: ‘‘Don’t You Give me no backtalk now. You get in there and get them shoes on.’’ (P.95) This is a perfect example when she (Rose) talks to Raynell (Troy's illegitimate child, mothered by Alberta, his lover. August Wilson introduces Raynell to the play as an infant. Her innocent need for care and support convinces Rose to take Troy back into the house) about getting in the house and wear the shoes that Rose told her to wear.
“She watches me, I can feel her eyes. I have seen it before in women. Seen them drive from the room them coming with sympathy and pity, with actual help, and clinging to some trifling animal to whom they never were more than pack horses.” Being a woman in the 1920s, Addie is expected to do nothing but give birth to her husband’s children. Because of this Addie became an aggressive person. Addie wants to be a strong, independent woman but society prevents her from doing so.