What do you think are the feelings about marriage in this poem and how does the poet present these feelings to the reader? In the poem 'A marriage', Michael Blumenthal expresses a clear view to the reader by presenting marriage as a positive affair which helps people to share burdens as well as progress their lives. At the beginning of the poem, Blumenthal implies that living on your own is a tire and an exhausting ordeal as he describes the arms as "tired". This word is repeated which exaggerates the misery of loneliness and implies that there is no end; this idea of there being no end is also expressed in "either your arms or the ceiling will soon collapse" giving out before the end. From this, it is clear to the reader that Blumenthal believes that being alone is painful and controlling towards you.
“My Madonna cried.” This is the line that opens the story and sets the theme of depression throughout the story. The Madonna doll in the story is used to represent death starting with the first sentence in the story. Josephine instantly thinks that her mother has died when she sees the tear rolling down her doll’s cheek. The doll is also the one thing that the mother holds onto as she tries to cling to what little life she has in prison before she is executed. The doll has been passed down from generation to generation in Josephine’s family, and seems to represent the tragedy of each woman’s demise.
‘The Voice’ by Thomas Hardy portrays the aftermath of the death of Hardy’s wife, Emma. Whilst they were in love, they became estranged in the later years of their marriage until her death. In this poem, Hardy explores feelings of his loss in a wistful and nostalgic manner. He shows his frustration in being unable to communicate with Emma, and paints her as both real and insubstantial, both in life and in death. Even the landscape described in the poem reflects his loss.
The metaphors found in this poem bestow upon the reader a sense of the overdramatic; “the world drops dead” is an overstatement of the desperation she is feeling. Nothing exists but her lost love. The first line of the first stanza reads: “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead:” (1) When she closes her eyes everything in existence fades from her mind and she is no longer thinking of the many problems that exist in the world, she can only think of her former lover. This line carries throughout the poem showing the significance of emotions. The second
Especially when she reminisces in the final stanza about the time she was young and beautiful, illustrating her complete lack of confidence. Nevertheless, she is still presented as a foul character who threatens the reader, with the line ‘Be terrified’. The poem also ends with the line ‘Look at me now’ which has a double entendre (double meaning). It could be read as a cry of despair or, as a threat – if you did look at Medusa you would die! This leaves the reader feeling conflicting emotions for the character, probably similar to how Medusa herself feels in the poem.
The Story of an Hour As the title puts it, “The Story of an Hour” is a story that happens in one hour. This story mostly revolves around one woman, Louise Mallard. The story begins on a very sad note especially in the eyes of a reader. Mrs. Mallard is said to have a “heart trouble” (Chopin 1), so her sister Josephine felt that great care had to be taken when delivering the sad news of her husband Brently Mallard’s death. Upon the delivery of the news, she starts sobbing and grieving then goes to her room to be by herself.
Maria Portillo January 14, 2013 A.P English Literature – Period 4 Modern Love by George Meredith In the poem, Modern Love by George Meredith, it defines the feelings about a husband and a wife, who both had suffered in a loveless marriage. Meredith uses literary devices to convey the view of “modern love”; he uses alliteration, metaphor, and imagery throughout the poem. Meredith uses alliteration in the first line of the poem, “she wept with walking eyes (line1).” Since the beginning of the poem the readers could notice that the wife was already unhappy, since she had cried, probably for unhappy marriage. He also writes, “were called into her with a sharp surprised (line 4)”, meaning that she wanted to escape the marriage but couldn’t, and that the time that is poem was written it referred to the marriage in the 19th century. Which both the wives and husbands were forced to marry, without loving each other.
Women of the time were forced into settings they loathed, which is where the narrator finds herself day after day. Gilman uses the old room and its surroundings as a symbol for her helplessness and sorrow; the suffer feels run down, much life the old mansion. Ironically, all those around the narrator keep throwing her into the room and it only makes her worse; eventually making her want to jump out the barred windows. Much has changed in the treatment of depressed women, “Yellow Wall paper” serve as good documentation of past
“Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath dramatizes the clash between perception and reality in the mind of a speaker who has lost a love so vital to her world that she begins to question her own sanity. No formal setting is introduced, which supports a theme of mental instability as it can be inferred that the entire poem is taking place within the speaker’s mind as she struggles to determine the degree of validity that her memories of a past lover hold. The beginning stanza contains the two central ideas of the poem: perception and instability. The poem is a villanelle in iambic pentameter and these concepts are presented through the poem’s two refrains. The first refrain, “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead”, both contrasts and shares parallel structure with the second line, “I lift my lids and all is born again” (1, 2).
Sylvia Plath’s ‘Morning Song’ is one of the constituent poems of her final anthology ‘Ariel’ written before she committed suicide. The collection was composed in a seemingly manic surge coinciding with a period of anguish and rage concerning her traumatic impending divorce with her British husband and poet Ted Hughes. He left for another woman, leaving Sylvia with their two children. In her rather short poem ‘Morning Song’ Plath employs many poignant images to convey a disconcerted ambience of disillusionment concerning her maternal experience. The poem may be referred to as a confessional poem in the sense that it emphasises visceral and intimate emotions and personal details of Sylvia Plath’s life in a seemingly unflattering manner.