• In my opinion, Lee Smith writes objectively not tragrically. Her writings are based strictly on the truth, and they prove that frankness can trouble some people like it does to many of the characters in "The Happy Memories Club". Lee's writing strategy involves telling a story exactly how it occurred, and not biting her tongue in the least. What she means by "you can either go in the closet and sit in the dark or you can make jokes..." is she can either keep the unique perspective to herself or she can try and make others understand where she is coming from. This quote is extremely accurate for her style of writing.
The yellow wallpaper In the story, wallpaper, a usually feminine, floral decoration on the interior of walls, is a symbol of female imprisonment within the domestic sphere. Over the course of the story, the wallpaper becomes a text of sorts through which the narrator exercises her literary imagination and identifies with a feminist double figure. When John curbs her creativity and writing, the narrator takes it upon herself to make some sense of the wallpaper. She reverses her initial feeling of being watched by the wallpaper and starts actively studying and decoding its meaning. She untangles its chaotic pattern and locates the figure of a woman struggling to break free from the bars in the pattern.
Short Story Analysis Have we ever read a story that just didn’t make sense at all when first read? That the descriptions in the paper just create vivid pictures in our mind that are kind of disturbing. That is exactly how this short story was constructed. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author uses symbolism, imagery, irony, and theme to show the subordination and trapped role of women in domestic life. Gilman uses symbols to explain the how women are trapped in domestic life.
An anonymous voice states “fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind.” This links back to the fearlessness the wife displayed. The fact that the doctor’s wife is the only known character to keep her sight throughout the novel raises the question: “why her?” Although the allegory of fear causing blindness might portray the doctor’s wife to be very deserving of keeping her sight, an exact reason is never given. However, due to her sight, she develops a stunning amount of insight in the novel, which Saramago contrasts with the other character’s both
For her becoming part of the wall paper is her way of avoiding the feelings of abandonment. In both stories in a way I feel both characters are battling oppression and imprisonment. One difference I see in “The yellow wall’ paper she is aided by the use of medication and her husband feels he knows what is best for her. Miss. Brill is not medicated to help her suppress her feelings and is a single elderly lady.
As an example two influential short stories will be discussed in depth in order to shed light into the lives of the two authors and their stories. The short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) and Angela Carter (1940–1992) both sideway the same idea; the confinement of women in particular roles and positions in both personal and professional lives, posed on them by patriarchal figures. Toril Moi quotes in her examination of feministic criticism, Sexual/Textual Politics (2002), Elaine Showalter’s idea that “women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike, or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine” (Moi, 2002: 49), which comes across when reading the two stories which are stylistically already very different. It might be so that a feminist reader of both times (there’s some 80 years difference between the two stories) did not only want to see her own experiences mirrored in fiction, but strived to identify with strong, impressive female characters (Moi, 2002: 46), and looked for role-models that would instil positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women as self-actualising strong identities who were not dependent on men (Moi, 2002, 46). The two stories bring out two female characters, very different by position and character; the other a new mother, scared and confused of her own role, and the other a young newly-wed girl, still a child, being fouled by a much older man, mainly as a mark of his authority over women in general.
Looking for Alibrandi is written entirely in first person enabling you to see how she feels about certain people and how she feels about what is happening to her in her life. You can tell that she doesn’t like snobs or racism because she expresses those feelings inside her head and as you are inside her head it is as if you are getting a personal commentary from the main character throughout the whole story, making her a believable character. The use of language in the story helps establish a confident relationship with Josephine. She uses chatty slang to make the reader more comfortable with the story line, especially when she attempts to rationalize a feeling or action on her behalf. Her father calls her “our obnoxious creation” because she has witty observations and is never short of something to
Sylvia Plath’s first and only novel ‘The Bell Jar’ focuses on the protagonist and narrator Esther Greenwood; The Bell Jar is a story of how Esther descends into a dark and depressive state and how she eventually overcomes the illness, even if it was not permanent. The theme of female oppression is highlighted throughout the rest of the novel. The novel also highlights the idea that the people that surround you can push you to conform, even though you do not want to, for instance Esther’s mother constantly attempts to force Esther into a stereotypically female job such as a short-hander, the idea that women are only suitable for easier, less fulfilling professions. The protagonist, Esther, explains her desire to explore and rebel against the ‘norm’ for woman in the 1950’s society. "The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from.
This perspective plays a thought-provoking and eye-opening role to overcome the misconceptions about her but also empowering for female patients who suffer from mental illness. This is partly because her approach does not overly depend on the dichotomous understanding of mental illness which has been prevalent in researchers and clinicians in the psychiatric field but instead, she explores Camille’s nuanced and situated identity contextualized back in her time and space. In this paper, I am going to present three distinctive aspects of her being and examine each of them to see whether she was mentally ill or simply she was a deviant and independent woman, which was rare to see because of the social norms and expectations of the time. Then I would argue the ethicality of this question itself and expand it into more general term of mental illness and a sense of abnormality from ethical perspectives. [Her life-long decision making] When Camille grew up, it is safe to say that she was surrounded by relatively fortunate circumstances compared to other females in terms of receiving parental support and artistic education.
Dale Disney Professor Pucciarelli English Composition: Section 64 21 September 2011 FICTION OR DESCRIPTION There are various techniques to write and share stories. Which technique is best to use seems to be subjective. In both Joan Didion’s essay “On Keeping a Notebook” and Patricia Hampl’s essay “The Dark Art of Description” illustrates this fact clearly. While Joan Didion uses rhetorical questions, personal anecdotes, and imaginary facts to record her life experiences, Patricia Hampl uses imagery and vignettes in her writings, but based on the fact that Patricia Hampl uses less falsehoods in her stories, her style of writing is more appealing to the reader. Joan Didion uses rhetorical questions in her notebook to engage readers into the story of her notebook writings.