In the article by Katherine Kearns titled “The Nullification
of Edna Pontellier”, the author’s purpose was to talk about how Edna’s suicide in
the water symbolizes birth as well as death. The Author makes many great points
one being that Edna’s ‘awakening’ helped her to stir up great powers, she
starts to realize that she has many strengths and she wants to change her life.
The author compares Edna to Sleeping Beauty because it is better for the public
when she is sleeping, kind of like how it was better for the people around Edna
before she has her awakening. A second great point that Kearns makes is “… that
once one’s egoism is a defined condition, it may awaken a profound self-disgust
and weariness.” This is important because it provides a valid reasoning for why
Edna had even started to go on this search for herself, maybe she was disgusted
by herself for taking things from her husband for so long. Also she makes the point
that It is hard for a women to see a vision of herself while looking into a masculine
mirror. All of these points lead up to one important one, that the future in
Edna’s eyes is not a mystery that she never attempted to penetrate, but it was
a foregone conclusion that she perceives to bring on her suicide. The author proves is that Edna’s love for
Robert will subside and that her kids will have to suffer from her if she did
not suffer from her own death and that the sea mirrors the soul’s abyss which
could be the reason that the author of this article believe Edna’s suicide
symbolizes birth and death. I believe that the author did a great job at proving
her point; the article truly helped me to see that her suicide can be portrayed
as birth and death. I agree with the
author’s thesis because she did a great job at getting her point across.
Overall I truly enjoyed reading the article.
AHS AP Lit Jenna W.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
'The Story of an Hour'
The short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin was a
very interesting story. I was a bit confused while reading it because at the beginning
of the story we as readers all thought that Mr. Mallard has died in an accident,
his wife got sad because she thought she lost her husband. She was starting to
think about how she was going to live without her husband; she did not know
what she was going to do. After she thought about it for a little while she
realized that now that her husband is gone she would be able to live her life
the way that she wanted to. She no longer had to do things for her husband or
because her husband wanted her to, she now could go about her life the way she
wanted to and she could do things for herself. This surprised me because most
women who lose the person that they love do not immediately think about how
they can do whatever they want to, they morn over their loved on being lost for
a little while at least. I did not expect her to just be kind of happy that her
husband passed so she no longer had to do things the way she wanted to do not
the things her husband wanted her to do. Another thing that surprised me while I
was reading this story was that she felt so strongly about finding out that her
husband was not in the accident after all that she had a heart attack and died.
This is kind of ironic because they whole story we thought that Mr. Mallard was
the one who died but in the end of the story Mrs. Mallard was the one who had
died from her heart being so bad.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Ethan Frome
1.) The author’s purpose for writing this article was to show how the novel Ethan Frome relates to Edith Wharton’s personal life and relationships and how they influenced the writing of the novel.
2.) The author of this essay makes many points on how this book relates to Edith Wharton’s personal experiences. Throughout the essay Cynthia Griffin Wolff, who is the author, says that Edith Wharton married a man who had acquired an illness and needed to be taken care of so Wharton was the one to help him try to get better. That is one similarity between Ethan and Edith; they both have to take care of an ill spouse. But the peculiar part is that while Edith was tending to her sick husband she had a lover who she had fooled around with, just like how Ethan and Mattie had a secret love for each other. Also, Edith’s husband had suspected the secret relationship and would no longer let her leave the house to go visit anyone really, and once Zeena started to suspect something she tried to end it to.
3.) I believe that the argument presented in this article very well backed up. I think this because the author does not simply state these facts to prove her point, she used letters that Edith had actually written to her lover to show that it was actually true and did happen. I think that the author had gone into much depth in studying Wharton’s life n order to obtain such great information.
4.) I most defiantly agree with the argument presented in this essay, I think that with the evidence that Wolff presents is very hard to disagree with. I do not think that anyone would be able to say that there are no similarities between Ethan Frome and Edith Wharton. It was a great article and I truly enjoyed reading it, it got me to think a little differently about the story.
Friday, January 11, 2013
"The Yellow Wallpaper"
In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the main character is
telling the story; she has some sort of illness though we never know what it
is. I personally think that she is not going insane, I believe that the
narrator is just looking for a way out of something and just trying to find the
old her. She repeatedly states in the story that many of the things that she
does is because her husband wants her to. For example, she wanted their bedroom
to be down stairs in the house but he refused and now it is upstairs just like
he wanted it to be. The woman in the wallpaper is symbolic because she is
trapped and cannot escape, just like how the narrator is trapped in her life
just going along and doing what her husband wants her to. She said that during
the day the woman in the wallpaper is free and can go about but it is not until
night time that she gets trapped into the wallpaper. This is important because
during the day the narrator is ‘free’ because her husband is at work, she can
do the things that she enjoys and it is not until her husband gets home that
she starts to feel trapped because things always have to go his way. When the
narrator starts to rip of the wallpaper it makes he look insane but she just
really wants to not be so controlled by her husband. It is not until she
finished the job of taking the wallpaper off the wall that she starts to feel ‘free’
again. At the end of the story the narrator say “…you can’t put me back,” (Gilmore
18). This leads me to believe that the old narrator is back, the one who does
things for herself not only because he husband has told her to, she does not
feel trapped by him any longer and does not intend to every fall like that
again.
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