“The Awakening” by Kate Chopin

“The Awakening” was truley one of the best novels I have ever read.  The entire plot and storyline was easy to connect with and urge you to finish.  Throughout the story  I connected with the main character Edna Pontellier.  She was the cagged parrot in the beginning of the story.  Then, she escaped her cagged world and flew out on her own.  She was forced to follow society’s norms and way of life in their Creole wealthy lifestyle.  Edna was pushed into the Creole way of life.  She despretly tried to fit in by following the daily activities assigned to the wife.  She was modest and followed in line with a quiet personality and was not opinionated.  She took care of the children in her own way.  She had a servant to take care of them for her so she did not have the closest relationship with her children and in their development.  Throughout the story, I believe that Edna learned to appreciate her children more and more.  I saw her as realizing her true love for her children once she was getting more and more away from society and the repetitious lifestyle.  As Edna learned more about herself and her true feelings, she wanted more independance.  I think that the author really created an interesting plot toEdna’s life.  She was more determined, independant, and outgoing.  She was realizing her true personality.  She was for the first time making decisions on her own.  Slowely, her husband realized the great change he saw in her.  He was fearful of her defying the traditional way of women during those days.  He thought she was sickly or insane.  By giving her room to do what she wanted, her husband was introducing her to the independant life and she was able to esacpe her married life.  She saw how it was to be independant as she moved into her own home down the street form her large mansion.  She was away from callers, the large mansion, and being a housewife.  She thought she would find independance in taking care of her own peaceful and small house.  During this time, she had an affair with a young man in town with a bad reputation for being with women promiscuously.  Edna gave in to Alcee Arobin.  However, he was not who she thought she loved.  She truely loved Robert Lebrun.  He was her true soulmate she thought.  Edna went from her husband Leonce, to Alcee, to Robert.  She tried to gain her independance and her freedom.  In the end, she was still controlled and  her feelings were controlled.  She realizes that her life is really revolved around men.  She is not her own independant self.  She thinks to  herself that their will always be another Robert Lebrun.  The author implys many things about Edna experiences and transformation.  The reader easily sees the transformation that Edna goes through because of the interesting story line.  I believe that Edna makes her final esacpe of her old life.  She leaves for Grand Isle.  It is he peaceful place where she spent her summers in some kind of happiness.  She leaves behind her children, he r husband, and her lovers.  She attempts to truley free herself and attempt independance through killing herself.  She drowns herself in the ocean that she learned to love the summer before.  I think  that Edna has her last happy moment in life through killing herself and escaping society and her life.

“Recitatif” by Toni Morrison

The story “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison was a great example of postmorderism.  The story is based on two young girls who live together in a orphanage.  Throughout the story memories and experiences that happened changes from person to person.  The author keeps things from us so that we experience only one of the girls ideas and feelings throughout the story.  The story is first person perspective and the reader follows the young girl Twyla.  Twyla and Roberta meet at the orphanage St. Bonoventur when they are young because their parents can not take care of them.  Both girls are there for the same reason but their parents have different reasons for sending them there.  Twyla’s mother is a dancer and can not take care of her and spend time with her.  Roberta’s mother is sick and is not well enough to care for her.  Her mother is also very religious and disagrees with Twyla’s mother.  The author does not reveal the girl’s ethnicities.  However, there are some phrases and images that can lead the reader to think one is white and one is black.  The author confuses you and does not give the true answer though.  Throughout their time in St. Bonnys, the girls grow very close and stick together.  There are a group of girls that are bullys and tourture some of the girls there.  A worker there, Maggie, is harrased by the group and Twyla and Roberta are there to witness it.  When the girls grow up and seperate they each live their own sepertate lives with no contact with eachother.  They run in to eachother a few times in a diner, a grocery store, and then one day when Roberta is picketing because of the civil rights movement at the time.  They learn that they grew into completely different people but that they still had some things in common.  They both do not remember what really happened to the girl Maggie.  Twyla thinks that she was beat by the older girls.  Roberta argues that Twyla and her really were the ones who beat her.  Twyla does not agree and can not imagine hurting Maggie.  They fight about many things but compete during the integration that occured with their children’s school.  In the end, Roberta admitts that they were not the ones that hurt Maggie.  She felt guilty trying to convince Twyla that that was what really happened.  She also admitts that she felt like she wanted to kick Maggie that day and join in.  She felt guilty for feeling that way and said that it was as good as doing it.  They were standing their watching so they were a part of it.  They did nothing to stop it.  I think that the author does a good job of omitting the ehtnicity of Maggie, Twyla, and Roberta.  You learn to understand what they all went through without the color of their skin.  Twyla had a touch time growing up.  She worked at a diner for many years and started a family.  You could think that she is black.  However, in the beginning I had a sense that she was white.  Roberta, which I thought was black, then seemed like she was white in the end.  She married into a wealthy family and had nice clothes and cars.  Twyla was jealous of her nice things in life.  Based on the time period during the civil rights movement there were many problems with integration and equal rights.  It was interesting to see though that despite their ethnicity, the two girls grew up as great friends and still made a connection as adults.

“The Moths” by Helena Maria Viramontes

“The Moths” by Helena Maria Viramontes was full of imagery and told an interesting story about a granddaughter and her connection with her mother and grandmother.  The narrator in the story, the granddaughter, at first seems to be a young girl.  She is immature and acts out.  She throws bricks at her siblings and does not listen to her mothers commands.  She is not the girly girl that her sisters are.  She is not connected to her family and seems like the outcast.  She is more connected to her grandmother.  Through her developing relationship with her grandmother, the reader gets the sense that she is much older.  She has much more responsibility and seems more grown up.  The granddaughter is in charge of taking care of her sickly grandmother.  They form a close relationship and the young girl feels like her grandmother is the closest person to her.  Her grandmother teaches her things and she learns life lessons.  As her grandmother becomes more and more ill, the girl expresses her feelings and explains the horrible things that she sees as her grandmother is near death.  She is the one who has the task of taking care of her grandmother after her death.  She cleans her vomit, lifts her body to the bathroom, and washes her in the tub.  The imagery the author explains creates a serious gruesome picture of her grandmothers dead body and the aftermath of her death.  The girl is the older more mature women who is taking care of her grandmothers body.  In the scene of the girl washing her grandmother in the tub, she explains the gray  moths floating up above her.  The moths are flying around the single light in the bathroom.  This to me symbolizes the transformation occuring and death.  The young girl’s grandmother explained to her that the moths lay in your soul and slowly eat your spirit.  In death, the moths freed her of her body and her spirit left.  The image of the moths escaping her grandmother’s body represented to final escape of her spirit and the only thing left was her outer shell, her body.  During the strong religious images throughout the story, there are many examples of how the young girl did not have faith.  She enters the church but is not comfortable and leaves.  However, at the end of the story there is the image of her washing her grandmother.  To me, it represented her “washing” her grandmother of evil and death.    She also compares her grandmother to go, “I always felt her gray eye on me.  It made me feel, in a strange sort of way, safe and guarded and not alone.  Like God was supposed to make you feel.”.  She has a lot of respect for her grandmother and what she knows.  There were many strong images, religioius symbols, and references of dark to light.    There was definitely transformation in her grandmothers death to the afterlife and in the transformation of the little girl to the mature care-giver.  The young girl also changes in that when she was young she did not care about her family or being connected to them.  However, in her grandmother’s death, she wished for her mother to be there.  There was good and evil in her grandmothers death.  She suffered so long with her cancer but then as she died and the moths left her body, she was free of the pain and trama.

“Where are you going, Where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates’ story “Where are you going, Where have you been?” was a very terrofying and eye-opening story.  The main character Connie in the story is naive and shallow.  She sees everyone by their appearence only.  She is not the type of girl to appreciate a good personality.  If a person looks good, then she likes them.  She is obseessed with appearances and her mother finds Connie staring at herself in mirrors seldomly.  The story is set in the 1960’s in a normal American suburban town.  During the hot summer, Connie and her friends go out to the mall and the drive in movies.  She wants to get the attention of the older good looking boys from her school.  She will do anything to feel wanted and liked.  She dresses older than she is and tries to act grown up.  She is just an ordinary teenager wanting to grow up fast.  Ironically the antagonist Arnold Friend comes along and puts Connie in a nightmare.  Her dream of being admired by all the boys turns into a nightmare.  Arnold Friend is a strang man who masks his true idenity so that he can draw young girls to him.  He even has outdated sloagans on his car and looks to be wearing makeup to help him look younger and tanned.  He is really trying to take Connie.  I thin that he wants to rape her or even kill her.  He come with a sidekick to come try and take Connie away from her home, family, and innocence.  Arnold “Friend” is not the friend that Connie was looking for.  He says strange and horrible things to her that scare her and convince her that she has no where to go and that she is helpless to his power.  Psychologically I think that Arnold Friend took ahold of Connie using fear and intimidation.  Connie had no phone to use, no family near, and no neighbors to hear her cry.  She was trapped with a rapist.  The story foreshadows Arnold Friends true motives when Connie sees him when she was out on a date at the drive in movies.  Arnold Friend marks her with an X and says that he is going to get her.  He seems innocent enough her Connie at the time but there is a strange sense of doom that I saw as a reader.  The character of Arnold Friend had too many strange details.  It looked like he had something stuffed in his boots to make him look taller, he had makeup running on his face, it seemed like he had a wig on, and he spoke with strange comments and outdated phrases.  It seems like he easily found Connie and destroyed her life.  However, I think that Arnold Friend took his time and gathered information about Connie so that he could easily gain her trust.  He used her weaknesses against her.  She trusted him quickly and admired him for how he was dressed not on how he was acting towards her.  I believe that she was too young and innocent to understand the true task that Arnold Friend was trying to complete.

“Rape Fantasies” by Margaret Atwood

“Rape Fantasies” was a very eye opening story for me.  The story is 1st person narrative and the main characters are in an office lunchroom chatting and eating their lunch.  They are all sitting around a table looking at a magazine article titled “Rape, ten things to do about it”.  They women are shy about the topic and sort of embarrased to  be talking about the subject.  They warm up to the idea of divulging their own fantasies about rape.  The character Chrissy bravely asks each woman if they ever had a rape fantasy and what was it about.   They start discussing the topic and Darlene tells the group do not go out alone and put yourself in that position.  She believes that as a women you are putting yourself in a dangerous position if you go outside by yourself or are independant.  I disagree with her statement that she tells to the group.  She makes it seem that no women should ever walk the streets alone or else she is forcing herself into a rape situation and making herself an easy target.  The women are not the problem, the sick men are.  The women disribe some of their rape fantasies.  One women describes her fantasie of a man dressed in black scaling the side of the building on a rope.  He comes in through her balcony.  She makes it seem mysterious and exciting.  A rape is neither of these things.  Another story one of the women describe is of a man walking in the woman’s apartment and meeting her in the bathroom.  She is in the tub and he undresses and gets in with her.  To me the characters are naive and unrealistic.  They are describing some kind of romantic story of a mysterious stranger coming into their home and “making love” to them instead of a gruesome rape story.  They are fantasizing about that other man, the stranger, not about a rapist.  A real rape would be horrifying, full of anxiety, and difficult to ever live with.  The narrator explains their story about their fantasy.  The stranger that all the other women described as mysterious would really be unattractive, clumsy, evil, and full of problems.  She seems like the type of women who is more realistic about the experience.  From the views of the other women, I got a sense that all of them blame themselves and believe it is their own action that is making this happen.  Women feel responsible for when things go wrong.  In today’s society, women are made to feel like they have control over what went wrong and if they do go wrong it is our fault.  However, we also hear that men are the controlling ones and women are weak.  Both statements give the wrong idea towards women.  Instead of comparing the rape to fantasies, the characters must thing realistically about the situation.  It would be a terrifying and horrible experience that no one can be prepared for.  However, to keep ourselves safe there are some ways to protect outselves.  There is mase, use of sharp objects, our voice, and noticing when situations are uncomfortable.  Women can be strong and turn situations around.  There just must be more information given to women about rape situations and ways to protect ourselves in any danger.  Atwood’s story was shocking and made you think.  The women in the story were naive but they can also portray real women today.  This story makes you wonder if women know the truth about rape and how to defend themselves.  Women can not have some romantic fantasy of rape.

“Mannequin” by Jean Rhys

“Mannequin” was an interesting story to me about a young girl in Paris learning her way through modeling.  I like that the author described so many types of girls that the main character meets along her journey through the solon.  The main character Anna is the “mannequin”.  I see the term mannequin as being fake, plastic, and a creation of man.  Anna’s dream is to be one of the top mannequins and make a name for herself.  However, she learns that everyone in charge of her tells her what to do and how to do it.  Her life seems to be run by everyone but herself.  She even has a mother figure who watches over her and the other mannequins, Madame Pecard.  She tells them they can not smoke, can not act out, and can not be anything but what the clients what them to be.  She is a tyrant to the girls.  I see her as wanting the girls to be their best and also to make money.  The mannequins are the models for the clothes.  They stand in front of buyers and try to get them to buy the clothes that they are showing.  The theme that I saw in the story is Identity.  Does Anna really want to be this type of person?  She has to follow the rules and regulations  of how to live and act every second.  Throughout the story Anna is trying to find her way through the building that she works.  This is a symbol of a labyrinth.  She is running trying to find her way throught the building and her life.  She has to make her way through the world and find her own identity.  Another symbol mentioned in the story is the human flowers.  The mannequins and the way they look must be beautiful all the time, fresh, and young.  They are seen as flowers and they must keep up appearences to make it in their line of business.  Each of the girls that she meets of fellow mannequins, have their own characteristics.  The author makes me see that each girl can relate to a “type” of girl in real life.  They all fit in their certain roles.  There was a tomboy, a strange looking beauty, a gorgeous blonde, and an exotic girl.  They all were beautiful in their own way.  I felt bad for the character of Anna because first she is looked down apon for being the new girl.  She must fight for her place and her certain “look”.  I think that she needs to learn from the others and own her personality and appearance.  In searching for her identity, she must also chose if she wants to be controlled by buyers and bosses for the rest of her life.  She will always be the person behind the clothes and something to just look at.  The mannequin business seems to me like it would be a very competitive and tiring business always trying to please everyone but yourself.  I do not know if I see Anna that way.  She seems like she is younger and more naive than the other more experienced mannequins.  She must find her own way of doing things and not get lost in her maze of finding her true identity.

Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”

“Good Country People” was an overall very interesting story for me.  The characters each had their own specific characteristics and there was a lot to the plot.  The whole idea of irony in O’Connor’s story was very shocking in the end of the story.  The family of Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell lived in the small country town of “good country people”.  Mrs. Hopewell acted judegmental and was naive towards other people.  She agrued with her daugther Hulga’s negative and philisophical attitude.  However, she was the one who was outsmarted in the end.  Hulga’s character was interesting in that she changed her name to “ugly” name.  She does not believe in the religion that her mother tried to force on her.  She acts sort of superior to the others in her home because she is very educated.  I think that Hulga feels strong in her use of knowledge that she learned as a philosophy major, however, she is insecure with her looks and wooden leg.  As the character Manly Pointer entered the story, he was at first a bible carrying “good” person.  He acted like he was from the country and believed in good country things.  Mrs. Hopewell believed in her judgement of people and that theat he was a good religious country person.  Manly Pointer’s name is very strange and ironic for his personality.  He was the villian who ends up stealing Hulga’s leg.  He tries to pursue women and corners them.  Then, he steals something from them as a keep-sake.  He stole Hulga’s leg as his prize and quickly left her.  He was the opposite of  a good country person who believed in God.  His bibles that he carried around ended up being carried around in the case where he saved the many items that he has stolen from numerous women.  The story teaches us that you never know how someone will truley be.  Everyone has their own secrets and their true personality can be hidden.  Mrs. Hopewell thought that she new things from just looking at a person and judging them herself.  She seems like the type of person to continue on judging people and continuously only following her own opinions and beliefs.  Hulga saw the true Manly Pointer and learns from her mistakes and opinions about a person.  She goes through a very uncomfortable experience with Manly and the fact that he touches her fake leg is very serious.  She is vulnerable to him and he takes advantage of her.  I think that Manly saw her as an easy target.  Hulga changes throughout the story because of the experiences she has.  I think that she was blind to many things and pushed people away because of her strong opinions.  Then, during the story a symbol of seeing through her own blindness was when Manly takes off Hulga’s glasses.  She experiences something so terrible that she is forced to see through her foolishness and pride.  It is also sad to think that the first person she lets her guard down to turns out to be the opposite of what she thought he would be.  She will probably be scarred from the experience and change her opinions on the world, which she was once so rigid against change.

“Shakespeare’s Sister” by Virginia Woolf

“Shakespeare’s Sister” to me was a story about how woman are treated and what types of oppourtunites they have compared to men.  Virginia Woolf describes a story about Shakespeare and what if he had a sister.  What kind of life would she have?  What kind of education would she be given? Would she be a playwright like her brother with the same kind of talent?  During the time of Shakespeare, his sister would live in a different kind of world compared to her male brother.  Men were allowed to wife-beat.  Women had arranged marriages from the time they were born.  If they refused to be married to their picked husband, their father would beat them.  Women were made to feel like their thoughts were stupid and that their ideas were not valued.  If Shakespeare had a sister, she would be declined from many things.  She would not be allowed to go to school and learn the things that he learned.  She would not be allowed to act and learn the stage.  Becuase she is a woman, she is not allowed in theater.  She also would not be allowed to read, learn, or write.  She would be expected to do housework, follow the rules of her family, and do the activities expected of “proper” woman.  His sister would have no chance of learning the many things that Shakespeare learned.  Therefore, if Shakespeare sister lived to grow up as he did, she would not be able to experience the same things because of her gender and would suffer.  Woolf described her story of Shakespeare’s sister and wrote that she would run away from her betrothed to be an actress and live a life that would be looked down apon by everyone.  She would not live up to the greatness of her brother.  Virginia Woolf made me think about how many things woman of the 20th century were not allowed to do and pursue.  Their entire life was planned by someone else.  They had no choices or life or their own.  Woolf encourages the readers of today to go out and accomplish things for the woman before us who were not granted the simple freedoms that we have today.  We must follow our passions and act on ideas and feelings that we had because we are allowed to and have the right to.  Simple daily activities are there for us to do if we chose.  However, woman years ago were forced to follow the same daily plans every day and do them without disagreement.  Today woman are allowed to have different opinions and ideas and act on our impulses.  We must appreciate that and not forget it.  It is interesting to me to think that Virginia wrote about all of these topics so honestly even in the time period she lived in.  I am sure that her ideas and writings could have been seen as “wrong” or “not normal”.  She went against the rules of a common woman and spoke what she thought was the truth.  Today, we read her work not understanding the restrictions that every woman had in their life.  Thanks to her we have a chance to be reminded to appreciate the freedoms we have in life and appreciate her courage to write about these things.

“Birth” written by Anais Nin

The short story “Birth” written by Anais Nin was a very interesting and emotion filled story.  The first sentence in the story was very disturbing and grabbing, “The child,” said the doctor, “is dead”.  From the beginning of the story there is a sense of despair, death, and struggle.  The woman giving birth is so exhausted that she could not force herself to push any longer in her child birth.  She was giving birth to a dead child.  Her hope of having a healthy baby is gone.  The woman is going in and out of consciousness and surrounded by annoyed and tired doctors and nurses.  They just want her to push the baby out and end their struggle.  The emotions of the doctor and nurses was anger and fear.  The doctor was mad her the woman for not pushing her hardest and trying to get the baby out as quick as they wanted her to.   The doctor thought that she was taking too long to deliver and was trying to push her to try harder.  They were treating her harshly in her tired condition.  Throughout the labor, they were impatient and annoyed at the mother even though she was fainting and devliering a dead child.  I was shocked reading that the nurse had her knee on the mothers stomach trying to help push the baby out.  They did not seem to care about the mother’s well being or how she felt during the painful ordeal.  The doctor and nurses were trying to control the labor but they could not change the fact that the woman was so exhausted.  Suddenly, the doctor is amazed when the woman on her own realizes the pushing sensation and uses the rest of her strength to deliver the baby.  On her own terms she started pushing and felt the urgency to get the baby out.  She screams, “Show me the child!” as the nurses refuse to let her see the dead baby.  I felt that the woman was strong enough to see her child in that state.  I believe she needed to at least see the child that had been growing inside of her.  She went through a tough ordeal to deliver the baby even though it was not alive.  She showed courage to deliver the baby and still want to see it.  She was a little baby girl.  The image that the author described of the baby was striking and depressing.  It made an impact as I finished reading “The Birth”.  The title “The Birth” is interesting because birth is the celebration of a new life brought into the world through reproduction.  But, through this woman’s birth of her child it was the end of the life cycle in “death”.  The mother conteplates about why she is struggling so hard and why is she still alive.  But in the end, she overcomes her thoughts and feelings and delivers the baby that she had inside of her so long.  It makes me wonder if she needed to have the baby and overcome her labor in honor of the baby who lost its life.  The story made me think of a struggle so hard and long only to have sadness and emptiness in the end.  For woman in the 20th century, I believe that they had to struggle to follow customs and norms and the rules of life, just to have nothing to themselves in the end.  They tried so hard to be the “right” kind of woman only to be just like everyone else in the end.  They could end up being lonely and with no thoughts and feelings of their own.  I connect those ideas to the birth process in the story.  “The Birth” made me feel many emotions for the woman who lost her child and for the child who does not have the opportunity to live life.

“Molly Means” by Margaret Walker

“Molly Means”, Margaret Walker

The poem “Molly Mean” represented a great theme to me.  One of the themes portrayed in the poem by Walker was about women and what labels them as “crazy” or “mad”.  Women in the 20^th century were faced with many obstacles in life.  The way they handled them were watched carefully by the people around them.  If you were a woman, you were always expected to act a certain “right” way.  The main character in the poem is defiantly not the perfect woman, wife, and mother that society makes woman strive to be. 

The main character Molly was born surrounded by superstition.  She was born with a membrane covering her face which was thought to be a sign of supernatural powers.   At birth, she was labeled a certain way.  She had no control over how she would be born, but townspeople made predictions at once of how she would grow up and what kind of person she would be.  Molly had dark hair and dark eyes.  She also was said to have seven husbands.  She had a different appearance that people feared.  And, she had many husbands which was not common and was frowned upon years ago.  The townspeople looked down upon her from the day she was born.  Because of her differences she was labeled a town witch.  She was a labeled because she did not follow the town norms.  It is sad to think of all the people who are judged every day for being different.  In today’s society, I think that difference and uniqueness should be accepted and applauded.  I think being different and expressing yourself shows that you are creative and comfortable in your own skin.  Looking past today’s norms and being your own person can only make you stronger and be a positive experience in your life.

Any woman today can be labeled or stereotyped about because of a way that they look.  If people are out of the ordinary or different, they are looked at strangely.  If everyone acts this way, the truth behind the real person will not come out.  They will not be able to get to know the person behind the different look or appearance.  There are many pressures for women to look a certain way and act a certain way.  If Molly was present in our society today, I think that she would be looked at the same way.  She would be judged for things that are different about her.  I think that Molly was wrongly looked down upon and called names.  Because she was seen as superstitious, I think that in the end of her life she began to accept the label that she was given.  I think that the town blamed her spirit for causing trouble in her town because they could use her as a scapegoat.  She was not a close part of the town so they used her to their advantage by blaming her for superstitious things that happened around town, which were really out of her control.  This story clearly showed how woman who are different can be labeled crazy and different.  Other things that woman are labeled as being mad or crazy are for not being religious, or not wanting children, or being disabled.  There are a lot of pressures on woman today and many people to judge them.