Emily Dickinson Journal 1

By Jessica Granse
March 19, 2009
"He glanced with rapid eyes, / That hurried all abroad - / They looked like frightened Beads, I thought," (lines 9-11, page 85, poem 359 [328]).

In poem 359, or 328 in Johnson’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson, she describes the simple scene of a bird she observes. This bird comes down the walk, eats an angle worm, drinks some dew, moves to let a beetle pass, looks around, and flies away after she offers him a crumb. These lines are showing the bird’s fear as he looks around.

The mark of a good writer is if you can really envision a scene just from the descriptions given. In a poet, this seems even more of a challenge, due to the shorter amount of space one has to work with, although this provides a more narrow focus of subject. Emily Dickinson definitely has achieved this talent. She is able to describe this bird’s actions and demeanor very vividly. When describing his "rapid eyes" as looking like "frightened beads", if you’ve ever witnessed a bird before, you can really imagine what this looks like. Also, in the last two stanzas she describes the graceful motion of his flying. Notice, that she uses only two lines in the first two stanzas to describe each action; The third stanza starts to bring a change as she spends a full stanza on his frightened demeanor; Then once again only two lines for her offering a crumb; But, ends the other two lines of that stanza and the last stanza all on the flying. This really is where she is stressing importance. In spending so much time on the descriptions of his fearful eyes and his flying she is trying to emphasize the point of this poem. This poem must be looked at in a discipline of eco-criticism. The third and fourth stanzas are really showing the relation of human and nature. The bird looks around at the big world in fear and her offer of the crumb scares him away. Then, her description of the flying is an emphasis on the beauty of this natural motion. She relates the way his wings move to someone in a boat saying that the wings "rowed him softer Home - / Than Oars divide the Ocean" (lines 16-17). This really is much like the way that humans travel is almost an obstruction to nature. Our oars could never be as graceful as this bird’s flying. You can much relate the flying and the bird’s fear of getting close to her to the fact that humans will never fly on their own. They cannot spread their wings and partake in this graceful act, so she sits there just witnessing it. This is what you’d expect from a naturalist point of view, but then when you consider the last two lines, she compares his gracefulness to being even better than butterflies as they "Leap, plashless as they swim," (line 20). She is placing the bird’s flight high above anything else. It’s one of her most breath-taking descriptions. If you follow the timeline of her poetry on wikipedia, this seemed to be right around the time when she experienced a transition to more themes relating life and death, while this seems to still hold ground in her period of sentimentality towards nature.

Whitman Journal 2

By Jessica Granse

March 12, 2009

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," (30).

Whitman’s poem seems to have a big struggle between the self and everyone else. He starts off the poem with these lines, which seem to be some type of explanation saying that you are he and he is you, everyone is everyone else. He puts it at the beginning of the poem, it seems to me, because it is something you should know first and foremost before diving into the meaning of the rest of the poem.

There’s a lot of confusion between whether he is talking about himself or the reader or everyone else. Some critics see him as simply egotistical. The way I see it, he is talking about not just himself, not just the reader, and not just everyone else, but how these three fit together. It seems to be a poem of unity. His first section seems to discuss that the audience and himself are all the same, physically and thoughtfully too because he says "And what I assume you shall assume," (30). This is much like saying, as humans they are both endowed with the same common sense. They both tend towards the same assumptions about the world around them because they are the same. Everyone assumes that if they are to walk off the edge of a cliff, they will inevitably fall. In the second section, he seems to be talking about the unity between himself, and thus all humans, with nature. This is why he "will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked," (31). He is saying that we are nature. He takes his clothes off because clothes aren’t nature. Humans are, though. There is a lot of emphasis by critics about the sexual content of the poem, which seems to be introduced within this section. The images of him naked in the woods and him describing the "few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms," (31) as well as some possibly phallic references, seems to be the first examples of the sexual nature of this poem. This seems to further stand for the unity between himself, or humans, and nature. Nature is a very sexual thing. On Cliffnotes, they explained this by saying that, "Sexual union is a figurative anticipation of spiritual union." I couldn’t have said it better myself. He’s using these sexual images to further the union theme that seems to be the basis of this poem. I believe this is also the reason for the sexual images in section 11 where the woman, and Whitman it seems, are watching the 28 young men bathe in the sea. I would also like to mention the child in section 6. The child asks what grass is and he says he is as clueless as the child. This again shows the unity theme by connecting the ages: this young child to the grown man. He does go on to give an explanation of him believing that grass is the child of nature. This shows another prevalent theme in the poem of age or of innocence itself and the cycle of life. The grass represents the beginning of something in nature, but at the same time it is found over the graves of the dead. This also shows a unity between nature and ourselves because no matter what it is present. This young child holds grass in his hand at the beginning of the section, but it also is present at the graves. It is present throughout our lives. There is this unity because everyone witnesses grass. It is everywhere. There are numerous examples throughout the rest of the poem to back up the theme of unity and list could go on forever.

Whitman Journal 1

By Jessica Granse

March 12, 2009

"Borne hither ere all eludes me, hurriedly, / A man, but by these tears a little boy again, / Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, / I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, / " (26).

In these lines, Whitman presents the contrast between man and boy, especially where he says "A man, but by these tears a little boy again," because it seems to be an examination of a moment of growth where a boy becomes a man.

I view this poem as an observation of this moment when a boy learns his relation to nature and learns about death, thus, in Whitman’s book, becomes a man. He seems to be observing nature very closely. He’s listening to the bird, considering what the bird is trying to express in his song and translates it. He’s also listening to the waves. This boy is using nature as a type of companion it seems. He’s all alone in nature and he simply listens and attempts to understand nature, especially when he tries to translate the bird’s song. This also seems to represent the maturing of a poet. The boy is learning to look around him and listen to what the birds and waves are saying. This is exactly what a poet must do and thus, what Whitman does. He puts this question of boy or man in this poem to show this growth. He is now a man because he has the ability of observation. He is able to see and hear all around him. He also is able to, rather than continue to cry, ask nature and try to understand the importance of himself. He calls himself a boy because of his crying, but he seems to cease when he really starts to observe nature. This is a reason that I view this poem as a poem of growth for this boy. Not only does he examine this growth of his ability to understand what is happening around him, but he also is able to present this question about the obsession the living seems to have with death. Many ask what the point is of life, and questions of this nature at one point in their life at least. In this case, I view his question of "The word final, superior to all" as a question of that nature. He listens to the waves for his answer and the return back death as the word. I think this is Whitman’s way of almost saying that’s the "Why?" in life. Everyone wonders "Why?" like why are we here? Or what’s the point of life? By the answer to the boy’s question being death, it makes me think that he’s trying to show you the irony that in life we are obsessed with death. We try to accomplish as much as possible before death, what makes one most sad is death, everyone fears death, everyone wonders what happens after death. I believe he’s showing this at the end of the poem by making death the most important and final word. Maybe he’s trying to get the lesson across that you should just enjoy life rather than being so obsessed with death. This is a really interesting lesson.

Chopin Journal 2

By Jessica Granse
March 5, 2009


"She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s," (635).

At the end of "The Awakening", we witness Edna swimming in the sea. She swims far out until she is tired and it is implied that she drowns herself. Before the end of the novel, Edna thinks about her husband, her kids, and Mademoiselle Reisz; She hears Robert saying "Goodby-because, I love you"; She thinks about Doctor Mandelet; She hears her father’s voice and Margaret’s voice; Then she hears a dog barking, a cavalry officer walking across the porch, the hum of bees and smells the pinks in the air.

Some literary critics say that Edna did not in fact drown herself, but wikipedia even states that most believe it was a suicide. I believe there is enough evidence to assume that she does, especially when it says "Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him-but it was too late; the shore was so far behind her, and her strength was gone," (625). Everything seems to go to past tense. Chopin is saying that maybe Doctor Mandelet would have understood, but that doesn’t matter anymore because she has already swam far enough out that she’d inevitably drown, so the question now would be whether it was intentional or not. I believe the statement about how foolish Mademoiselle Reisz would have thought she was because a real artist would just defy the laws of society proves the suicidal aspect of her drowning. Reisz would have not thought her as giving up unless it was a suicide. In this case, I’m pretty confident in my belief that this is a suicide. Now the next question I have is about why Chopin made the last thing she heard before the dog barking and the cavalry officer was her dad and her sister’s voices. I believe her suicide was mostly caused by her realization that no matter what, she could not be free from the restraints of society on how she must act and who she must be. This is mostly clear when she attempts to explain to Robert that she is not Mr. Pontellier’s possession at the end of chapter 36 and he doesn’t understand. After she has to rush off to be with Madame Ratignolle, she comes back to only find a note saying, "I love you. Good-by-because I love you" from Robert. I think this is one of the main things that made her realize she could never be free from her societal duties. Even when she tells the man she loves that she is free and wishes to belong to no one, but wants to be with him, she is pulled away by her duties to Madame Ratignolle since she told her that she would be there for her. By the time she gets back, it’s too late and he’s gone. His note also could imply that he believes she should follow her duties. It could be interpreted as him saying, "Good-by-because I love you", meaning that he cares. He could be saying that he knows it would be best for her if he wasn’t around, so she would get back to her duties as a wife and mother. This could make it seem that he even believes she isn’t to be free. This could have been the last straw. Her knowing that going against all these restraints still will not allow her the freedom of being with the man she does love could have put her over the edge. This I believe was really the cause of her suicide. Then one idea about the reason for Chopin to have her father and sister’s voices as the last things she hears before the sounds of her surrounding could be because her family is the first society she is placed into at birth. Her father is an authority figure, so by her hearing his voice, it’s like her remembering the first installment of these rules. This leaves the question of her sister Margaret, though. If you refer back to chapter 24, she refuses to go to her sister’s wedding. Her father says that by her not going he won’t be able to ever forgive her and he knows her sister won’t. Knowing this, I think hearing their voices is her realizing that all her family and all of her friends would not be able to accept this new her. Life would just be too hard when doing what she wants to do isolates her from everyone she loves. I think this is really why this sentence was placed at the end. It fulfills why both her sister and her father’s voices are there and gives reason for the importance of their voices.

Chopin Journal 1

By Jessica Granse

March 5, 2009

"Her white neck and a glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully," (533).

When Chopin is describing the sexually driven scene between Calixta and her lover, Alcee, in section II of "The Storm", you notice her description of Calixta also accents the paleness of the skin on her neck. I also noticed that in the beginning of "The Awakening", in chapter IV, she gives this same attribute to Adele Ratignolle when describing her as being unbelievably beautiful.

Chopin is famous for her revolutionary ideas towards feminism and her openness about female sexuality in a time where sex was viewed as a chore for women in order to please their man. It was not believed that they enjoyed it. Wikipedia attributes her strong ideas about feminism to her upbringing by strong women. Her ideas are really different from others at that time because the women she writes about have these sexual wants and needs that aren’t fulfilled within their marriage, which leads them to find these needs filled elsewhere. Although she pushes the envelope with this idea of sexual desire in women, she also keeps to a norm of how women should look. When describing the characters that are to be seen as beautiful, she sticks to certain similar characteristics. The three similarities I saw were the white neck, blue eyes, and really red lips in both Calixta of "The Storm" on page 533 and Madame Ratignolle in "The Awakening" on page 540. The description of Ratignolle is obviously over-the-top in the description of her beauty. She says that her husband would be a brute to not appreciate her and all men find her beautiful. She makes it really understandable that this character is to be found as absolutely gorgeous. Then, in "The Storm", during the scene between Calixta and Alcee, she’s describing Alcee’s desire for her and she mentions these three characteristics in her as well. By mentioning this when discussing the sexual desire between them, it emphasizes that these are things that are found sexy in her to Alcee. Back then, there wasn’t sexy, there was only "beautiful". I find it very interesting that although Chopin is presenting this brand new view of women’s sexuality, she uses really traditionally looked for physical traits in these women. In psychology class in high school, we studied the fact that there is basically a "universal beauty". This is a template for what everyone finds beautiful in a man or woman. In "Studies in the Psychology of Sex" by Havelock Ellis, which can be found on google books, he also presents these three characteristics as something that’s very consistent in what one sees as beautiful. On pages 97 and 98, he concentrates on these ideas and presents examples from different cultures that proves this true. This is how we are able to attribute this to psychological aspects of ourselves, rather than cultural. This seems like the main difference between Chopin’s ideas about society’s views on women sexuality and how she describes her characters to make them beautiful. This beauty isn’t simply a societal view, it’s a psychological trait we all seem to have, while the views on women’s sexuality is just the societal view. She changes what could be changed: the simple societal view. Another thing that shows this is the fact that even now the societal view is changed, but the valued traits remain the same. Women are able to be seen as sexual characters, but a lot of the time many women that are seen as beautiful on tv and in magazines are often, not always, but often ones with red lips, blue or light eyes, and white skin. They’re often skinny too, but that’s a whole other discussion.

Twain Journal 2

"From youth to middle age all men and all women prize copulation above all other pleasures combined, yet it is actually as I have said: it is not in their heaven; prayer takes its place," (311).

Twain, by talking through his Satan character in "Letters from the Earth", he presents the odd idea that on earth, sex is a very sought after pleasure, an obsession almost, but it does not exist in heaven. Instead there’s prayer in its place.

I found an article on commentarymagazine.com which seems to be one critic criticizing the criticism of another critic on Mark Twain. He is commenting on the first critic, Shaw, referring to Twain as a "self censoring Victorian about sex." The interesting thing about "Letters from the Earth" is that it wasn’t published until 1961, when it was written in 1909. Twain did not publish it in his lifetime and instead it was published after his death AND after his daughter’s death because she objected to its publication. She believed that it misrepresented her father’s beliefs of religion. Twain said "This book will never be published[;]. . . in fact, it couldn’t be, because it would be a felony" (Footnote No. 1 on page 307). This still does not mean the term "self censoring Victorian about sex" applies to him. The question is whether he is censoring himself. By saying the book couldn’t be published because it was a felony, he is commenting that the book would be seen as anti-religion or atheist because he does make jokes about organized religion. He talks about how these men go to church and absolutely dread it and they don’t like praying, but they do it because they believe it will get them into a heaven. He questions these beliefs or these religious practices. No one really has proof there’s a heaven and a hell and since there’s no proof of it, there’s no way of knowing how to get in. He’s commenting on how much of a waste of time these practices are. Also, by presenting this oddity that there’s no sex in heaven when it is something so obsessed over here, I think this is another comment on the weird ideas of religion. The most likely reason that I’ve heard for there being no sex in heaven is the idea that sex is to be used for reproducing. Since heaven is for people who have already lived and died, there would be no reason for sex in heaven because their way of reproduction is just by people dying and being sent to heaven. What about sex in heaven purely for pleasure? He presents this question because it’s much like religion itself. You have to do all these things you dread to get to a place where they just have these dreaded things constantly going on, and none of the greatest pleasure found here on Earth, yet they somehow believe they’d like it. There is no real logical reason behind this. He presents these questions of religion in this story, as well as the idea that prayers are constantly unanswered for a reason. In the letter from "the recording angel" to Abner, he grants only the prayers that the clouds and sun, basically continue to do what they naturally do, because by granting other prayers it would have an effect on more than just this one man. The "recording angel" says to Abner that in an attempt to make everyone happy, the prayers are basically left not granted because if anything is granted that would basically make any change, it can do much harm to others.

Twain Journal 1

By Jessica Granse
February 26, 2009

"A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail…It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn’t step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around," (Page 296).

In his criticism of Cooper’s work, Twain says that he is very repetitive in his use of the same types of tricks. One of his favorite stage tricks is making sure there is always a dry twig for someone to step on, thus giving away that person’s hiding place. Another is when he has one person follow another both in moccasins, so the follower’s tracks are then hidden in the other person’s moccasin tracks. Also, not included in this quote, but included in his criticism, Twain shows that Cooper often has one saved at the end by some miraculous event.

On his online weblog, golf writer and entertainment lawyer Jay Flemma writes a sort of critique on Twain’s "Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses", where after summarizing and commenting on it, he relates it to golf course architecture. In commenting on Twain’s criticism, he says that Twain is as well guilty of the above issues he accuses Cooper of. Now, it’s hard to be able to really tell whether this is true or not, just using the work we’ve read of Twain, so far since all we’ve read was his criticism of Cooper, his biography, and one chapter of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". This is why I’ve also done some additional research to find out what else happens in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". The way Jim is saved later in the book is because Tom Sawyer comes and reveals that his owner left him to freedom in her will and she died 2 months earlier. This is definitely not something impossible and miraculous. It’s pure luck and coincidence. Huck’s father’s death is the same thing: pure luck and coincidence. This is why I don’t believe he follows the theory set forth by Flemma that he uses miraculous events to save a character. The conclusion in this story is not at all similar to the miraculous event he mentions by Cooper where the people that shoot cover the previous person’s bullet and that he’s able to see it from so far away. In relation to the moccasins type of trip and the twig, I see evidence to back this. When Huck tries to escape the duke in chapter 31, he just waits for a good opportunity and runs for it. Later, when they try to free Jim, Huck, Tom, and Jim just run for it. There doesn’t seem to be any similar tricks to the dry twig or the mocassins. The instance in chapter 31, Huck is unnoticed as he runs away, but Jim is gone. In the later instance, they are all noticed because the farmers were already trying to catch the slave stealers, although their identities weren’t yet revealed. There doesn’t seem to be any relation between the reasons they were caught. I don’t seem to see Twain at fault for any of the issues he accuses Cooper of. His characters talk how they are expected to sound consistently, there are no miraculous events really, no repeated tricks, and none of the other issues Cooper had. This does show why Twain was such an important writer of his time. He seemed almost flawless. His dialect was good, his stories believable, and he had a wonderful way with words. Nothing like Cooper.

Wharton Journal

By Jessica Granse
February 19, 2009

"With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the instinct had developed. She was ‘as easy as an old shoe’-a shoe that too many feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension in many different directions," (841).

The fact that Waythorn’s new wife knows how to act in a way her husband would like is a direct result of experience from her previous two marriages. As he figures this out, it starts to eat away at him. This is an important observation of human nature. It is not enough for one to do things for another, but it’s also important how they know what you would like and their intention behind it or it loses all sincerity and thus is no longer a good thing.

"The Other Two" is a good portrayal of newlyweds, as well as on the complications of a new marriage after divorce. At the beginning of the story, Wharton really shows the feeling of a newly wed couple when Alice brings up that her ex-husband is demanding to come to the house for his weekly visit since the daughter’s sick. You notice that there was a little tension in the way they talk about it. When Alice brings it up, she’s very timid about it and apologetic. Waythorn seems unhappy, but says for her not to worry because there’s nothing he can really do about it and because they just got back from their honeymoon, so he didn’t want to start our their marriage fighting. From speaking with my mom, this is much like being newlyweds. You walk on eggshells so as to not start a fight the first while of the marriage and try harder than you do for the rest of it because you become more comfortable. They really present this in this instance. He’s just trying to be happy with the feeling he made the right choice because she’ll be a good wife because she’s so calm and level-headed as well as beautiful and caring. The truth is, though, she’s too good of a wife. Because she has had so much experience from her previous two marriages, she is able to put on a perfect wife appearance out of practice. She slips up by putting cognac in his coffee, which from watching her previous husband at his luncheon that day, he knows that it’s something he would do. He realizes that she was so used to putting cognac in Varick’s coffee that she was completely on auto-pilot when she put it in his. This pokes at him and pokes at him because he starts to question every single action of hers as being something she did because she was conditioned that way by her previous husbands, rather than something she did because she knew that would be how he wanted it. This drives him to grow a resentment for these kind actions because although he disliked them for them being the actions she did for her previous husbands, but he can’t say anything about it, because she plays the part so well. She is showing him this loving, caring wife whom does not get upset easily, but he resents it and it sickens him because he doesn’t feel like it’s sincere. She does these actions because she knows it’s what would please a man, not particularly that it would please him specifically. It’s enough to make one feel as if it doesn’t matter to Alice who wears the ring that matches the one on her finger. She has the dream of being happily married and being the perfect wife, but she doesn’t show any particulars as to whom the husband must be. This seems to relate a lot to Wharton’s personal life because of her own marriage. Her biographer, R.W.B. Lewis, says that she stayed in her unhappy marriage for 28 years for "moral conservatism and her devotion to family ties and the sanctities of tradition than to personal affection". This is a possibility for Alice. It’s possible that she married Waythorne in a third attempt at trying to have a perfect marriage. By doing all the right things, and what she believes Waythorne would like, because her other husbands liked these things, she believes maybe she can achieve this type of marriage. It says in Wikipedia that her writing style is characterized by a suble use of dramatic irony. In this case it’s ironic because the very things Alice does to make her husband happy, are what makes him miserable.

James Journal

Jessica Granse
February 19, 2009

"’The young ladies of this country have a dreadfully pokey time of it, so far as I can learn; I don’t see why I should change my habits for them,’" (419).

When Winterbourne brings up how improper it is that Giovanelli invites her to walk about the Pincio at night, Daisy responds by saying the she doesn’t really care how it looks. She thinks the ladies in Rome are too uptight and she would rather do as she pleases than conform to their ways. This is central theme of this book: her rebellion against the ways of the society.

Wikipedia brings up the importance of the characters’ names in the novella. Daisy is a beautiful young girl, whom talks freely and does whatever she chooses. Her name is a springtime flower, which represents the character’s beauty and youth as well as her absence of inhibition. Winterbourne, on the other hand, is more uptight and adult. Daisies die in the winter and after meeting Giovanelli, Daisy dies as she gets malaria from being out all hours of the night with him. Another thing I find really interesting is the fact that flowers represent purity a lot of the time, such as when one says to "deflower" someone would be to take their virginity. Daisy is a young girl and everyone’s concern in the story is her purity and innocence. When they see her out with a man at all hours of the night with no other chaperone, it makes them question her purity. It’s very improper for a girl to go around with gentlemen friends, let alone foreign gentlemen friends, during the night without her mother or some other chaperone. I think her name definitely also represents this question of purity which really is a main theme to the story. Her purity is questioned because of her careless actions. She does not consider the propriety of her own actions in society’s point of view. Instead, she is more concerned with having fun and simply making herself happy rather than worrying about other people, such as Mrs. Costello, and her reputation. This causes the rest of society to think she is impure because of her having so many gentlemen friends and being seen alone with them various times at night. This leads to the end where Winterbourne discovers that she is, in fact, still innocent. Daisy’s mother tells Winterbourne that she wanted him to know she wasn’t engaged. Then, Giovanelli also comments that she was "’…the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable.’ And then he added in a moment, ‘And she was the most innocent,’" (428). He mentions that she wouldn’t have married him. Even her mother believed she may have been engaged, simply due to her actions, but society, and her mother, was wrong. This shows how one’s actions could give the wrong impression to the rest of society. James is really known for his writing on psychological matters, such as why people do the things that they do, as well as how Europeans fit into American society and vice versa. This is an excellent example of this type of theme. He’s discussing an American girl in a European setting and how her actions and carelessness for the rules of society ultimately affects her. Due to her inability to conform to the European ways, she meets her doom. Since she ignores that the observers consider her actions very improper, in the end she dies because of those same actions. They say it’s improper for her to be walking about with a gentleman at night, but she ignores them and ends up with malaria. Her rebellion from society’s rules is the cause of her demise.

Crane The Open Boat Journal

By Jessica Granse
February 12, 2009

"None of them knew the color of the sky," (1000).

As was brought up in class, this is one of the most talked about topics of this story. Why don’t they know the color of the sky and why does he open the story this way?

This is a beautiful sentence that introduces the feeling of gloom and desolation, but the question on everyone’s mind is, what does he really mean? I like the idea that he could be using this as a metaphor for the loss of faith by the men in the dingey. By "the color of the sky" he might be referring to the intention of the sky, meaning the intention of God. It’s like he’s saying we just don’t know what’s up there. Is God or heaven up there? It can also be asking, assuming there is a God up there, what his mood is. Is he angry or happy, or does he feel like saving them or not? This I would take more from the keyword of "color", because colors stand for many different things and ultimately they stand for moods, because they can affect your mood. All professional house decorators know that rooms painted red makes one feel more stressed out. I painted my room a bright, cartoon blue and I’ve felt that since then I have felt more optimistic and always seem to have a better mood in my room. In this way, he can mean the color of the sky, like the mood of the sky. Most people see the sky, because of the vastness of it, as something bigger, something God-like. This relates back to "the color of the sky" meaning the intention or plan. This is also a probable meaning because they’re in a position to be losing hope. They’re stuck on a tiny dingey floating out at sea, trying to get themselves closer to shore, but it feels like a hopeless task and the correspondent, who seems to play the part of the narrator, expresses this loss of hope when he questions the gods of the seven seas, "If I am going to be drowned-if I am going to be drowned-if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees," (1011). He is trying to ask what the point is to all his efforts to get back to shore, if he’s just going to drown anyhow. This could also be a metaphor for the question of life. As mentioned on Answers.com, "being at the mercy of fate has demonstrated to them how wrong their previous beliefs about their own importance had been." If you apply it to life and death rather than this specific situation, it’s like asking what is the point of all the efforts and struggles you go through in life, when you’re just going to die in the end? Everyone dies and this is an inevitable fact. Some apply themselves and do great things in life like find cures for diseases, to prolong death, and some whittle their lives away in front of a TV set on the couch, but what is it all for? For the most part, we just help ease the lives of future generations and leave behind a legacy, but no one really knows what the point of it all really is. Religion often tries to apply reason behind it by saying you will get rewarded with a good afterlife, but I believe this is mostly out of the fear that all our efforts are pointless. In this story, he’s presenting these questions to us, most likely due to his fear of dying himself when the Commodore sank. He’s possible asking what the intention of God is and whether we’re just his play-thing or there’s a reason for us.

Crane Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 12, 2009

"Evenings during the week he took her to see plays in which the brain-clutching heroine was rescued from the palatial home of her guardian, who is cruelly after her bond, by the hero with the beautiful sentiments," (975).

During the week, Pete would take Maggie to see plays. All of them had the basic story line of this girl being saved from her guardian by this elegant hero character. This is much like them going to see plays. Pete comes and takes her from her drunken mother out to see a play, where she can forget her troubles and dream of it all being resolved.

Since the plays are much like her current situation, she enjoys them, because they always end with the heroine being saved. This helps her to imagine herself being saved. While Pete was taking her out to the theatre and the museum, she was mentally saved from the life she is stuck in, until her mother and Jimmie start saying she’s "gone the deh devil". She believes that by going with Pete, he will protect her from this life, but he ends up leaving her for a "woman of brilliance and audacity" named Nellie. Maggie believed in the story of the play, where she is saved by the "hero with the beautiful sentiments", but after all, it’s just a play. Pete seems to be this wonderful charming man to her because he is disinterested in things she thinks are absolutely unbelievable, such as plays and museums. She thinks this makes him really sophisticated because he isn’t easily amazed and he says nice things to her thus why he’s the "hero with the beautiful sentiments", because he asks her to come away and have a "hell of a time". Maggie’s main objective in this story is to escape her current situation. She is unlike her brother and mother in the way that they all drink heavily and curse at each other whenever they come home, but you’ll notice that Maggie doesn’t take part in this. She, instead, stands on the sidelines or is the one being yelled at. Because she doesn’t believe it has to be that way, she wants to escape. In the end, her escape doesn’t work out because Pete leaves her for Nellie, so she is left poor again, and ends up on the street as a prostitute until she is murdered. This is why this novella is considered an example of naturalism, as stated on Wikipedia. She tries to escape her current way of life, but is controlled by her heredity and environment, so she is stuck in the situation she tries to escape. Fate has sealed her to be in a certain situation because that is the situation she was born into. When she tries to escape, she just ends up worse than before. Her heredity and the fact that she was a kid growing up on these streets doomed her to be at the mercy of Pete for an escape, but as soon as he found someone better, she was worse than in the beginning.

Ruiz Journal

By Jessica Granse

February 6, 2009

"’I say PERHAPS, because, in my humble opinion, we ought to prefer cattle raising and fruit growing for our county. We should make these our specialty,’" (98).

Don Mariano is the one to propose a change in the line of work for the squatters in "The Squatter and the Don". He represents a change of life. This line is taken from his attempts at convincing them that it’s a better idea to raise cattle and grow fruit due to unpredictable weather that makes it difficult to grow grain crops.

On Wikipedia, under Maria Ruiz de Burton, the description of "The Squatter and the Don" the closest mention of the type of writing it would be put under is in these few sentences,

"The novel focuses on the demise of a heroic society (the aristocratic Californios), but differs from other nineteenth century romances in that it is not written from the perspective of the conquerors, portraying a "backwards" people constrained by an outmoded order and unable to cope in the modern state. On the contrary, "The Squatter and the Don" is written from the perspective of the conquered, questioning whether the new order indeed brought progress to California, and if so, at what cost considering the immorality of the invaders: the squatters, the monopolists, the corrupt political leaders, and their legislation."

There is mention that its focus is "the demise of a heroic society" and that the novel questions the new order and the immortality of the invaders. This is very much true, which is one of the reasons I would look at this piece of work as a piece of regional writing. It focuses on a change in the way of life of a group of people, which is exactly what regional writing does. It questions the change and exposes the feelings behind those that changed their way of life and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. This is evident in the section we read. Don Mariano presents this idea of switching to fruit and cattle raising. This makes him a sort of symbol of change. Since he is already in that line of work, he represents what they could be, only since there will be no more issues of killing the cattle, they would be even better off. He is willing to loan them the money and cattle to get this new production set up, which shows that he’s pretty well-off financially, at least that was the sense I got from the reading. This is why he also represents the possible wealth they could make in switching over. They fear this change, though. Mathews, Hughes, and Gasbang are all examples of this. When they speak up, especially Mathews, they’re against this idea. They present all the problems with it. This is most likely due to a mixture. The fear that the change could be a trick and they could end up in debt, like he mentioned near the end of the reading, mixed with the fact that he just doesn’t want to agree with Don Mariano, because he’s of a different race. No matter what Don Mariano proposed, some would reject it due to the fear of change and the fear of a different race.

Jewett Journal

By Jessica Granse

February 02, 2009

"What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake?" (528).

The big "action" for this story would be Sylvia’s big decision at the end of the story of whether to give away the location of the white heron, where surely the boy will shoot it for his collection, or to keep it a secret, and in doing so, save its life. It leaves you to question why she chose the bird’s life over the ten dollars the boy offered and the friendship they could have had. Was it just her innocent conscience, or was it something more?

In the story, Sylvia is described as someone very in tune with nature. She lives with her grandmother and Mistress Moolly, an old cow. At the beginning it mentions that she has no playmates, so she sees the cow’s hiding as a way to play hide-and-seek, and she plays this with joy. When she finally gets a chance to meet another kid, the boy that was hunting, she is very afraid of him, because she is generally afraid of people. This is probably why she is so dedicated to nature. You would think it strange that she chooses to remain loyal to this white heron at the end, rather than to the boy. Many critics have questioned this. I found some light on this subject from an article of criticism on this story by Cynthia Bily on Answers.com,

"Critics have offered many different interpretations about the meaning of this choice. The hunter offers a chance for money, for fulfilled womanhood, for human companionship, for sex. (Although Kelley Griffith, Jr. points out the inherent absurdity in assuming that this temporary partnership between the man and the child could become permanent.) Whatever he represents, it is clear that if Sylvia chooses him she will lose something of herself. She can remain a ‘lonely country child,’ or she can serve, follow, and love him ‘as a dog loves.’"

There is the question of whether the boy implies a continuous friendship, or he wants to pay her the ten dollars, shoot the heron, and leave. Either way, you can see within this paragraph of criticism that she is seen as a representative of nature in some sense, such as she feels she will "lose something of herself" by telling the boy the bird’s location and there is the simile of a dog being related to the possible relationship she could have with the boy. This simile is straight from the story, as you can see by the quotations. One other reason it seems she’s a representation of nature is her name. In this same article of criticism, I found out that her name is from the Latin word for "wood". These are all subtle hints by Sarah Orne Jewett that she represents nature, so by fearing people it’s much like she’s making a statement on how nature fears us. We have chopped down trees that were inhabited by animals and have shot them, so you can see why nature would be afraid of us. When you go up to a squirrel it runs away, much like as the boy came up to her, she hid from him. This story is her stating the fear that nature has for us, because like the boy, we come trampling and shoot at whatever animal we want, simply for our collection, and this is why animals run and hide from us much like Sylvia did from him.

Sui Sin Far Journal

By Jessica Granse

January 30, 2009

“The Little One looked up into his mother’s face in perfect faith. He was engaged in the pleasant occupation of sucking a sweetmeat; but that did not prevent him from gurgling responsively,” (880).

This is an example of Sui Sin Far’s style of writing and ability to describe, by describing beautifully how Little One interacts with his mother.

Sui Sin Far is not only known as a talented and wonderful writer, she’s also known as the first Eurasian writer to try to bring the experiences of the Chinese immigrants of the nineteenth century to life in a way that the people of America could really see what they’re going through and where they come from. Although it was hard to do this and be published, she stuck to her identity, even though some told her she needs to cash in on her nationality. They wanted her to “act more Chinese”. As it was put in an excerpt from “Sentimentalism and Sui Sin Far” I found online, “Perhaps it was because some ‘funny people’ saw Sui Sin Far, the earliest known American author of Chinese ancestry to write in English, struggling to survive and publish that they advised her to ‘trade upon’ her ‘nationality.’” Luckily, she didn’t follow this advice or we wouldn’t be able to get the insight into the experiences of these immigrants that we do in works by her such as “In the Land of the Free”. The thing that makes her work so interesting is that it comes with a big piece of history from it. Rather than simply hearing what happened when the Chinese were immigrating here, you get to witness one case first hand in this piece. It also has the subtle message, at the beginning, that you can’t judge someone from another country right off the bat because you really don’t know what they’re going through or who they are. At the beginning of “In the Land of the Free”, Lae Choo is speaking to her son in Chinese. She talks in a way that’s more on the elegant side, such as when she says, “’Yes, my olive bud; there is where thy father is making a fortune for thee. Thy father! Oh, wilt thou not be glad to behold his dear face. ‘Twas for thee I left him,’” (880). She has the air of Shakespeare and is able to talk very smoothly and soothingly. One she arrives in America and tries to speak English, her language becomes more choppy- and less intelligent-sounding, “’No, you not take him; he my son too,’” (881). This is simply due to the fact that she knew little English. Hom Hing, on the other hand, understood and spoke English very well, so his responses were more beautiful such as, “’When my wife told to me one morning that she dreamed of a green tree with spreading branches and one beautiful red flower growing thereon, I answered her that I wished my son to be born in our country, and for her to prepare to go to China,’” (881). This may also be because at this point he was still trying to reason with the officer, while Lae Choo didn’t really understand what the problem was and was fearful also due to her maternal instinct. She hadn’t been away from the son for a whole night since he was born. It seems as though this is to say, although one may not speak the language well, if you speak to them in theirs, it might be some of the most beautiful stuff you’ve ever heard. When it comes to Sui Sin Far, she has learned the language so well that she is able to write just as she would in a native tongue, thus the reason she is able to write so beautifully herself.

Cahan Journal

By Jessica Granse

january 29, 2009

“’You know that I have on my tongue what I have on my lung, Tamara. I mean what I say, and we want no match-makers. America is now treife to me,’” (803).

Asriel is having problems with Shaya and Flora’s want to conform to American ways.

“The Imported Bridegroom” is obviously much about the hardships of moving from one culture to a completely different one. It includes hardships like homesickness and learning the new language and concepts, but the most prominent subject seems to be that of cultural identity. I found an article that gives a discussion of it in more complicated terms and more depth, so I would like to take the idea of interpreting it in terms of interior identity and public identity, but in a much simpler way. The main point from the article on the Article Archives website, “Marvels of Memory: Citizenship and Ethnic Identity in Abraham Cahan’s ‘The Imported Bridegroom’” is explained in one particular sentence, “Particularly in the central character of Asriel Stroon in "The Imported Bridegroom" can we see the narrative of a lost interior identity, but we can also delineate a recuperated public identity through Asriel's son-in-law Shaya.” Now, the first question that came to my mind was why we were studying Asriel and Shaya but not Flora. Easily, I figured out that in order to have a real discussion about the separation of identity between interior and public caused by the move from Pavly to New York, they would have had to experience this move. Flora, however, was born in America and thus did not first have the exposure to living in this really Jewish culture in Pavly and then being removed from it and put into this American society. Instead, all of her experience of Pavly was secondhand through her dad. He reinforced values of the Jewish religion upon her and her friends also followed these values by taking these broken English-speaking men from Pavly as their husbands. The thing he fails to remember is that they are now in America. They’re in a different place and there’s a different norm. In America, it is allowed for a girl to marry any man, of any religion, of any occupation, as she chooses. Alternatively, within this Jewish culture, a girl of one social class, depending on her father’s occupation, is to marry a man of that same class and occupation as well as for him to be Jewish. This is unimportant to Flora. Instead, it’s more important to her that the man is an American doctor than that he’s Jewish. Flora is dealing with more of an independence issue than identity, because she wants the ability to think for herself, while her father wants her to stick to tradition. Shaya and Asriel then are what we’re left with. Shaya must choose whether to go with his new passion and in turn obey Flora, or stick to tradition and obey Asriel. He is burdened with the difference between what he was and what he wants to become. Asriel has no confusion between whether he wants to stick to tradition or change, because he’s all for tradition. He does however have a confusion stemmed from Shaya and Flora’s want to conform to American ways.

Zitkala Sa Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 23, 2009

“Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one,” (Page 1118).

This quote is only one of the times in Zitkala Sa’s biography writing that she expresses her feelings of isolation, which is the reoccurring and main theme.

The works by Zitkala Sa that were biographical were stories about a culture and about the wrongs done to that culture, but ultimately they were stories of isolation and loneliness. At the beginning of Impressions of an Indian Childhood, she’s a very happy girl. She enjoys spending time with her mother and hearing Indian tales. It all changes with the introduction of the missionaries to her life. Her excitement over the red apples and going on the “iron horse” with them leads to the first disappointment in a line of letdowns. Her first feeling of isolation in this book seems to be when all of her friends are able to go East, but her mother doesn’t want her to. She is isolated from her friends in this sense, but only temporarily. When she finally is able to go in The School Days of an Indian Girl, she is stared at by the white people, or palefaces, as she likes to refer to them, making the ride not so easy. Due to the way she’s dressed, their stares announce her isolation from white society. Within the first day she’s isolated because she doesn’t know the routine and what the bell means in the classroom. The isolation from the whites seems to continue while she’s at that school, although she seems to find some friendly faces among the Indian children. The isolation doesn’t pause when she goes home. On her visits, she is set separate from her mom because she is taught to speak, read, and write English, while her mother doesn’t know any English. Also, when her brother goes to a party and she isn’t invited. She even feels as though nature has isolated her, as expressed in the above quote. The isolation seems to be a theme for the full length of these short biographies. In college, it’s because of her being called a “squaw”, although she does get a little more inclusion from the oratorical contest. Even as a schoolteacher she is alone in the sense that she understands what it means for an Indian child to be Americanized, while the white people who come through the school are amazed at the productions these supposed savages produce, but are unable to understand the pain they had to go through in order to become so “civilized”. Zitkala Sa is pulled from her culture in an attempt to teach her a separate culture and she ends up being all alone in her personal mixture of the cultures. In American Narratives by Molly Crumpton Winter, found on the google book search, she discusses the fact that this was normal for the Indian children in the boarding schools at this time. This isolation was a normal feeling among these children. This whole big group of people were all forced to feel alienated just for the goal of making them more “white”.

Winnemucca Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 22, 2009

“And by-and-by the dark children grew into a large nation; and we believe it is the one we belong to, and that the nation that sprung from the white children will some time send some one to meet us and heal all the old trouble,” (503).

This is a small part from where Winnemucca’s grandfather is telling the creation story about how the whites and the Paiutes came to be separated. In the story, there was a boy and girl that were white and a boy and girl that were Indian. Due to their bickering, they were separated by their father, so the whites were considered the long-lost siblings of the Paiutes by this story.

Winnemucca’s story is basically an Indian’s account of the disturbance that took place when they met with the white men. In telling this, she also gives you a sense of the Indian traditions she was raised with. Something very popular with pretty much all cultures, is the idea of creation stories. We went over some of these in the last quarter, such as one from the Iroquois culture and another from the Pima culture. The Bible also presents another creation story. I don’t know if you can really refer to this specific story as a creation story because it more talks about the separation of the races at the beginning of the world, but it is close to the same basic genre. One of the things I found most interesting about this particular one is that, while you can find all the other creation stories we went over last quarter somewhere online, I’ve found that this one is more obscure. The other ones are known stories past down through the culture they are a part of and you can find information on several sites for each of them, but I’ve tried searching online for this one that Winnemucca presents to see if I could find any interesting information about it, but I was unable to find it anywhere online, unless it was referring specifically to Life Among the Piutes. This leaves the question of whether this is a popular story of their culture or whether it was more of a story important to her because her grandfather was the one telling it. Also, there is the question of her credibility. When we talked about her in class, we discussed the probability that she could be adding some fiction to her story, possibly to give her side more of an authentic, stereotypical Indian view. According to wikipedia, there are some who don’t believe she has credibility in her writing, “Like many people of two worlds, she may be judged harshly in both contexts. Many Paiutes view her as a collaborator who helped the U.S. Army kill her people. Modern historians view her book as an important primary source, but one that is deliberately misleading in many instances.” As you can see, which side she’s on seems a bit obscured. Her choice is not only between white and indian, but maybe this is the pull between whether she’s on her dad or her grandfather’s side. While the grandfather, supposedly believing in this story, believes that the white men are their long lost brothers, the father has the horrible dream about the emigration. While it’s obvious the father’s side was true because they were forced to reservations, it’s possible that the grandfather was too in the sense that the grandfather’s view respresents how it should be, while the father’s dream is how it is in reality. I believe in this case, the view of why she’s told this story is more important than any other aspect you could relate to it. The reason she told this story, in my opinion, is for her trying to, as someone who is an Indian and has assisted the whites during the Bannock War, she tries to present both views.

Du Bois Journal

By Jessica Granse

January 16, 2009

“The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North- her co-partner in guilt- cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold,” (910).

Near the end of chapter three of W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, he discusses his theories on how the discrimination of African Americans can be solved, but when doing so he personifies the South as a woman, as you can see in the above quote. Is this possibly his own prejudice against women?

The Souls of Black Folk contains Du Bois’ thoughts regarding the issues of race during the time. After the Emancipation Proclamation, although African Americans were then free from slavery, they still were barred from other rights. When Du Bois discusses what he believes should be done, he says that the South needs be led and criticized to be better and make up for the wrongs it has done African Americans. He does this is personifying the South as a female, saying the South must “assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging.” Is it possible that in his search to correct the prejudice done to his race, he belittles the whole race of females? We must consider why the South is considered a woman in his eyes. In doing this, we must remember that the South was the one most discriminating against the African American race. One possibility for this statement is that he’s making a statement on the efforts from the women of their race not being as great as that of the men. It could also be a slant at women due to his own prejudice. If you look at the Personal Life section of W. E. B. Du Bois’s on Wikipedia, you’ll see that a biography about him be David Levering Louis presents evidence for the possibility of Du Bois having affairs and refers to him as a “priapic adulterer”. Although there is another biography by Raymond Walters in which this possibility is doubted due to “lack of direct corroboration” from those said to be his lovers. Although there is some doubt, this shouldn’t be ruled out as a possibility. This would then provide some support for Du Bois being discriminative against women because if he cheats on women, it shows that he doesn’t respect them. I do believe that it’s likely for him to be discriminating against them because at this time there was so much emphasis on the race issues that American had yet to approach the sex issues. Because of this, women were still looked down upon. Another possibility is that there’s only two genders, so it’s a fifty-fifty chance he’d choose to use she rather than he and this time he happened to be she, but I still believe that it was thought out and put down on purpose.

Booker T. Washington Journal

Jessica Granse

January 13, 2009

“’Cast down your bucket where you are’— cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded,” (681).

Much like Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”, this quote from Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address was the most famous line of his speech, more specifically the line saying “Cast down your bucket where you are”. You could consider it his catch phrase.

Booker T. Washington was one of the fathers of the progress for the African American race. His Atlanta Exposition Address was his most famous speech with the line “Cast down your bucket where you are”. There can be endless discussions about this one line. He said it in order to encourage his race and give them hope that they can contribute to the progress. Although this line was no doubt meant for this purpose, there still seems to be a little interpretation to do for it. One meaning you could get from it would be that you need to get started where you are. You can’t wait for someone’s help and you can’t wait for the time to be perfect. You must “cast your bucket”, or start your efforts, where you are. In this case, the people must start their new free lives and they must make the changes right there in the South. If they don’t it will never make them fully free. Another variation of the meaning for this line would be that one explained on The Booker T. Washington Inspiration Network’s blogspot, “Dr. Washington uses a true story, here, as an analogy of a truth he understood regarding how one may miss the life saving nourishment or answer when it is right in front of them.” They mean that you need to open your eyes to what’s right in front of you. The opportunity for change is right in front of them. The slave’s have been freed. What Washington believed was that in time the African Americans would eventually acquire all the same privileges that are already granted to the white people, but they need to take it slowly and not try to fight hard for all of it at once. Instead, they needed to open their eyes to and be happy for the freedom that’s right in front of them, rather than complaining right off the bat about the freedom’s they have yet to have gotten. In the analogy, it’s just like the seamen’s need to open their eyes to the fresh water right in front of them. This could also simply mean you need to stop worrying about changing your situation and you should be happy to enjoy the one you’re in. They need to enjoy their freedoms and work slowly at the rest rather than trying to acquire them all at once. Although there are these few variations at the line, it is still obvious of what Washington is basically trying to get at. He’s trying to make sure that all the African Americans are happy with their new freedoms and that they realize that all the freedoms don’t come at once, but they need to acquire what’s important first. Then worry about getting full equality after the more important rights are granted.

Gilman Journal

Jessica Granse

January 08, 2009

Journal #2

“And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?” (808).

In “The Yellow Wall-paper,” Gilman illustrates the incredible amount at which women were trapped in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She did this through showing the mental illness that she herself suffered in which her treatment involved the advice of her never writing again. She was told what to do and told nothing was wrong, against her own suspicions.

Although she never suffered hallucinations, Gilman did have nervous breakdowns, as she announces in “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’”. Though Gilman’s breakdowns weren’t quite as severe as the character in her story, she tries to use these severities to show just how mad one can go when they’re told to isolate themselves and resist from doing anything intellectual or productive just because they’re a woman. It was believed that women suffer from hysteria due to the sole fact that they’re women. As it says on the second footnote of page 808, hysteria and uterus come from the same Greek root, so it was believed the reproductive parts of women were their source of mental illnesses. The doctor she was sent to, Dr Silas Weir Mitchell, explains this theory as quoted in Deborah Thomas’ paper “The Changing Role of Womanhood: From True Woman to New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’” from the ALRA site,
“American woman is, to speak plainly, too often physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps of all civilized females the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which nowadays she is eager to share with the man?”
Mitchell isolates American women as those that are unfit for their duties. He thinks that if women are already taxed by their own duties as wife and mother, there is no way they’ll be able to do the tasks that even trouble men. I would like to bring up the point that that’s not all Gilman was trying to do. Her biography from the Norton Anthology mentions about her first marriage, “She entered into the marriage reluctantly, anticipating the difficulties of reconciling her ambition to be a writer with the demands of being a wife, housekeeper, and mother,” (807). Gilman was trying to take on something that was considered one of “those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man”, writing. She was trying to be successful at her ambition and this was not a time in which women were very welcome to have any ambition beyond motherhood and wifehood. She was taking this on as well as the traditional duties assigned to women by society. Society, at that time, put more emphasis on the mother and wife’s role in the family and they were to take on the responsibilities of caring for the children. Maybe if there was less work automatically assigned to them around the house and the man of the house took an equal part in those responsibilities, women could have had a fair chance at their ambitions. To me, this seems like just a result of the fear of men having more competition. If women were able to compete with them in the world outside of the house, there would be twice as many people they had to compete with. Instead, they’d rather get all the glory by having the wife stay at home and all the household duties be done for them. They just weren’t ready to share the glory, so they made up a cure for these nervous breakdowns caused by the woman’s actual stress of not just following her ambitions but having to do all the housework, care for the children, and cook for the husband. This cure would also cure them of their fear of having to share the rest of the world with women: just make them bedridden. This was no cure at all, though. Instead, it made them feel isolated and useless.

Abrose Bierce Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 08, 2009

"He gave the struggle his attention as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!-what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo!" (Page 363, Bierce).



As Farquhar struggles to free the cord from his hands, Bierce describes it with this metaphor of someone watching a juggler, then is applauding his effort in a way that sounds almost sarcastic due to his exclamations sounding a little over-the-top.



As we discussed in class, there were several instances where the author, Bierce, changed the point of view. He starts just as describing the scene on Owl Creek Bridge, then he is able to look through the eyes of Farquhar, and eventually is able to get in his mind, then in his skin. Just as he changes the point of view, he just as easily changes his tone. Most of the story, his tone seems serious and descriptive. It’s pretty much manner-of-fact type of narration, such as when he describes Farquhar, "Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause," (page 362, Bierce). Notice how he simply tells the facts. He provides nothing of a personal opinion and in that way, stays uninvolved and emotionless for the most part. Then, this tone switches and he seems playful and almost sarcastic. The way he describes the struggle seems jokingly. First, he chooses the metaphor of a juggler, "He gave the struggle his attention as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome," (page 363, Bierce). A juggler is someone whose job is to entertain and someone who is amusing because they’re silly. It’s also a curious way to describe it. Farquhar is struggling for his life, trying to escape the cord around his arms. Why would he give his attention "without interest in the outcome"? You’d think he’d give this his complete and undivided attention. An idler observes a juggler in a half attentive, only slightly amused way. Anyway, this sets the sarcastic tone of him next over-applauding Farquhar’s attempts at escaping, "What a splendid effort!-what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo!" (page 363, Bierce). He describes it so over-the-top, saying Farquhar has superhuman strength. It seems funny that he starts with a metaphor, describing his efforts as being "without interest in the result" but then switches to saying he give a "splendid effort!" In this way, he changes his tone twice at this part. First, from his initial tone to almost uncaring with the metaphor about the juggler, then from this metaphor to joking about how magnificent Farquhar’s escape was. Switching the tone is fine, but he seems to refuse choosing one description for the escape. First, he says Farquhar has no interest in the outcome then he discusses the magnificence of the escape, implying that it was this huge effort. It almost is cause for him to lose his credibility, but only almost.