In both “Dimension” by Alice Munro and “The Breeze” by Joshua Ferris, the authors address aspects of marriage that impact the characters mindset and actions. Doree in “Dimension” struggles with a marriage that has been altered by the death of her children and the knowledge that her husband was responsible for taking their lives. Her unexplained effort to sustain her marriage is driven by her need to hold on to positive elements from her past and not engage in her current situation. Also in “The Breeze” Sarah constantly battles with her internal feelings about her marriage but cannot inform Jay because of his naivete, this causes Sarah to be trapped in a marriage that is filled with repetitiveness centered in denial. These characters struggle …show more content…
She does this by overlooking hard details that validate the level of destruction their marriage possess. Sarah feels trapped, whereas Jay (her husband) is oblivious to the reality of the situation, causing their mentality and actions to become repetitive, trapping them in the marriage: “She put a hand out to stop him, ‘Jay’ she said. ‘I'm sorry sweets I can't see a movie tonight.’ ‘why not?’ ‘It's to predictable’ she said. ‘aren't you tired of movies?’ ‘all we've done all winter long is go to movies’” (Ferris 5). In this Sarah expresses that these repetitive actions are reflective of the state of her marriage, which is destroying her inside. However, her obligation to her husband is apparent when she says, “i'm sorry sweets” allowing him to remain innocent and forcing her stay in a humdrum marriage. In this short story, Sarah demonstrates that her husband's obliviousness about their marriage, clouds her decision making because she feels responsible for his feelings. The reason that Sarah cannot tell Jay she is through with the marriage is because of the difficult concept of broken love and their marriage ending. Therefore, repetitiveness is used by her as a means of survival to ignore the underlying
Stepping into a new life with someone is difficult enough, but if you step into the marriage with unrealistic expectations (which vary among couples) you’ve set yourself up for great conflicts. In “The Myth of Co-Parenting” and “My Problem with her Anger,” both Edelman and Bartels are at a disadvantage due to the expectations they’ve created. Everything in their marriages is going in a different direction, and nothing is parring up with their original expectations. They’ve seen marriages they admire, and also marriages on the other side of the spectrum. To better phrase this, both authors allow expectations to control their mindset in their marriages, but Edelman’s expectations
All over the world, marriage is one of the main things that define a woman’s life. In fact, for women, marriage goes a long way to determine much in their lives, including happiness, overall quality of life, whether or not they are able to set and achieve their life goals. Some women go into marriages that allow them to follow the paths they have chosen and achieve their goals while for other women, marriage could mean the end of their life goals. For Janie, the lead character in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, who was married twice, first to Joe sparks, and to Vergil Tea Cake, her two marriages to these men greatly affected her happiness, quality of life and the pursuit of her life goals in various ways, based on the personality of each of the men. Although both men were very different from each other, they were also similar in some ways.
...es clear that women are able to maintain their agency even when it seems impossible. They may not be able to make huge changes in their lives but the agency they do have allows them to manipulate situations in their favor and/or ensure their voice is heard. This fact is clear through Janie’s internal and externa rebellions in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Mrs. Ramsay’s ability to change views and her choice of language in To The Lighthouse. Overall, this demonstrates the issues with agency for wives. They often find themselves in an oppressive relationship that makes it difficult to sustain their agency, thus they must be creative in their choices in how they remain active agents. This issue is common in modernist narratives and beyond. It is a topic that needs to be explored in literature so it can be explored in the real world with real world consequences.
Helen is a disgruntled housewife, she doesn’t support Harry in his plans to create a safe haven inside of the cellar. When Harry attempts to set a plan in motion, she seems to be against him and proceeds to scold him. The scenario of Karen, their daughter being ill, may have contributed to her attitude towards Harry. Unable to come to a unanimous decision on the appropriate approach to handle Karen’s illness and as well as the ongoing crisis around them, they foster a bitter attitude towards one another. According to the authors Thomas N. Bradbury and Frank D. Fincham there is a reason for that. It states that… “One explanation for this apparent gender difference is that, compared to husbands' attributions, wives' attributions are rooted more firmly in the events and circumstances of the marriage. If wives' attributions are indeed more accurate or well developed representations of partner behaviors, then their attributions will be linked more closely to the behaviors they display in interaction when discussing some of those partner behaviors.”(Bradbury and Fincham 574). All things considered, Helen’s and Harry’s portrayal cast their marriage under the ‘dysfunctional marriage’ category.
All over the world, marriage is one of the main things that define a woman’s life. In fact, for women, marriage goes a long way to determine much in their lives including happiness, overall quality of life whether or not they are able to set and achieve their life goals. Some women go into marriages that allow them to follow the paths they have chosen and achieve their goals while for other women, marriage could mean the end of their life goals. For Janie, the lead character in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, who was married twice first to Joe sparks, and to Vergile Tea Cake, her two marriages to these men greatly affected her happiness, quality of life and pursuit of her life goals in various ways, based on the personality of each of the men. Although both men were very different from each other, they were also similar in some ways.
Devotion and compassion toward one another, a core reason why many relationships these days work out and last a lifetime. Trusting someone is essential and basically the backbone to all relationships. Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a satirical novel that involves the story of Tony Last and his wife, Lady Brenda. Tony is more in love with his house, Hetton Abbey, than with his wife. Brenda, bored with Tony and his apparent desire to live in the past, being the lord of the manor type of person, that she turns her attention to John Beaver, a twenty-five year old socialite. The personalities and character traits of Tony and Brenda contributed to the end of their relationship. Pompousness, conceit and the actions motivated by these traits affected their lives in and outside of their marriage.
In today’s society, the notion and belief of growing old, getting married, having kids, and a maintaining of a happy family, seems to be a common value among most people. In Kevin Brockmeier’s short story, “The Ceiling,” Brockmeier implies that marriage is not necessary in our society. In fact, Brockmeier criticizes the belief of marriage in his literary work. Brockmeier reveals that marriage usually leads to or ends in disaster, specifically, all marriages are doomed to fail from the start. Throughout the story, the male protagonist, the husband, becomes more and more separated from his wife. As the tension increases between the protagonist and his wife, Brockmeier symbolizes a failing marriage between the husband and wife as he depicts the ceiling in the sky closing upon the town in which they live, and eventually crushing the town entirely as a whole.
In “The Yellow Wall-paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the unnamed female protagonist is going through a rough time in her life. (For now on, this paper will refer to this unnamed character as the “the narrator in ‘Wall-paper,’” short for “The Yellow Wall-paper. The narrator is confined to room to a room with strange wall-paper. This odd wall-paper seems to symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard must also deal with conflict as she must deal with the death of her spouse. At first there is grief, but then there is the recognition that she will be free. The institute of marriage ties the two heroines of these two short stories together. Like typical young women of the late 19th century, they were married, and during the course of their lives, they were expected to stay married. Unlike today where divorce is commonplace, marriage was a very holy bond and divorce was taboo. This tight bond of marriage caused tension in these two characters.
While reading these two novels by Zora Neale Hurston, I noticed several metaphors, ideas, and lines that she uses in both texts. I think that the almost parallel lines quoted above are particularly telling of the way that these two novels relate in their depictions of male attitudes towards women and the relationships that exist between the husband and wife characters. Janie's marriage to Joe Starks in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Arvay's marriage to Jim Meserve in Seraph on the Suwanee both operate under the rubric of the male figure's ideas about what marriage and women should be and do. Within both of these marriages, the husband feels his wife is a possession that is to be provided for and cherished, yet not necessarily to be communed with. Joe embodies this sentiment throughout his marriage with Janie, placing her on a kind of pedestal where she can be seen, but not heard. Jim establishes his marriage under similar pretenses and verbally reiterates them throughout the novel, yet seems to evolve past them in a certain respect as he urges Arvay to take an active role in their love. In their patriarchal positions of authority, both Joe and Jim see themselves as wise, as "understanding ten things," whereas they view their wives as stupid and ungrateful, as unable to "understand even one thing."
Right now Breeze Burst was searching for Jazz. She wanted someone to play with her and everyone else she asked was working or busy. Jazz was the last person she could think of. Prowl wasn’t in the base right now. He and a few others were out on a mission. She didn’t really understand what the mission was about, but regardless she was lonely. Whenever Prowl wasn’t around, Breeze Burst felt upset. She didn’t like being away from him for too long. When she was with Prowl she felt safe. She really liked Prowl, unlike what some of the other bots would say, he was really nice and he didn’t mind her being around him.
Waite, J. Linda. “Social Science Finds: ‘Marriage Matters.’” Read, Reason, Write. By Dorothy U. Seyler. Ed. Emily Barrosse. 8th ed. New York: McGraw, 2008. 566-57. Print.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
Marriage consists of love between two people, the strong connection between them, and memories made that the couple will never forget. Despite all of this, it is possible for one person in the marriage — in this case the wife — to begin to lose this feeling. The women feel as if they are held back; tied down to a life they no longer desire. As the women contemplate, they become scared to leave the comfortable life they originally had, for a new life they only previously could dream of. The two wives in The Bridges of Madison County, directed by Clint Eastwood, and “Astronomer’s Wife,” written by Kay Boyle, are continuing to live in a marriage they no longer want. When both women are deserted emotionally and physically by their husbands, the
- Noller, Patricia; Feeney, Judith; Understanding Marriage, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2002, Chapter 6
While it has traditionally been men who have attached the "ball and chain" philosophy to marriage, Kate Chopin gave readers a woman’s view of how repressive and confining marriage can be for a woman, both spiritually and sexually. While many of her works incorporated the notion of women as repressed beings ready to erupt into a sexual a hurricane, none were as tempestuous as The Storm.