Sarah Orne Jewett's Miss Tempy's Watchers
Sarah Orne Jewett was born in Berwick, Maine, 275 miles away from Oakfield, where my grandmother lives. Jewett’s story, “Miss Tempy’s Watchers,” takes place in a small farming town in New Hampshire, yet as I read the story for the first time, I was certain it took place in the small northern Maine town, and my grandmother was a subject of the author’s study. Jewett makes use of the dialect New England is known for by following very broad rules as well as the pickiest details one might never notice unless one were looking with ultimate scrutiny or from personal experience.
Jewett chose certain phrase structure to make her characters’ speech genuine. Sarah Ann Binson, one of Miss Tempy’s watchers, describes how Tempy “never did like to hear folks goin’ about themselves.” To some this phrase may be foreign, but to an older New Englander it means to speak of oneself braggingly. Another syntactic trait of the speech is the frequent regularization of verb forms. Mrs. Crowe, the other watcher, says, “Tempy come right up after they rode by,” and Sarah Ann later asks if Mrs. Crowe made cupcakes “while you was home to-day.” These are both obvious grammatical errors, but the two women were only trying to make sense of a very complicated set of rules. To two women of middle and upper-middle class who are not particularly familiar with a true upper class where the English language is treated with greater care, they were only speaking in a manner that seemed most natural. Something else worth mentioning is when Sarah Ann asks Mrs. Crows if she remembers a certain girl. Mrs. Crowe answers, “Certain,” and Sarah goes on about her. A stickler for grammatical perfection would insist she say, “Certainly,” or at least, “For certain,” but in the New England dialect of the older generation, there is nothing wrong with just “certain.”
Sarah Ann Binson, the less wealthy of the two watchers, uses the word “ain’t,” but Mrs. Crow, the one of slightly higher class, never lowers herself to such unsophisticated speech. Sarah Ann also adopts a typically Acadian dialect (owing to her location in a New Hampshire farming area) when she tells of how Tempy once said, “I’m only a-gettin’ sleepier and sleepier.” The reader can’t be sure if it is a direct quote or if the structure is her own, but it is clear it is not entirely foreign to their ears.
Colloquialism is “a word or phrase that is used mostly in informal speech : a colloquial expression” (merriam-webster.com) An example of colloquialism would be, “I god, Ah don’t see how come yuh can’t. ‘Tain’t nothing atall tuh hinder yuh if yuh got uh thimble full uh sense. You got tuh. Ah got too much else on mah hands as Mayor. Dis town needs some light right now.” (Hurston 41). This quote not only shows the reader that this book is taking place in the deep south, but it also shows that Jody always wants Janie to agree with him, and not have her own opinions. Hurston uses different types of colloquialism to show where the characters come from but also to show how they compare there to the different social classes. Also she uses colloquialism to enrich each character, and give them their own way of talking, and their own way of expressing themselves.
The small community of Hallowell, Maine was no different than any other community in any part of the new nation – the goals were the same – to survive and prosper. Life in the frontier was hard, and the settlement near the Kennebec Valley was no different than what the pioneers in the west faced. We hear many stories about the forefathers of our country and the roles they played in the early days but we don’t hear much about the accomplishments of the women behind those men and how they contributed to the success of the communities they settled in. Thanks to Martha Ballard and the diary that she kept for 27 years from 1785-1812, we get a glimpse into...
James Wright’s “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” reveals a rather pessimistic narrative of the various lifestyles that are described, and also the inescapable destinies that hold for the townspeople. This utmost despair experienced through the people, forms an ambition that transcends onto their children; who are their last hope. Therefore “Autumn Begins”, the season that holds many possibilities for the townspeople, and even a glance into the past for others.
...es can lead to difficulty in understanding one who is from a different background. Peter, who we assume was brought up in a suburban environment with the upper class, portrays standard English compared to Charlene who was brought up in a black urban neighborhood which would explain her AAVE speech. Although both speak English, it is simply the variation that arose from class, gender, ethnicity, and other distinct traits that led for misunderstandings to occur. In part of the scene, in attempt to explain her course of actions through her alleged crime, Charlene says “When Roscoe cracked that doe, I was strait off day heezy and bounced.” After Peter looked at her with a lost look and asked her what she said, Charlene restated the phrase by saying “I was recently liberated from a correctional facility…” This moment illustrates not only the language variations of English, but the necessity for one to style shift according to their audience. English has many dialects, pronunciations, and other factors that may require one to adapt temporarily to facilitate communication with somebody who is accustomed to a different form. This was the case for Charlene, as it is for others in the film.
Gayl Jones suggests, “Not only does the dialect have more functions but it is used in a story of greater complexity of character, greater thematic range and literary sophistication. Though the people themselves are “simple” in the sense of being “ordinary folks,” their range is more than sentimental or comic emotion.” The dialogue in this story helps to move the narrative along and give it additional char...
Flannery O’Connor lived most of her life in the southern state of Georgia. When once asked what the most influential things in her life were, she responded “Being a Catholic and a Southerner and a writer.” (1) She uses her knowledge of southern religion and popular beliefs to her advantage throughout the story. Not only does she thoroughly depict the southern dialect, she uses it more convincingly than other authors have previously attempted such as Charles Dickens and Zora Neale Hurston. In other works, the authors frequently use colloquialism so “local” that a reader not familiar with those slang terms, as well as accents, may have difficulty understanding or grasping the meaning of the particular passage. O’Connor not only depicts a genuine southern accent, she allows the characters to maintain some aspect of intelligence, which allows the audience to focus on the meaning of the passage, rather than the overbearing burden of interpreting a rather “foreign language.”
...she describes the pompous women. The author uses the women's conversations to emphasize the reasons Scout remains a tomboy and refuses the traits of Maycomb females.
In Donald P. Costello’s article entitled “The Language of The Catcher in the Rye,” Costello supports his thesis, being that the language in the novel The Catcher in the Rye all serves a greater purpose, by delving into the linguistic elements of the novel as well as the significance behind them. Costello acknowledges the authenticity of the language used in the novel, but argues that Salinger’s intent was to use Holden Caufield’s speech to characterize him. To do this, he elaborates on the unique parts of Holden’s vernacular and how they are used, along with Holden’s awareness of his language. Finally, Costello closes his article by explaining why the specific language was employed.
Catharine Sedgwick’s novel, A New-England Tale, tells the story of an orphan, Jane Elton, who “fights to preserve her honesty and her dignity in a household where religion is much talked about but little practiced” (Back Cover). The story take place in the 1820s, a time when many children were suffering in silence due to the fact that there was really no way to get people to understand exactly how bad things were for them. The only way anyone could ever really get a true understanding of the lives of the children in these households would be by knowing what took place in their homes. Outside of the home these women seemed perfectly normal and there was not reason to suspect any crookedness. The author herself was raised by a woman of Calvinist religion and realized how unjust things were for her and how her upbringing had ultimately play at role on her outcome. Sedgwick uses her novel, A New-England Tale to express to her readers how dreadful life was being raised by women of Calvinist religion and it’s affect by depicting their customary domestic life. She takes her readers on an in deep journey through what a typical household in the 1820s would be like providing them with vivid descriptions and reenactments of the domestic life during this period.
In “To Kill a Mockingbird” Harper Lee shows the reader how all women are expected to act lady-like and be proper through the actions of Mrs. Dubose, Jem, and Atticus. In Maycomb, there are social norms that girls are expected to follow. Atticus grinned, "I doubt if we'd ever get a complete case tried—the ladies'd be interrupting to ask questions" (296). Jem and Scout react to Atticus’s answer by laughing.
Tobias Wolff’s “Hunters in the Snow” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” have related elements, but also divergent styles. The two stories expose that their characters were desperately looking and needed a change in their lives; either a change to help get over the limitation of the character’s freedom or a change in domination. The way Wolf and Faulkner wrote their stories caught many different types of audience by how similar and different their stories share, even though the stories were written in different time periods.
Sothern gothic literature that include Works like Flannery O’Connor’s “A Late encounter with the enemy” incorporates the idea of “investigating madness, decay and despair, and the continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with respect to the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and to the continuance of racial hostilities.”(Marshall 3). These ideas all share a common theme that O’Connor brings to the table in “A Late Encounter with the enemy, along with “The American South serves as the nation’s ‘other,’ becoming the repository of everything from which the nation wants to disassociate itself” (Marshall 3–4). But in true Gothic fashion, the horrors of the past continue to dominate the present.” (Marshall 12). Flannery O’Connor gives readers insight into the life of the granddaughter Sally Poker Sash and how she heavily relies on her families past lineage to shape her present and future in this southern gothic horror (O’Connor 87).
Despite the similarities in the time periods of the pieces, the use of language in them is very different. In Stephen Crane's “Maggie,” the audience is given the story of a poor family whose children grow up and experience difficulties due to their social position. As already noted, the dialog is treated in the story in a much different manner than the paragraphs which are written in a more eloquent manner. An example of this is:
Although told in an aloof and anonymous third-person, the narrativeis always shifting, almost imperceptibly, from an objective stance to less neutral observations which, because of their perspective or particular choice of words, appear to be those of Mrs. Kearney. (Miller,...
Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time. 1854. Introd. Susan Belasco. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Print.