Irwin Shaw's The Girls in Their Summer Dresses
In The Girls in Their Summer Dresses, it is necessary to explore the personal differences that cause problems in the relationship of the couple. The details of the story will lead to a conclusion that for Michael the relationship could just be a mere convenience or an affection solely generated by his physical wanting of Frances, so with the way she looks and appreciates the girls of New York.
Frances calling the Stevensons shows her attitude which is passivity and lack of idealism to confront the relationship with his husband. She is going to call the Stevensons because, she and her husband have nothing more to discuss about.
Michael?s way of looking on women as mere bodies could suggest a kind of degradation?which is to define a woman only as an erotic or sexual figure.
There is an irony in the relationship of the couple which is the bloodless horror from the truth expressed that somehow the things are not, and never have been, what they used to pretend about themselves.
It is clear in the details with Frances that she had an initial feeling of insignificance and she wanted to be loved and acknowledged by her husband. The sentence, ?I?d do any damn thing for you? points to a certain desire to be recognized as a good wife because of some degree of sensitivity that a man is needed in the family as the head and without him everything is nothing.
The ?desire to please her husband? could also be attributed to lib...
...d longs for her elder sister and mother. Frances is a good person – at heart – and is always looking out for her younger sister. Moreover, even though she has different views that her father and will always do the opposite of what is expected of her, it is seen that this insecurity is caused by James indeed. Frances feels that in order to gain security in her life, she must perform these actions. She feels compelled to live her life the way she does. Frances’s naughty and mischievous behaviour can be viewed as a weakness she possesses, and she longs to correct these weaknesses by her actions. She is not a role model by any means, but she is by no means the Devil’s advocate. A sincere heart – compelled by circumstances – does its best to make the situation turn out for the better than the worse, and Frances, through her love for her mother, inevitably does just that.
In addition to appearance, the two women have extremely different relationships with Ethan. In order to portray each woman’s relationship with Ethan, the author uses the motif of silence.
When Marie tries to ask the protagonist to take a walk, this action shows that she is trying to achieve Pauline’s dream by getting her outside of the house. Therefore, she could finally feel the true meaning of freedom. Nevertheless, Pauline’s mother’s response demonstrates that she wants her daughter’s safety more than anything. The mother tries to keep Pauline away from the danger, so the protagonist can at last have a healthier life. However, Agathe’s reply shows that her mother is willing to sacrifice Pauline’s dream to keep her secure. Therefore, the author uses contrasting characters to mention that safety is more valuable. Furthermore, the protagonist starts to describe Tante Marie and reveals that she always has her hair “around her shoulder” (85). When Pauline describes Marie, Pauline shows how her Tante is open-minded. In fact, Marie helps Pauline to let go of her limitations and to get a taste of her dream. Therefore, Marie always wants Pauline to go outside and play hockey or even to take a walk. These actions that Pauline’s Tante takes show how she is determinate to make Pauline’s dream come true. Thus, the author
Pauli Murray was a double minority. She was plagued by being visibly black and a woman. These are labels that held her back and caused her great discrimination and pain throughout her life. Pauli Murray labeled the disfavor she faced because of her skin color and sex “Jim Crow” and “Jane Crow”, respectively. She used these terms to help pinpoint and vanquish the problems that people facing such discrimination encountered in society. I will identify the ways “Jim Crow” and “Jane Crow” both had a hand in discriminating against people like Pauli Murray, and the many key differences in the ways they affected lives and were indoctrinated in society.
Sammy sets the scene of a sunny, summer beach day in which three young girls dressed in nothing but bathing suits enter the store to buy some snacks for their day in the sand. Sammy is deeply intrigued by the girls and watches every move they make while ringing in other customers at the store. The girls parade through the isles as if they are putting on a show, just for Sammy. This is Sammy’s first live “girlie show” and he doesn't want to miss one single detail. Sammy expresses his excitement and fondness of one particular girl as he conveys the details of the one scene:
woman she once knew. Both women only see the figure they imagine to be as the setting shows us this, in the end making them believe there is freedom through perseverance but ends in only despair.
Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.
The killing of teenagers with big dreams and hopeful futures represents death’s unpredictability. “He will never go to college… He will never satisfy his curiosity, never finish the hundred best novels ever written, never be the great man he might have been” (Lockhart 60). Through the adults and living children, the two incredibly different ways of dealing with and understanding tragedy are shown. “They know it doesn’t play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person” (Lockhart 63). Clairmont symbolizes the problems of the Sinclair family, while New Clairmont stands as a reminder of the dead children. ““New Clairmont seems like a punishment to me… A self-punishment. He built himself a home that isn’t a home. It’s deliberately uncomfortable”” (Lockhart 53). In conclusion, connections to tragedy linger in every corner of We Were Liars through symbolism in characters and
The ominous and tragic atmosphere infusing the consummation of their relationship gives a foresight into what is going to happen in the rest of this relationship which is ill-fated. Their love fails to give them the perfect happiness that they envisioned and therefore they begin blaming the social circumstances for their dissatisfaction. The social and familial disapproval that Vronsky encounters angers him. "They have no conception of what happiness is, and they do not know that without love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us, for there would be no life" (Tolstoy, 167). After the fulfilment of their initial desire for each other, they strive to satisfy another desire, a further one. They need to be set free from the need for dissembling and lies, "it was necessary to put an end to all this falsehood, and the sooner the better" (Tolstoy, 168). Vronsky puts it, "throw up everything and let us two conceal ourselves somewhere alone with our love" (Tolstoy, 168). The two lovers eventually achieve
In A Conversation With my Father, Grace Paley uses irony to show how not every story ends happily. In the real part of the story the father just wants a plain and simple story but his daughter gives him this scenic tale about a mother and son. The story does not end happily so the daughter tries to continue it in order to form a more perfect ending. The daughter believes that everyone has a second chance and there is an opportunity to make things end well. “She’s only about forty. She could be a hundred different things in the world as time goes on.” The father disproves of his daughters outlook. He says “Truth first. She will slide back,” knowing that not every story will end happily mainly his own. The irony involved is that the father knows
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
At the beginning of the story, in plot “A”, John and Mary are introduced as a stereotypical happy couple with stereotypically happy lives of middle class folks. Words like “stimulating” and “challenging” are used repetitiously to describe events in thei...
Despite the authors writing the stories decades apart, there are striking similarities between the protagonists. Defying the societal standard of the time, they rebelled against their marriages and strove for any feeling
These factors lead to the unraveling of the relationship as the conflict precedes and is described through both of their views on the issue. As the topic of their son was brought up, which is the cause of the confrontation, the woman immediately “withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm”, illustrating how she feels as she faces him in such a situation (33). The woman feels she must make herself and her emotions smaller, ultimately concealing them completely from him, as she faces him due to his inability to understand her, avoiding his questions and comments. Throughout the poem she seems insistent in leaving their home saying “[She] must get out of [there]. [She] must get air” because she feels suffocated both by his way of responding to situations which have taken an emotional toll on her and her incapability of being able to have closure on the situation while living in conditions that are not being of assistance to her (39). These actions show how she has to alter some aspects of her personality when speaking to him to please him, and he feels like he has to do the same. As he says “A man must partly give up being a man / With women-folk”, he is describing how he feels he must give up his opinion or view on certain topics and even says “[they] could have some arrangement by which [he’d] bind [himself] to keep hands off / Anything special [she’s] a-mind to name” (52-55). He continues by describing how having such disagreements and having to make compromises with each other are part of being in a relationship “Though [he doesn’t] like such things ‘twix those that love”, but now that he sees how serious she is about
...ociety; we do not need teens, which are not ready for marriage, to be married. Marriage is all about compromise, understanding, and give and take. Teens have not fully grasped that concept yet. They need to experience more in life before becoming married. They are missing out on so much; it is truly not worth it to rush into marriage.