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The relationship between a mother and a child
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Elaine Potter Richardson was raised by her mother and her stepfather while living in a Caribbean island with much poverty. Her mother sent her to live in the United States at the age of seventeen, which left her with no other choice other than to provide for herself. After she briefly attended college in New Hampshire, she moved to New York and began to work for the New Yorker. There, she met Allen Shawn. They married in 1979 which later ended in a divorce. She began to write personal stories in connection with her mother, her father, and her youngest brother who died of AIDS. In the second story the author’s name is Katherine O’Flaherty, born in St. Louis, Missouri. Unlike Elaine, Katherine’s family preferred to live higher than usual in …show more content…
Chopin used the experience of living with three independent women to show how much she desired to break free of bring dominated by a male. Considering that Chopin decided to move and raise her six kids away from the place her husband died from shows that she wanted to move away and start new and an independent women living by herself. After her husband’s death was when Chopin began her career and branched out with many different stories. A part of her must have been stopped by her husband while he was alive. Kincaid was dominated by her mother because in the story “Girl”, she is showing the reader how her childhood was while living with her mother. Her mother thought it was okay to be dominated by a male figure and Kincaid didn’t agree. She also wanted to break free from that stereotype that all women must answer to a man. After Kincaid divorced her husband she also became an independent woman and began to write more stories. Sometimes married men and women can stop their lives or put in on hold for their other significant loved …show more content…
They were both controlled by people in their lives. Kincaid wrote about her mother controlling her, but she doesn’t agree with her mother. Chopin wrote about her character being controlled by her husband. When Mrs. Mallards found out that her husband had died, she felt relieved, and when she found out her husband hadn’t died, she had a heart attack because she had felt so much happiness and it got taken away in a matter of seconds. These two writers were also very different which led their stories to also have differences. One writer being poor and the other one being wealthy, they were both raised by different kinds of people. Kincaid was raised by her mother and her stepfather, which led her to teach Kincaid how to become a respectful, hardworking housewife and how to not become a slut. Chopin was raised by independent women who may have led her to think that women shouldn’t be controlled by men. This goes back to her story. When the husband is controlling the wife, she was glad to find out that he was dead. This story may have been related to her real life experiences with her mother or her
This week’s reflection is on a book titled Girls Like Us and it is authored by Rachel Lloyd. The cover also says “fighting for a world where girls not for sale”. After reading that title I had a feeling this book was going to be about girls being prostituted at a young age and after reading prologue I sadly realized I was right in my prediction.
During the nineteenth century, Chopin’s era, women were not allowed to vote, attend school or even hold some jobs. A woman’s role was to get married, have children
Chopin's story begins with a woman who has locked herself up in her room who stares endlessly out her window after getting word of her husbands death. As the woman is looking out of her window she begins to think about her new life and what is in store for her now that she is widowed. An important note about this story is that it takes place back in the 1890's. In the 1890's woman had very little rights and were very dependent
Neither short story would have been as effective without the narrator revealing the thoughts of the protagonist. By emphasizing individual perspectives, the author's shift the focus from the external action to the internal experiences of each protagonist. The power and depth of the ideas are successfully delivered because the reader is permitted insight into the characters' thoughts. The analytical tone created by Bierce is a detailed and thorough examination of the character's thoughts before her death while Chopin's sympathetic tone is responsible for allowing the reader to feel affectionate for Mrs. Mallard's plight prior to her death. Both stories arrive at these similar conclusions with opposing tones through the successful use of third person point of view.
The poem "Bitch" by Carolyn Kizer describes the heartache in which most women get out from her former lover, who she had not seen in a long time. The tone of the poem is sad because of the horrible things about her relationship. She describes herself from the outside, pretending that everything are okay, "Fine, I’m just fine, I tell him". However, in her inside, she is fighting and struggling with her feelings, wanting to curl up to him, remembering their time together. An example of this is when she says, "She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe" . getting to the end of the poem she left and felt indifferent about this man. Another metaphors that Carolyn
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
In the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is a story that everyone can related to. The story is about a mother telling her daughter what to do, what not to do and how to do things. Kind of like society or parents or a friends of what to do. There has also been always been expectations of what to do and how to do things in life regards of gender, nationality or religion. The male has he’s duties and the female has different duties. However, in the typical society today, a person is supposed to graduate from high school and go straight in to an Ivy League university, to get a degree in a field of study that makes lot of money. While working a person must save money for that dream big house with the white picket fence. At the same time, you have to look for that perfect spouse so you can have the big beautiful dream wedding. After the wedding it’s the romantic honeymoon to Bora Bora. After a couple years the baby comes, and you are a happy family. Typically, that is what parents teach their children of what is what is expected of them.
Chopin's stories seem very modern in different ways even though it was written about two hundred years ago. Chopin says that it "..does not always find that marriage necessarily requires that a wife be dominated by their husband,.."(Oklopcic 19) and she was trying to show that women can get along just fine without having man interfere. The story represents a disdain for the way women are treated in some relationships and in society as well. "Her concern w...
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” tries to shed light on the conflict between women and a society that assign gender roles using a patriarchal approach. Specifically Margaret Bauer highlights, that most of Chopin’s works revolves around exploring the “dynamic interrelation between women and men, women and patriarchy, even women and women” (146). Similarly, in “The Story of an Hour” Chopin depicts a society that oppresses women mostly through the institution of marriage, as women are expected to remain submissive regardless of whether they derive any happiness. The question of divorce is not welcome, and it is tragic that freedom of women can only be realized through death. According to Bauer, the society depicted in Chopin’s story judged women harshly as it expected women to play their domestic roles without question, while on the other hand men were free to follow their dream and impose their will on their wives (149).
Marriage oppressed her, she needed freedom, freedom to grow and do what she wanted to do, and marriage took that away from here. Chopin didn't believe that one person should take away another's freedom.
... This woman suffers a tremendous amount from the commitment of her marriage, and the death of her husband does not affect her for long. A marriage such as this seems so unbelievable, yet a reader can see the realistic elements incorporated into the story. This begs the question of how undesirable marriage was during Chopin’s life. The unhappiness felt by Mrs. Mallard seems to be very extreme, but Chopin creates a beautiful story that reflects upon the idea of marriage as an undesired relationship and bond to some women in the nineteenth century.
There were more clues to unpack than expected but once I realized the writing style of Kate Chopin I enjoyed reading each sentence to pick out the hidden meaning. Xuding Wang’s essay was helpful seeing what I could not see on my own. The point that grabbed me out of Wang’s essay was the critic, Berkove, whom as I mentioned earlier in this analysis seemed to be the same blockade to women that Chopin wrote about in 1894. To know the character in the story you must know the writer. Kate Chopin was called a rebel in her time. Her stories were a call to action by women and to go as far as Berkove did and call those ideas delusional make him seem out dated and controlling. I can only experience what I do in life. I’ll never understand challenges faced by people of other races, cultures, or sex. Reading the original story and another woman’s discussion on it was very enlightening. There were emotions described that I’ve never considered. With a critic like Berkove using language as he did in the critique against Chopin’s work it makes me curious just how far our society has come. Racism is still alive and well, religious persecution and in this story, sexism. It seems to me that the world has never really changed and will continue to bring with it the same problems as the days
Kate Chopin’s short stories include many elements that replicate the real world, including marriage, which makes women feel oppressed and unheard in her stories, but also the real world. Kate Chopin was a female author in the 1800s who defied societal standards. Even though she was married, she was not trapped by her marriage and her husband supported her. She saw how other women in her time were oppressed and decided to speak up. One of the biggest societal oppressors of women was the Cult of Womanhood.
“There is no perfect relationship. The idea that there is gets us into so much trouble.”-Maggie Reyes. Kate Chopin reacts to this certain idea that relationships in a marriage during the late 1800’s were a prison for women. Through the main protagonist of her story, Mrs. Mallard, the audience clearly exemplifies with what feelings she had during the process of her husbands assumed death. Chopin demonstrates in “The Story of an Hour” the oppression that women faced in marriage through the understandings of: forbidden joy of independence, the inherent burdens of marriage between men and women and how these two points help the audience to further understand the norms of this time.
Through the use of a concise plot, symbolism, descriptive setting, point of view, and dramatic irony, readers are left with a strong feeling of empathy for the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard. Through each paragraph of the story, readers continue to feel empathetic for the woman who grieves the loss of her husband, gains a new feeling of freedom outside of the restrictions of marriage, then loses that freedom when she discovers that her husband is not dead, all within an hour’s time. While women’s independence and freedom within marriage could still be a topic reflected in today’s literature, it would be a much different story than that of Chopin’s time. At the time this story was written, women were expected to do whatever it took to please and cater to their husbands. This story seems to draw from the changes of that time as women were beginning to gain more independence in their lives as in the suffrage movement, marriage, and employment outside the home. Much has changed in women’s rights since the end of the nineteenth century, which is a result of the work of women like Kate