In the short story, The Brink of Freedom by Stella Harvey, the character Saphal has conflicts with herself and the people around her about her the expectations surrounding her identity as a mother and a wife. Saphal has been forced to flee her country of refuge, Greece, and leave her young son behind. Her struggle with this is evident, especially when the idea was first brought up, “her eyes filled with fire” (23). Her child is only six years old, and she is very aware of the fact that there are imminent dangers in leaving him behind. She behaves like you would imagine a mother without her child would, irritable and empty. Saphal struggles internally with whether or not she stay with her child, bring her child, and go back for her child,
In Sandra Benitez’s novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, we get to know the lives and struggles of the residents of a small town in Mexico. Each character faces a conflict that affects the course of his or her life. The conflict I chose was the conflict that Marta was with her child and how her anger about the child made her do things she wished she could take back. It all starts with Marta and her sister. Marta is pregnant and thinks she can't take care of the kid so she wants an abortion. Then once Choyo Marta’s sister husband found out he insisted to take the kid once he is born. So then Marta decided to take care of the baby until it was born but then after time went by the husband of Choyo said that he wouldn't be able to take the kid because he was already going to have a child with Choyo. Once Marta was told this she let her anger get the best of her which then lead her to
Women throughout time have been compelled to cope with the remonstrances of motherhood along with society’s anticipations
The mother is a selfish and stubborn woman. Raised a certain way and never falters from it. She neglects help, oppresses education and persuades people to be what she wants or she will cut them out of her life completely. Her own morals out-weight every other family member’s wants and choices. Her influence and discipline brought every member of the family’s future to serious-danger to care to her wants. She is everything a good mother isn’t and is blind with her own morals. Her stubbornness towards change and education caused the families state of desperation. The realization shown through the story is the family would be better off without a mother to anchor them down.
...Having this shred of freedom in choosing who would be the father of her children was important to Linda Brent and she risked shaming her family to do it., and she had found some individual freedom in doing so.
In “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour”, the woman in each story imprisons in the domestic sphere. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the woman in this story conflicts between keeping the baby or getting abortion although the relationship with her boyfriend would not improve as he said. In “The Story of an Hour”, even though Louise Mallard, an intelligent, independent woman understands that she should grieve for Brently, her husband and worry for her future, she cannot help herself from rejoice at her newfound freedom. The author of this story, Kate Chopin suggests that even with a happy marriage, the loss of freedom and the restraint are the results that cannot be avoid.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Racism affects everyone on Earth since people are all different. Leslie Marmon Silko wrote an essay called Fences Against Freedom. She was a person of mixed-ancestry who has faced racism very closely from childhood to adulthood. Early on She recalls being rejected from some school pictures, later as an adult, she was pulled over by Border Patrol officers all because of her ancestry. Leslie Marmon Silko points out that there is no race, but human race and; hence, racism should not exist. Silko was raised in her hometown where racism did not exist at all; people judged others by behavior and not by skin color, religion or origin. Nevertheless, coming out of her hometown environment racism was evident. People’s interactions were driven by attending to skin color, creed, ancestry and other biases. Racism affects everyone in the United States from foreigners to natives, as presented by Leslie Marmon Silko’s feelings of pride, disappointment, sympathy and anger as she confronts racism in the United States.
In today’s society, there is a considerably high value on motherhood. Mothers teach their kids important aspects of life and typically pass down their own values to their children. It only makes sense emphasize the importance of motherhood. This is not the case in the novel Sula. In the community of The Bottom, motherhood is not highly valued and has a negative connotation which is shown through Eva’s experiences as a mother and is passed down through her family.
In Night Woman, there is a Lady who earns her living as a prostitute. She hates her job, but she has a son who she loves more than anything so she endures it in order to provide for him. On page 71 the mother states, “The night is the time I dread the most in my life.” The woman loves her son enough that she is willing to work all night doing something she despises in order to make sure he is taken care of. She even makes up lies to ensure her son doesn’t know what she does at night and so that he doesn’t have to see the darkness that is all around him. Caroline’s mother in the story Caroline’s Wedding shows a similar love for her child. Unlike the mother and son in Night woman who live in Haiti, Caroline and her sister and mother live in America. In their family, everyone marries a Haitian person. It has been like this for a long time, so when Caroline is preparing to marry an American man in a very un-Haitian way, her mother is horrified. She desperately wants Caroline to reconsider even though he is a good man. Despite all her complaints, she is there for her daughter when she needs her and she does her best to do her part in the wedding. When asked by her other daughter why this is the mother responds, “ ‘She is my child. You don’t cut your own finger off just because it smells bad.’ ” (159) The mother doesn’t stop loving her daughter even when things get rough and they disagree. She accepts that she cannot keep her daughter from the
...son into obedience, and has been the partner who dominates and controls all along. Her efforts to find true happiness are futile, and she lives a lie.
Evald has repeatedly espoused to her that he does not want children. Thus when she becomes pregnant at the age of thirty-nine, Marianne is in an incredibly difficult position: leave her husband and raise the child on her own, or abort the child and stay with her husband. Neither of these options are ideal; Marianne repeatedly elucidates that she wants to keep the child, and so the decision is not one she can make lightly. This brings to mind other sub-optimal conditions faced by prospective mothers throughout the semester; particularly, the situation of Lucy in Disgrace, pregnant with her rapist’s child, conjures similar quandaries. Neither of these women is a teenager unable to support herself and her possible offspring, but still, the question of impending motherhood is a challenging one. Wild Strawberries tends to portray motherhood in a negative light; motherhood does not seem a harbinger of joy and happiness, but rather a necessary evil that should not necessarily be undertaken. Sarah, Isak’s betrothed who eventually marries his brother, cradles what is supposed to be a newborn child, but is obviously only a facsimile, a doll. Isak’s mother, of advanced age, is frigid and cold towards him, unwilling to show the least bit of affection for her last remaining
...eeper. In the narrator’s conscious she sees herself “free” of her marriage, society and her repressed mind.
Motherhood does not come with an instruction manual. So, it is fair to say, not every mother makes the best decisions. We would like to think that all mothers do their absolute best, however we know after reading “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, that is not the case. Some, do not put the needs of their children before their own. In “I Stand Here Ironing”, Olsen utilizes symbolism, flashbacks, and theme to develop the narrator as a selfish, unsympathetic mother that does not provide for her daughter, Emily, with the attention and care that is needed for her to blossom into adulthood.
Stepping up to the counter a metallic voice started chirping. Oddly though, it did have a more pleasant sound partly masking it which was slightly musicbox-esque. The source appeared to be a bird shape with it's wings clamped in an upwards position but it's neck was still open to reveal all the tiny cogs that made it sing
This signifies that the women here are recognized only in terms of the role that they play. This becomes their sole identity. The question that arises out of this is what is the essential activity of a woman in the society? Are they only meant to adhere to the ideals of feminity? Are they essentially required to play the role of the fundamental carer2(Freixas, Luque and Reina 48)? The mother in Sahni’s story fits into this conception of a woman. Right from the beginning of the story, the author suggests her extreme concern and love for her son as she keeps feeling anxious that “everything should go well”(95). She willingly or unwillingly accepts all his orders and even goes to the extent of agreeing to make a ‘phulkari’ for his Boss inspite of her weak eyesight only to ensure that her son gets “a lift in the office” (101). The son on the other hand is opportunistic enough to exploit her love to meet his own needs. This also points at the question of power-play in the mother-son relationship. There is infact a power reversal where the old mother is dominated by the son. In return, all that the mother asks for is some space of her own. She wishes for independence: “Son, send me to Hardwar” (100). She is indeed given a space but a space of imposed solitary existence in her own household where her freedom is