Sophia McGarrity Mr. Williams Honors English II 22 February 2024 19th Century Reflections: The Interplay of Naturalism and Realism in Literature In the poem, “We Wear the Mask,” Paul Laurence Dunbar articulates, “We smile, but, Oh great Christ, our cries / To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but, oh the clay is vile; Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!” (10-15). After the Civil War, African Americans faced struggles with segregation. Although slavery was over, white people still did not see them as equals. Dunbar conveys how even though the journey will be hard toward freedom and equality, they will get through it. No matter how hard they want to give up, they need to keep a positive mindset in order for change to …show more content…
Moving from the romantic era and into the realist era was controversial to some critics who did not believe that writing or reading about the real life struggles of average people was “literary.” Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” and Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory” introduce low and middle class characters who struggle to make sense of their difficult lives. Ethan Frome, for example, is a poor farmer trapped in a loveless marriage. Mrs. Mallard, on the other hand, learns her husband has died tragically in a terrible train accident, and Richard Cory is a young, handsome man who appears to have it all but chooses to end his own life. In all three of these 19th century works, the authors employ naturalistic conflicts, including physical limitations, economics, heredity, social conflicts, and gender to show their readers the struggles of ordinary individuals in everyday life. The naturalistic conflicts of heredity, economics, and physical limitations appear in Wharton's, Ethan
Edith Wharton's tale of Ethan Frome is a classic story of hopeful romance ending in tragedy. We are introduced to Ethan as he's walking to pick up his wife's cousin Mattie, at a church social. On the way, we witness some of Ethan's thoughts about his life and the people in it. By the end of Chapter One, the readers begin to understand the way Ethan views himself, Mattie, and Zeena, and the way these characters might influence the events in the novel.
Throughout “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton renders the idea that freedom is just out of reach from the protagonist, Ethan Frome. The presence of a doomed love affair and an unforgiving love triangle forces Ethan to choose between his duty and his personal desire. Wharton’s use of archetypes in the novella emphasizes how Ethan will make choices that will ultimately lead to his downfall. In Edith Wharton’s, “Ethan Frome.” Ethan is wedged between his duty as a husband and his desire for happiness; however, rather than choosing one or the other, Ethan’s indecisiveness makes not only himself, but Mattie and Zeena miserable.
Many people oppose society due to the surroundings that they face and the obstacles that they encounter. Set in the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is the story of a poor, lonely man, his wife Zeena, and her cousin Mattie Silver. Ethan the protagonist in this novel, faces many challenges and fights to be with the one he really loves. Frome was trapped from the beginning ever since Mattie Silver came to live with him and his wife. He soon came to fall in love with her, and out of love with his own wife. He was basically trapped in the instances of his life, society’s affect on the relationship, love, poverty, illness, disability, and life.
Set in 1881 Starkfield, Massachusetts, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome reveals a recurring theme in literature: “the classic war between a passion and responsibility.” In this novel, protagonist Ethan Frome confronts the demands of two private passions: his desire to become an engineer that conflicts with his moral duty to his family and his love for Mattie Silver that conflicts with his obligations to his wife Zeena. Inevitably placing the desires and well-being of his family before his own, Ethan experiences only “‘[s]ickness and trouble’” and “‘that’s what [he’s] had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping’” (12). The reader understands Ethan’s struggles when he abandons his studies at Worcester, when he considers running
The rise of Realism in 1855 was the time when farming began to industrialize, communication expanded through railroads, and Nationalism was yet again revived. On top of all these important transformations that have marked this period of time was the significance for literature with a new audience, new settings, and new characters. The novel, Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, is a magnificent example of literature from the Realistic period.
Edith Wharton’s brief, yet tragic novella, Ethan Frome, presents a crippled and lonely man – Ethan Frome – who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a hypochondriacal wife, Zenobia “Zeena” Frome. Set during a harsh, “sluggish” winter in Starkfield, Massachusetts, Ethan and his sickly wife live in a dilapidated and “unusually forlorn and stunted” New-England farmhouse (Wharton 18). Due to Zeena’s numerous complications, they employ her cousin to help around the house, a vivacious young girl – Mattie Silver. With Mattie’s presence, Starkfield seems to emerge from its desolateness, and Ethan’s vacant world seems to be awoken from his discontented life and empty marriage. And so begins Ethan’s love adventure – a desperate desire to have Mattie as his own; however, his morals along with his duty to Zeena and his natural streak of honesty hinder him in his ability to realize his own dreams. Throughout this suspenseful and disastrous novella, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton effectively employs situational irony enabling readers to experience a sudden shock and an unexpected twist of events that ultimately lead to a final tragedy in a living nightmare.
Ethan Frome is a popular novel written in 1911 by Edith Wharton. The plot of the novel consists of an unnamed narrator who tells the tragic tale of a poor farmer in the New England area. Ethan Frome is married to a cranky old lady, but falls in love with his wife’s cousin who helps out around the house. In the climax of the story the two in love attempt suicide to free themselves from Zeena’s control but end up handicapped for the rest of their life. Even though he isn’t the protagonist of the story the character that needs to be analyzed is the narrator. Edith Wharton uses the narrator to retell his interpretations of the story of Ethan Frome and in turn reveals his inner thoughts.
They say love is the strongest force in the Universe, but by god, “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton shows it can also be the stupidest. “Ethan Frome” a Fictional Romantic (and somewhat ironic) novel follows a man named Ethan Frome in his cold, melancholic life in Starkfield, Massachussetts during the late 19th century. Frome is unhappy, married, and desperate. That is until he meets Mattie Silver; his hope for a better life. Breaking down “Ethan Frome” the reader can realize that this is far more than a love story. The major theme is centered on love, but more it’s far more tragic. The novel focuses on creating a love triangle that is far from perfect and slightly awkward, but can somehow still work. Ultimately, “Ethan Frome” proves a point, which Ethan Frome embodies, and so does Mattie Silver.
While exploring an unknown island and struggling to survive, a group of schoolboys reveal their primitive, barbarous identities in William Golding’s work, Lord of the Flies. Similarly, Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet, describes the hidden nature of individuals in order to protect themselves and conceal their pain. Golding’s novel and Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask,” both express masks as means of escaping reality and a source of strength; however, the pressures of society suppress the characters in Dunbar’s poem while the boys in Lord of the Flies unleash true feelings through their innate savageness.
The poem, "We Wear the Mask”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar is about separating Blacks people from the masks they wear. When Blacks wear their masks they are not simply hiding from their oppressor they are also hiding from themselves. This type of deceit cannot be repaid with material things. This debt can only be repaid through repentance and self-realization. The second stanza of “We Wear the Mask” tells Blacks whites should not know about their troubles. It would only give them leverage over Blacks. Black peoples’ pain and insecurities ought to be kept amongst themselves. There is no need for anyone outside the black race to know what lies beneath their masks. The third stanza turns to a divine being. Blacks look to god because he made them and is the only one that can understand them. They must wear their mask proudly. The world should stay in the dark about who they are. This poem is about Blacks knowing their place and staying in it. This is the only way they could be safe.
Ethan Frome is the only book Edith Wharton ever wrote that the author's name is readily -and deservedly- associated with, and it has in fact been held in higher esteem than any other of her novels. This book is a brilliant makes a use of imagery and symbolism. The destiny of human existence which Ethan can never solve is more clearly sharpened by Wharton's skillful use of contrasting images and symbols. More significantly, it is by her use of this symbolic imagery that the characterization of the novel can be fully understand.
In the time of the Great Depression, many people were in moments of suffering and hardships. However, African American were facing moments of prejudice and segregation, that was sonly based on the color of their skin. In the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper lee and the poem “We wear the mask” by Paul Lawrence Dumber, gave incite to those moments and how African Americans changed themselves to fit in to the white people society.
Edith Wharton, a famous author of many outstanding books, wrote a chaotic love story entitled Ethan Frome. The story took place in the wintery town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Wharton was a sophisticated young woman who found love in sitting down and holding people’s attention by way of a pen. Wharton wrote yet another thriller that told the tale of two love stricken people that barely found it possible to be together; which later forced them to fall into the temptation of love that cannot be controlled. Wharton had many different writing styles but for different books meant different needs. In Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, frustration and loneliness play roles in disappointment while imagery, symbolism, and individual responsibility provide the novel with a tortuous plot.
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” is a lyric poem in which the point of attraction, the mask, represents the oppression and sadness held by African Americans in the late 19th century, around the time of slavery. As the poem progresses, Dunbar reveals the façade of the mask, portrayed in the third stanza where the speaker states, “But let the dream otherwise” (13). The unreal character of the mask has played a significant role over the life of African Americans, whom pretend to put on a smile when they feel sad internally. This ocassion, according to Dunbar, is the “debt we pay to human guile," meaning that their sadness is related to them deceiving others. Unlike his other poems, with its prevalent use of black dialect, Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” acts as “an apologia (or justification) for the minstrel quality of some of his dialect poems” (Desmet, Hart and Miller 466). Through the utilization of iambic tetrameter, end rhyme, sound devices and figurative language, the speaker expresses the hidden pain and suffering African Americans possessed, as they were “tortured souls” behind their masks (10).
The poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar was written in 1893. The poem is about how people have to hide their thoughts and feelings by putting on a mask. The mask allows people to conceal their pain and suffering and act happy around others. This is based on the struggles that African Americans faced at the time and how they had to hide their true feelings. Dunbar uses his unique and engaging style, language, form, and structure to tell the story of the struggles African Americans faced during and after the Civil War.