As a colonial subject of England on the island of Jamaica, Hortense has high expectations when she reaches England, along with 490 other passengers, on the Windrush of 1948. She is expecting high standards of education, language, lifestyle, an abundance of job opportunities, and a family. However, she is heavily disappointed as she realizes the reality of England does not compare to her expectations. Gilbert, one of the first Jamaicans to arrive to serve the Mother Country, is also discontented with his experiences in England. In Small Island, Andrea Levy (whose parents travelled to England on the Windrush), explores and compares the expectations versus the reality of migrating to England.
The first realization of the reality occurs at the beginning of the novel, as Hortense arrives at the house. From her conversations with Celia Langley, she is expecting a ‘big house with a bell’, with a bell that ‘ding-a-ling’s when pressed. However, upon arrival, she is greeted with a large, ‘shabby’ house. However, she is reluctant to admit its shabbiness, insisting it is a ‘grand sort of’ shabby, reflecting her disinclination to believe England is not what she expected. Her negative impression of her abode is emphasized when she asks Gilbert to ‘show me the rest’, and he responds ‘this is it’. In addition, the repetition of ‘just this’ clearly expresses Hortense’s disappointment, whilst highlighting her disbelief.
Hortense’s expectation of her lifestyle was also drastically different to the harsh reality. She expects ‘a dining table in a dining room set with four chairs. A starched tablecloth embroidered with bows. Armchairs placed around the sitting room placed around a small fire.’ Her expectations of the dining table suggests her ...
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...use of the swear word highlights to the reader Hortense and Gilbert’s overall disappointment with their reality, as compared to the fantasies they had dreamed of before.
Andrea Levy uses various structural techniques such as the nonlinear plot structure and four narrators to explore the difference between Hortense and Gilbert’s expectations of England the reality. The four narrators offer various insights into the story, as Hortense and Gilbert react differently to their experience, while Bernard and Queenie suggest the opinions of those who welcomed (or as the nonlinear plot structure emphasizes to the reader the change Hortense and Gilbert experience. Discuss how Andrea Levy explores what Gilbert and Hortense’s expectations, as British colonial subjects, are of England and how these differ from the reality they experience during the Second World War and in 1948.
She brings light to an issue that divided her family from her father, his “obsession” with fixing up the house. She states, "I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture" (14). She believes her father was detached, living his life through restoring old furniture and fixing up the family home, leaving little attention for the family that lived there. She was suspicious of her father’s décor saying, “they were lies” (14). This left much to be desired, often leading her to question whether her father even liked having a family. This feeling is expressed when she says, "Sometimes, when things were going well, I think my father actually enjoyed having a family. Or at least, the air of authenticity we lent to his exhibit. A sort of still life with children" (13). He occupied his life with fixing up his home almost as if he was trying to cover up the problems going on inside himself. Bechdel suggests that the antique mirrors decorating the home were meant to distract visitors from his personal shame. She says, "His shame inhabited our house as pervasively and invisibly as the aromatic musk of aging mahogany" (20). She states that this shame stemmed from her father’s closeted sexual preferences. This would later connect them in a very powerful
D'hoker, Elke, and Gunther Martens, eds. Narrative unreliability in the twentieth-century first-person novel. Vol. 14. Walter de Gruyter, 2008.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
In the novel, Holden is a conflicted 17-year-old teenager that discriminates, has low self-esteem, and seems to be depressed. The way the author dexterously uses his words depicts how Holden feels, purposely summoning emotions within the reader to understand the situation the character faces. “Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. I couldn’t help it […] but once you get started, you can’t just stop on a goddam dime,” (Salinger, 179). The use of the profanity in this quote is so that the reader realizes how conflicted Holden is about crying. It produces emotions in anyone who reads it. Students can learn from this storyline because it gives them the ability to feel what they are reading – to understand. This is not flawed writing, nor is it meant to be offensive; it is purely the objective of this form of literature – to present an artificial reality and to inv...
In conclusion, the three women end up with different fates, they all face similar conditions within their lives. Each woman deals with their circumstances differently and it impacts not only their lives but also the men’s lives that they interact with throughout the story. Both authors highlight the key issues surrounded by the lack of power that women have, isolation, and mental health illness within the Victorian time period through their characters and enlighten the reader to the similarities and differences between the themes that Brontë and Gilman both address.
Vulgarity. Holden Caufield, the protagonist, swears steadily throughout the book. His curses are of the tamest kind, though, "damn", "hell", "crap", "ass", and he curses so self-consciously and so consistently that the words lose most of their vulgarity. Most of the cursing in the book would not even be rated PG-13 if it were in a movie.
The parallel of Anne's growth as a compassionate woman, to Austen's growth as a compassionate writer is felt immensely by the reader. To value virtue over vanity, cultural and class diversity over conformity is to be free from the narrow confines of the ignorant mind. This is ultimately Austen's powerful message.
Faulkner then continues to build shape our opinion of Emily through the metaphorical comparison of her with a “Fallen Monument.” Such a comparison unsurprisingly leads the reader to think of Miss Emily as some sort of tarnished noble, or more appropriately, a tarnished aristocrat. The idea that Miss Emily is part of the aristocracy is then explicitly reinforced with the description of Miss Emily’s residence in the second paragraph (Page 391 Norton Introduction to Literature). Such a “big, squarish frame” (Page 391 Norton) house would not be something owned by anyone of mediocre social class, especially a woman of anything less than upper class when the contextual timeline of this piece is consulted. Faulkner’s pitiful description of the house leads the audience, yet again, to have a sense of pity for her.
The main characteristic of the new literary form of the novel according to Ian Watt is "truth to individual experience" (4) and its new shape is created by a focus on the individual character. He is presented in a specific definition of time and space. The second section of this paper will show how far this is realized in both of the novels. In the third section I want to analyze the characters' individualism in connection with the claim to truth and their complexity in description.
In a subtle way, Brush also makes the wife’s actions selfish. Even though her husband was wrong to react in the way that he did, she was also selfish in her actions. Clearly, her husband has a shy personality because “he was hotly embarrassed” (13) in front of “such few people as there were in the restaurant” (11). Using a couple of this age (“late thirties” (1)), Brush asserts that the wife should have known her husband’s preferences and been sensitive to them. The author also uses the seemingly opposite descriptions the couple: “There was nothing conspicuous about them” (5) and the “big hat” (4) of the woman. The big hat reveals the wife’s desire to be noticed.
In Fenstad’s Mother, by Charles Baxter, character is a very essential element to the story. The main character, Harry Fenstad, is a complicated person, but it is his mother, Mrs. Clara Fenstad, who I feel is a more important and complex person. In this brief paper, I will explain why it is my opinion that both of these characters play a crucial role in the story by complementing and developing each other’s character.
A story will become unreliable and lose the reader’s interest unless its author knows how to draw an exquisite circumstance and arrange the information. The story has demonstrated the descriptive scenes, even it’s a small detail. The powerful descriptive information and the symbols in the story helped to make the success of the story. That process is called setting which is the idea of the broad, form picture of the story. In the beginning of the story, we can see the house where the narrator and her husband rent for their summer vacation. It is the main and only place that story takes place. It was a colonial mansion and it was filled up with romantic love and happiness. By taking a first a look at its beautiful outside form and appearance but then the narrator described, “It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for ther...
Literary elements are demonstrated throughout the story and further improve our understanding of the central idea. The setting is important to the central idea because it shows the reader the type of society being described in the story. The language is also important to the central idea because it contains metaphors which further prove that the people are afraid of going against tradition because they are scared of being the target of violence. The conflict contributes to the central idea as well, because there are many examples of the society going against character, Mrs. Hutchinson, for not respecting the traditions put in place. The central idea is important to our understanding of the story because it sums up the main objective and furthers our
In conclusion the three themes of Freedom, Oppression and Repression are major factors in the two stories, all three of the themes appearing in distinct ways. By comparing the position of both Jane and Mrs. Mallard in the two stories both in their own particular way are oppressed or subjugated by other males, in this case their husbands, even though their husbands often want to do what they feel is best for them. This leaves both tales open to examination in terms of the issue of patriarchy and how often women are its victims. It is also sure to say that Freedom, Oppression and Repression were very much commonly seen in the 19th century since both stories were written in about that time and both share these
It is the aim of this piece to consider how two elements are developed in the opening chapters of three classic novels written by 19th century English women: Emma, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, respectively. The elements to be considered are a) character; and b) character relationships. Consideration will be given to see how each opening chapter develops these two aspects, and the various approaches will be compared and contrasted as well.