Fire and Roses was written by Nancy Lusignan Schultz in 2002. It depicts the burning of an Ursuline Convent in Charleston, Massachusetts by a mob of citizens, including the factors leading up to it’s destruction, and it’s fallout. While it describes a plethora of characters involved in the riot, it focuses on Bishop Fenwick and the Mother Superior of the Covenant, Mary Ann Moffatt.
The book begins with describing the arduous efforts of Bishop Fenwick to open the Ursuline Convent in the decidedly anti-Catholic area of 19th century Massachusetts. It then elaborates on the everyday goings on in the Convent and women’s academy that the Sisters run, while also revealing various conflicts and frictions that would later lead to the riot and destruction of the Covenant. These factors include religious disagreement, gender issues, territorial conflict, the escape of Sisters Rebecca Reed and Elizabeth Harrison, and class division(among a few others). The events of the burning on August 11th and 12th and it’s consequences are the topic of the second half of the book.
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Fire and Roses is a hybrid of sorts.
It straddles the line between academic, fact based writing, and historical fiction. Some of the most entertaining parts of the book come when the book shifts to a more typical narrative based writing, such as when it introduces the reader to the riot in the first few pages. This is especially true of the first half of the book, where Schultz frequently goes on painfully detailed tangents, such as her description of Mary Ann Moffat’s Fathers long winded squabbles and conflicts over various pieces of land(Schultz, pg. 27). Overall, Fire and Roses is a fairly enjoyable work of Historical Literature that, while occasionally losing itself to details, paints an interesting and vivid picture of 19th century New
England. There were many factors at play in the burning of the Charleston Convent, but the most important is the French influence on the Ursuline order. This foreign influence is the key, because it incorporates many of the factors that managed to create such a large, violent mob. While it is true that the riot itself was ignited by the rumors spread of Rebecca Reed, the escape(and delusion) of Elizabeth Harrison, Sister St. George’s brutish leadership style, and economic and gender divisions, the overlying motive for the bricklayers inherent distrust of the Convent was it’s French influence. While it is often forgotten in todays religiously liberal society, the New England of the early 19th Century was vehemently anti-catholic. The citizens of Massachusetts were only a few generations disposed from the Puritans and Pilgrims, and the religious persecution by the European old guard that first drove their ancestors to American shores had not yet been forgotten. As a nation, The United States was in a time of great political and cultural isolation. Confounded by the policies of early Presidents, and the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States had almost completely separated itself from the Old World. They saw themselves as Democratic trailblazers, fundamentally opposed to the tyranny of the institutions of Europe. Considering these factors, it is no surprised that the citizens of Charleston were angered at the idea of a Catholic Convent being planted on Bunker Hill itself, a sight of Revolutionary glory. The ornate, religiously foreign ceremonies and structures, “saucy”(Schultz, pg. 5) Canadian Mother Superior, and the fear of young American women being indoctrinated into European(which, at this point in time, meant anti-American) ideals doomed the Convent to public hatred from the start. All the disturbed citizens needed was an excuse to destroy the Convent, and take back Bunker Hill from it’s French conquerors.
This is significant because it shows that Rose highly supports independence even at the age of 3 years. She would rather her daughter to be burnt again than take a few minutes out of her drawing time to cook her daughter some food. In addition, the fire foreshadows that Jeannette isn’t going to back down from things because it was too hard. She will take things head on, which is shown when she becomes fascinated with the
The Wars of the Roses is written by Dan Jones, a British historian and award-winning journalist. As a college student at the University of Cambridge, Jones was taught by David Starkey, a leading expert on Tudor history. The Wars of the Roses, Dan Jones’ third book, discusses the Wars of the Roses and the events that led up to this period of warfare and political tension.While the main events of this novel occur in England, Dan Jones occasionally includes France and Scotland in the narration. The Wars of the Roses started in May of 1455, with the First Battle of St. Albans, and concluded in August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, where the Lancastrian Henry Tudor was officially crowned as Henry VII. The Wars of the Roses only lasted 30 years, but Jones begins the book in 1420, with the marriage of Catherine de Valois to Henry V, and ends it in 1525, with the rise of the Tudors.
Ulf Kirchdorfer, "A Rose for Emily: Will the Real Mother Please Stand Up?” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 10/2016, Volume 29, Issue 4, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0895769X.2016.1222578
In Puritan led Massachusetts Bay Colony during the days of Anne Hutchinson was an intriguing place to have lived. It was designed ideally as a holy mission in the New World called the “city upon a hill,” a mission to provide a prime example of how protestant lives should have subsisted of. A key ingredient to the success of the Puritan community was the cohesion of the community as a whole, which was created by a high level of conformity in the colony. Puritan leaders provided leadership for all facets of life; socially, economically, religiously, and even politically. A certain hierarchy was very apparent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in which ministers always seemed to have gotten their way. Governor Winthrop got his way in 1637 by banishing a woman, Anne Hutchinson, whom he thought posed a threat to the structure of the colony. I believe that there is a legit rationale for her banishment, this being her religious ideas that were very close to that of the Antinomians who Governor Winthrop was not too fond of. I also think that this was not the primal reason. In my mind, Anne’s gender played a large role in determining whether or not she actually posed a serious threat to the solidarity of Massachusetts.
In the beginning of the late seventeenth century a sense of fear and panic was sweeping throughout the colonies of North America this fear began in a small town in Massachusetts called Salem and would lead to the death of nineteen people. This fear was caused by young Puritan girls who started randomly convulsing and accusing people of being witches many of the accused were women many single or widowed who owned land and this event was titled The Salem Witch Trails, but another smaller very significant event also took place during this period of time that event is the attempted hanging of Mary Webster. Both of these events are very significant in the fact that they would become a basis of American literature and would bring about a very big theme even in today`s literature that theme being “A majority does not always make the right decision.” Both of these events would lead to the writing of two significant pieces
In the late 1600’s, literature is dissimilar from today’s, such as focusing on being sent into the fiery pits of hell only because one hasn’t converted to Puritanism. There are also different types of writing to display the righteousness and positives of being a converted and loyal to the Puritan culture. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards are two popular Puritan authors who project different messages and portray a varying energy through a slim number of their pieces. The poems, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” or “Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet or “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards are fit examples of the Puritan age and what Puritans belive to be religiously
...ve Indians. From the copious use of examples in Winthrop's work, and the concise detail in Rowlandson's narrative, one can imbibe such Puritans values as the mercy of God, place in society, and community. Together, these three elements create a foundation for Puritan thought and lifestyle in the New World. Though A Model of Christian Charity is rather prescriptive in its discussion of these values, Rowlandson's captivity narrative can certainly be categorized as descriptive; this pious young woman serves as a living example of Winthrop's "laws," in that she lives the life of a true Puritan. Therefore, both 17th century works are extremely interrelated; in order to create Winthrop's model community, one must have faith and closely follow Puritan ideals, as Rowlandson has effectively done in her A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.
In Massachusetts Bay colony, there were social stresses and there was a quarrel over land ownership in the Putnam family, twelve others from Gloucester; thirteen from the port of Salem; and fifty-five from Andover women. Rebellious acts started going on and the desire of power became outrageous as they physically started attacking ...
Salem in the 1600s was a textbook example of an extremist society with sexist norms and no separation of church and state. Because it had no laws, only people considered authorities on law, it was always a society based on norms laid down by the first settlers and severity on the verge of madness. The power was imbalanced, focused subjectively in the people who had means to control others. Some people attempted to right the wrongs of the powerful, as people are wont to do eventually. Because of them, change indeed came to Salem, slowly and after excessive ruin and death. Before the rebels’ impact took hold, Salem’s Puritan society was a religious dystopian disaster, a fact illustrated excellently by Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. This religious dystopian disaster carried many flaws and conflicts that can be seen in other societies, both historical and modern.
Reis, Elizabeth. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England.( New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 107-108.
This was a very dark and eerie time for the Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts (P. Shaunak). A group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, told the people of their town they were possessed by the devil and accused several women from their town of possessing them. The ringleader of the girls was Abigail Williams, the niece of Samuel Paris, the town’s priest. Abigail and her cousin Elizabeth Paris started having irrational fits and violent outbursts. Since the girls kept having these violent outbursts, Samuel Paris called for doctor William Griggs.
Concerning the contextualization of A Rose of Family as a sign of the times of women at that point, where cultural norms of women lead to a life in domestication. The recognition of the rose here as it is carefully placed in the title of the piece as well bears significance to the physical rose and what it meant to the young women in the South during the 1800s (Kurtz 40). Roses are generally given as tokens of love and affection by males to females. There are even remnants of it today where young lads also profess their love to women with roses; women still see it as an act of endearment towards them.
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a unique piece of literature. It has a plot which seems somewhat bland, and it is not particularly exciting. However, the ending is quite suprising, and for me it made the story worth reading. I think there are some interesting aspects of this story if you look at it from a feminist point of view. The feminist movement has attempted to elevate the status of the woman to a level equal with men. Feminists have fought for the right of women to be free from the old social restraints which have been in place for so long. A feminist believes a woman should be strong and independent. In some ways the main character, Emily, is this kind of woman, but for the most part she is portrayed as weak and fragile.
'A Red, Red Rose', was first published in 1794 in A Selection of Scots Songs, edited by Peter Urbani. Written in ballad stanzas, the verse - read today as a poem – pieces together conventional ideas and images of love in a way that transcends the "low" or non-literary sources from which the poem is drawn. In it, the speaker compares his love first with a blooming rose in spring and then with a melody "sweetly play'd in tune." If these similes seem the typical fodder for love-song lyricists, the second and third stanzas introduce the subtler and more complex implications of time. In trying to quantify his feelings - and in searching for the perfect metaphor to describe the "eternal" nature of his love - the speaker inevitably comes up against love's greatest limitation, "the sands o' life." This image of the hour-glass forces the reader to reassess of the poem's first and loveliest image: A "red, red rose" is itself an object of an hour, "newly sprung" only "in June" and afterward subject to the decay of time. This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of the later Romantic poets, who took Burns's work as an important influence.
In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.