In this excerpt from Belinda, a novel by Maria Edgeworth, she explores how it's the natural tendency of most people to abandon their god given gifts and abilities in order to blend in with the crowd. This idea is brought to fruition through Edgeworth's vivid imagery and diction while talking about Clarence Hervey's social interactions and thoughts.
Maria Edgeworth helps to illustrate Clarence Hervey's lust for social acceptance and willingness to abandon his gifts to achieve said acceptance in the first paragraph through her use of imagery and language. On lines 14 - 16 Edgeworth states “His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights, and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed.” The main imagery
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For example on lines 21 - 24 Edgeworth says “He was not profligate: He had a strong sense of humor, and quick feelings of humanity; but he was so easily led , or rather, excited by his companions” This is very strong language which is repeated throughout the entire excerpt. “He was so easily led… by his companions”, this line alone is a perfect summary of the theme throughout the entire novel. Hervey, like most humans, is a people pleaser who follows his “companions”, aka the status quo, without a second thought because he just wants to be accepted. As I said this language is repeated throughout the entire novel, Towards the end of the excerpt, line 46 - 49, it says “ If he [Hervey] had not been prejudiced by the character of her aunt, Mr.Hervey would have thought Belinda an undesigned, unaffected girl” This quote reveals that if it wasn't for Belinda's aunt he would try to court her, yet he and every other suitor knows that Belinda is below their class and her aunt is just trying to raise her social-economic status. Due to this Hervey doesn't want to court her because doesn't want people to talk about, and ultimately not accept, him because they believe he married a girl beneath his station. Once again we see how Edgeworth is trying to push the theme of people abandoning their gifts and wants in order to fit
Dignity is not found in a person’s position, but in the way their actions reflect upon them. The novel
What makes a person relate to a character? In the 1980’s authors began to utilize more imagery in their works to grasp audiences. With each character comes different languages and different viewpoints. When using imagery, the images the author wishes to convey come naturally. Louise Erdrich dug deep into her own ancestry which overtime inspired her short stories, poems, and novels (Louise). With background knowledge, she has been inspired to write about the relationships between Native and non-Native cultures. Erdrich was inspired by the family bonds and the ties of kinship, along with the inspiring storytellers she grew up with (Louise). All of these emotions are tied into her very first short story, “Love Medicine.” Lipsha, the protagonist
Though unbeknownst to many, the experience of being an outsider is a sensation that everyone can go through. In the world, it is entirely possible for a person to be judged on physical appearance, opinions, and status among other things. It is simply how humans have adapted; they experience society by forming social groups that they are comfortable in. Generally, this group is seen to those involved with it as the “inside group”, and those not directly related to it are seen as “outsiders.” Even in literature, it is clear that the feeling of being one of these outsiders is universal. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Fences by Pat Mora, and The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield all properly display how anyone can be an outsider.
Throughout high school, I had always judged people based on the social groups they were associated with. I tended to spend my time with friends who were in the same clique as me and didn’t give others a chance. This all changed once I met a girl in my PE class, who later became my best friend. I hadn’t considered her to be much like me because she hung out with a different, less popular crowd. However as she began to talk to me and we started to spend more time together I realized what an amazing person she was. I regretted letting our social differences set us apart in the first place. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator has difficulty feeling any sense of empathy towards his wife’s blind friend; but with the help of the blind man’s
Throughout Marilynne Robinson’s works, readers are often reminded of themes that defy the status quo of popular ideas at the time. She explores transience and loneliness, amongst other ideas as a way of expressing that being individual, and going against what is deemed normal in society is acceptable. Robinson utilizes traditional literary devices in order to highlight these concepts.
Although the people surrounding Susanna feel perturbed towards her lack of social-conformity, which is demonstrated through others questioning her “self-image”, she knows that she is simply exp...
In Raymond Carver's Cathedral “appear...extreme versions of insularity,from a husband's self-imposed confinement to a living room in 'Preservation' to another's pathetic reluctance to leave an attic garret in 'Careful'” (Meyer). One of Carver's chief goals in cathedral is to criticize people who fail, in one way or another, to communicate with society. In almost every short story, the main character suffers from insularity due to a horrible event in his or her life, alcoholism, or a failure to consider others' thoughts and feelings. The stories, “Careful,” “Preservation,” “Cathedral,” and “The Compartment” easily represent the entire novel's theme of the inability to relate with others. Each of these stories shows a slightly different degree of affliction, circumstance, and character types making the entire novel effective to a broad audience. Carver wants people to stop thinking that “[the loss of the ability to interact with others] is something that happens to other people” (Carver 25)
Oftentimes, in the public, people have to be “normal” to be successful and accepted. Author William Saroyan believes that society steers people to be conform and fit in, but he disagrees. In the short story “Gaston,” Saroyan shows that carving a unique path can turn out to be erroneous. Through symbolism and contrast, Saroyan conveys the theme that society does not always accept people’s differences.
In Lucy Steele’s confession to Elinor that she is engaged to Edward Ferrars, we can see how the novel illustrates gossip as a cause of both internal conflict, in Elinor, and external conflict, present between Elinor and Lucy. Elinor becomes jealous because of Lucy’s boastful gossip about her life, placing the two into a conflict over romance. When the two meet, Lucy divulges in her relationship with Edwa...
"Some mothers might have encouraged intimacy from motives of interest...and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence...but Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either consideration. It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable, that he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned the partiality" (13).
In her novel Middlemarch, George Eliot’s job is to compare different types of existence and their relevance to one another—where each character is faced with a struggle to resolve his/her desires with the realities of life. In the novel, both the characters of Dorothea Brooke and Dr. Lydgate share a similar form of imagination, where both create an image in their mind of the ideal marriage. Such images can be seen as illusions and it is through these illusions the characters must surrender to reality, as they must make an effort to understand the desires that sparked their imagination from the start, and must attempt to make peace with their existing situations. Eliot, through her narration, attempts to exemplify through these two characters this common inclination of human nature to create what we desire as a tool when dealing with life that is both limiting and disappointing. The vision of the ideal marital partner, for both Dorothea and Lydgate, is oddly chanced.
Edgeworth seems to use a very formal tone when speaking of Hervey. She was very descriptive and seemed to only use words that made Hervey seem very bright and like a very dnamic character. I think these choices were made to make Hervey come across as a very formal character, which was a great choice on Edgeworth's part because
...f society and the desire to marry into a higher class, she is able to expose her own feelings toward her society through her characters. Through Marianne and Elinor she displays a sense of knowing the rules of society, what is respectable and what is not, yet not always accepting them or abiding by them. Yet, she hints at the triviality and fakeness of the society in which she lived subtly and clearly through Willoughby, John Dashwood and Edward Ferrars. Austen expertly reveals many layers to the 19th century English society and the importance of having both sense and sensibility in such a shallow system.
To site a specific incident, Marianne describes her opinion of Edward Ferrars- her sister’s interest- as being very amiable, yet he is not the kind of man she expects to seriously attach to her sister. She goes on to find, what in her opinion are flaws, that Edward Ferrars reads with little feeling or emotion, does not regard music highly, and that he enjoys Elinor’s drawing, yet cannot appreciate it, for he is not an artist (15).
Throughout the whole work, we can observe the development of the character of Edward Waverley. We can notice how his rom...