Chris Shea
ENG 348
Professor Christine Doyle
03/29/16
Analytical Response Paper #7
In her 1876 short story Marcia, Rebecca Harding Davis shows the determination and persistence of a 20-year-old amateur female writer by the name of Marcia Barr from the perspective of an unnamed, middle-aged narrator who may be a writer herself. However, Davis also demonstrates the not-so-good perks of being an artist, hence the old term ‘starving artist’, and the other not-so-good perks of being a single woman in the 19th century (such as forced marriage).
We first meet this amateur female writer in the winter “…a few years ago…” (Davis 87). She comes up from Mississippi, “…the only white child on a poor plantation on the banks of the Yazoo.” (88). She tells
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As Marcia so eloquently puts it: “‘People will do anything for me – but publish my manuscripts.’” (88). She goes on to describe how she has had “‘…printed forms of rejection from every magazine and literary newspaper in the country.’” (89), and only had a two-inch snippet of her work posted in a Sunday paper throughout her three-year career. But when asked by the narrator if she is ready to give up, Marcia so eloquently says “‘No; not if it were ten years instead of three.’” (89), showing her true persistence as a writer.
But as the author of this essay has known well in his own life, sometimes persistence does not pay off. Marcia has an optimistic viewpoint on her literary career and vows “‘I shall not starve.’” (90). However, the narrator later goes on to say Marcia essentially all but starves during this endeavor. Her clothing becomes ratty, and she herself becomes forlorn and cold. And although she did get some assignments by newspaper companies, they were for petty tasks such as “…to collect a column of jokes for a Sunday paper, by which she made three dollars a week.” (90). She soon loses all hope and likely becomes
She first started writing, when she came back home after the death of her father. She wrote about the Jackson social scene for the Memphis, Tennessee newspaper. She also was a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration in rural Mississ...
The narrator, a new mother, is revoked of her freedom to live a free life and denied the fact that she is “sick”, perhaps with postpartum depression, by her husband, a physician, who believes whatever sorrows she is feeling now will pass over soon. The problematic part of this narrative is that this woman is not only kept isolated in a room she wishes to have nothing to do with, but her creative expression is revoked by her husband as we can see when she writes: “there comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word (Gilman,
This piece of auto biographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction
Foster, Frances Smith (1993). Written By Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1796-1892. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press.
Kort, Carol. A to Z of American Women Writers. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002.
To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
...devoted herself to the practical and compensating notion of supporting a household during the early 1900s. The farm girl’s exclusion from society allowed her to possess freedom, unattainable to the Gibson Girl. Victorian society bound the Gibson Girl to unrealistic expectations and oppressive restrictions. Society possessed no dominance over the ideals and appearances of a farm girl thus demonstrating that the Gibson Girl’s life held just as many, if not more, difficulties.
Sometimes trying to conform to society’s expectations becomes extremely overwhelming, especially if you’re a woman. Not until recent years have woman become much more independent and to some extent equalized to men. However going back to the 19th century, women were much more restrained. From the beginning we perceive the narrator as an imaginative woman, in tune with her surroundings. The narrator is undoubtedly a very intellectual woman. Conversely, she lives in a society which views women who demonstrate intellectual potential as eccentric, strange, or as in this situation, ill. She is made to believe by her husband and physician that she has “temporary nervous depression --a slight hysterical tendency” and should restrain herself from any intellectual exercises in order to get well (Gilman 487). The narrator was not allowed to write or in any way freely...
One of the most notable feminists of that period was the writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was also one of the most influential feminists who felt strongly about and spoke frequently on the nineteenth-century lives for women. Her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" characterizes the condition of women of the nineteenth century through the main character’s life and actions in the text. It is considered to be one of the most influential pieces because of its realism and prime examples of treatment of women in that time. This essay analyzes issues the protagonist goes through while she is trying to break the barter from her marriage and love with her husband.
It is important to not that the direction of Brooks’s literary career shifted dramatically in the late 1960’s. While attending a black writers’ conference she was struck by the passion of the young poets. Before this happened, she had regarded herself as essentially a universalist, who happened to be black. After the conference, she shifted from writing about her poems about black people and life to writing for the black population.
Louise Mallard is a woman who enjoys freedom and independence. She feels soaring relief and fiery triumph upon realizing that, yes, she is finally free. She is free of the weighted ropes of marriage. She fantasizes of her days ahead, living for herself and only herself. “A kind intention or cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination” (Chopin 234). She views the imposing of one’s will on another person as a crime, no matter the intention behind it. She has a taste of freedom after Mr. Mallard’s death and can finally see days without stress ahead of her. Prior to her husband’s death, young Mrs. Mallard feels tied down and even oppressed. “She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength” (Chopin 233). Despite the typical oppression of women throughout the centuries prior to the 1920s, Mrs. Mallard possesses a free spirit.
“The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed.
The author was born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1901. Later, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College where he studied traditional literature and explored music like Jazz and the Blues; then had gotten his masters at Harvard. The author is a professor of African American English at Harvard University. The author’s writing
The emergence of black women writers on the American literary scene was not a sudden or a fortuitous event.Their bursting on to the scene was a result of the new found consciousness of black American women.They were increasingly becoming conscious of the racist and patriarchal oppression that they were being subjected to in America.By the 1970's the black women had the knowledge that both-The Civil Rights Movement and The Feminist Movement were neglecting the issues relating to black women.Despite being active participants in both the move...