What is it about female relationships that makes them so complicated? How can two best friends quickly become enemies? Women, more so than men, have a tendency to hide their true feelings, creating tension and resentment that damage their friendships. From an early age, girls feel unspoken rivalries that only escalate throughout their lives. Envying another girl’s new pair of shoes eventually turns into coveting her career or fiancé. Once the delicate balance between friendship and rivalry is disturbed, feelings of jealousy and hatred will emerge to destroy the relationship.
Edith Wharton’s short story “Roman Fever” depicts the dynamic between two life-long friends as they reminisce about their youth. The events in the plot gradually undermine their close friendship, exposing their true feelings about each other and the hidden secrets of their past. Through character contrast, inner dialogue, and scenic descriptions, Wharton conveys the envy, hatred, and deception that exist below the surface of their relationship. Underneath the women’s superficial conversation and pleasant memories, the author proves that their friendship is actually a façade for a life-long rivalry.
Edith Wharton creates a contrast between the two protagonists, Alida Slade and Grace Ansley, in order to lay the foundation for their mutual jealousy and resentment. At the beginning of the story, the two characters are grouped together as typical middle-aged women, knitting and appreciating the view from the terrace of a restaurant. The author notes the difference in their physical appearance –Grace is smaller and paler, while Alida is fuller and darker; however, she places more emphasis on the women’s conversation and the description of their surroundings....
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... believed that I understood a fair amount about my female peers. But reading “Roman Fever” has shown me that I know nearly nothing about friendships. I began to doubt some of my friends, cautious of the fact that I can never be sure of what they really think or feel. Amidst these troubling doubts, I came to the realization that Wharton had missed the most important aspect of friendship: trust. Alida and Grace were childhood friends, yet neither had trusted the good in their relationship. They allowed the secrets and lies of their past to guide their feelings for twenty-five years, resulting in the end of a possibly salvageable friendship. In real life, I know that I cannot analyze contrasting details nor read into internal thoughts. The only hope I have is to put effort into a friendship and trust that it will be strong enough to overcome jealousy and rivalry.
Friendship is a necessity throughout life whether it is during elementary school or during adulthood. Some friendships may last a while and some may last for a year; it depends on the strength of the bond and trust between the two people. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters, Gene and Finny, did not have a pure friendship because it was driven by envy and jealousy, they did not feel the same way towards each other and they did not accurately understand each other.
Friendship is an unbreakable bond between two people and contains loyalty and love. In the story Chains, Isabel finds herself in grand friendships that play throughout the story. She showed how devoted she was towards Lady Lockton, Curzon, and Ruth by being there for them during tough times. In the end, friendship is the light through the darkness, powerful and important.
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.
Friendship can be debated as both a blessing and a curse; as a necessary part of life to be happy or an unnecessary use of time. Friends can be a source of joy and support, they can be a constant stress and something that brings us down, or anywhere in between. In Book 9 of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses to great lengths what friendship is and how we should go about these relationships. In the short story “Melvin in the Sixth Grade” by Dana Johnson, we see the main character Avery’s struggle to find herself and also find friendship, as well as Melvin’s rejection of the notion that one must have friends.
...n their stories at first, but by the end they both praise them for their ability to act with the virtues that every Roman woman should strive to act with.
Eliza Wharton has sinned. She has also seduced, deceived, loved, and been had. With The Coquette Hannah Webster Foster uses Eliza as an allegory, the archetype of a woman gone wrong. To a twentieth century reader Eliza's fate seems over-dramatized, pathetic, perhaps even silly. She loved a man but circumstance dissuaded their marriage and forced them to establish a guilt-laden, whirlwind of a tryst that destroyed both of their lives. A twentieth century reader may have championed Sanford's divorce, she may have championed the affair, she may have championed Eliza's acceptance of Boyer's proposal. She may have thrown the book angrily at the floor, disgraced by the picture of ineffectual, trapped, female characters.
Friendship has been crucial to the survival of women especially those whose social class puts at a disadvantage. Margaret Andersen, in her book, Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender, asserts that “Despite long-held assumptions that women’s primary identity was attached to men, research now shows the important role that friendships between women have, including women who live within stable heterosexual relationships” (94). While her claim on women primarily being identified with men is an assumption maybe contested, she points out the importance of friendship to women, which necessarily does not have a sexual undertone.
Catherine initially looks up to Isabella and considers herself lucky to have found such a good friend (p.19 NA). Isabella and Catherine’s friendship grows very quickly, unlike that of Catherine and Eleanor, which progresses much more gradually. Isabella is very free with her friendship, professing to do anything for her friends, even when she has known them only a short time. In contrast, Eleanor takes her time to get to know Catherine. She is far more sophisticated than Isabella and does not jump into a friendship without getting to know someone first.
Like Alice, who divorced was twice. Another example of how Edith and this particular story is compares to her life is Alice’s daughter is sick with typhoid and when Edith was 10 she suffered from typhoid fever and almost died. Also like Lily and most children her age Edith Wharton also had a governess. Wharton’s main concept in the story was the theme of divorce and survival of the fittest. By having the other two men being around the current marriage and dealing with some of struggles of divorced and being able to survive New York’s
Newland loathes the monotonous conversations with May and repetitiveness of his job. Newland respects and loves May with all his heart, but when she begins to call him original, Newland realizes she was always “going to say the right thing” (Age of Innocence 22) because she was simply giving the replies “instinct and tradition” have taught her (Age of Innocence 72). Cynthia Griffin Wolff, in her article entitled “Edith Wharton”, declares that the small world of New York was “suffocating” and “stifled spontaneous expressions of emotion” (3). Also, Newland lived in a kind of “hieroglyphic world” where what someone actually wanted to say was never said or thought, but just “represented by a set of arbitrary signs” (Age of Innocence 40).
In Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the protagonists’ relationships with their companions becomes an essential subplot within each text. Their relationships are crucial in order to complete their journey and in some cases complete each other. In addition, there are many characteristics in each text that are unrealistic representations of life. For instance, the environment of hell the Inferno, Don Quixote’s fictional world, and the instant marriages in Pride and Prejudice are all things that are not typically seen in real life. These unrealistic characteristics affect how each relationship develops, however, these factors do not take away from the significance of each relationship. In each text, the lucrative ambitions of the characters are initially the motive of many relationships rather than the desire for true companionship. A major part of the relationships development is how the characters’ companionships transition from ones that are based on individual ambitions to ones that are built on the desire for intimate relationships.
Whether it is because of the obligation, out of love, pity or kindness, Jane believes she visit Mrs. Reed and fulfill her last wishes. “Forgive me for my passionate language; I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.” (253) Putting the hardships behind her Jane gives her full apologies to Mrs.
First, the article introduces the audience to friendships described by Aristotle, and Todd May. In the text it states, “It is threatened when we are encouraged to look up on those
Friendship is a wonderful part of life, but unfortunately, it can be used to deceive. It is easy to manipulate, but true friendship cannot be defeated, even after death. This element could well be the very thing that sealed the fate of Julius Caesar. Brutus, Cassius, and all the other conspirators knew that they could use friendship to their advantage and Caesar's disadvantage. The conspirators used friendship as a cover to blind Caesar from the truth, just as a hunter uses camouflage to keep the animals from seeing what he is up to.
The word ‘friend’ often carries vague connotations and assumptions that have no real purpose to the meaning of the word that is important here. Within the boundaries of a true friendship, the superiority of one individual over another should never be outward nor should one individual benefit at the other’s expense; also, an individual should not claim ownership over the other within a relationship termed a friendship. A relationship where an individual contains more power over another and asserts this power cannot be defined a friendship regardless of how kind each individual is to the other. Through the account of an unnamed female, Aphra Behn outlines such a relationship within the narrative of Oroonoko and his encounters with other characters as a royal slave. One character in particular, Mr. Trefry, a plantation supervisor, takes a keen liking to Oroonoko and holds him up on a pedestal of excellence for all to see; however, his actions towards Oroonoko suggest that he sees him as a prize possession rather than a man of equal value. Trefry’s unwillingness and eventual failure to free Oroonoko from slavery insinuates that the relationship between the characters is not that of mutual respect and, consequently, cannot be defined as friendship. As Aristotle claims, there is no difference between a good friend and a friend for a “friend is one who will always try… to do what he takes to be good for you” (emphasized), which is a belief that, evidently, is important here (Aristotle Rhetoric I.1.5). In Jonathan Swift’s tale, Gulliver’s Travels, Part 2, Gulliver, again, meets a collective group of individuals who are of unequal size to him, but this time who are larger. Swift takes a satirical and more literal approach to the notion of ...