...Text Analysis: A MATTER OF TIMING by Charlotte Armstrong Summary The story, called A Matter of Timing, is by Charlotte Armstrong. Charlotte Armstrong was an American author. She has written over 28 novels and also has worked in The New York Times. The story is about a women named Jane who after visiting a grocery store experiences something unusual in the store’s parking lot. As she is trying to get to her car a man is standing in front of her, asking to get through the man suddenly turns around and threatens her with a knife and trying to make Jane get into her car and drive him somewhere. As the man was standing in front of her, Jane was trying to find her car keys in the bag. But then suddenly instead of taking her car keys out of the bag, Jane took some of the pepper she had bought and threw it in the man’s eyes. The man screamed and fell on the ground and finally other people started noticing the man and Jane and the police was called. The story is written in medias res, it has no background of the story and its characters, no information or introduction. It starts right in the middle of actions. The text has a bit of, both, formal and informal register. The story is written in 3rd person narrator (limited omniscient narrator) because pronouns (he, she, they) are used but 1st person pronouns (I, You) are only used in direct speech and the story seems to be written from somebody else’s point of view, like somebody that could`ve been right there when the actions took...
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...Post-colonial Fiction Essay Assignment 2012 Topic: How does Wide Sargasso Sea revise or alter the way one reads Jane Eyre? Your answer should include reference to contrasting narrative techniques employed by the two authors. Jane Eyre, written in 1847 by Charlotte Bronte, and Wide Sargasso Sea, written in 1966 by Jean Rhys, are two different novels, written in different eras and different backgrounds, thus are strongly related. In general terms, Wide Sargasso Sea can be considered to be a modernist revision of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; it acts as its sequence. “Bertha” in Jane Eyre is “Antoinette” in Wide Sargasso Sea. However, after reading both novels, we perceive them in a completely different way, as the mainly the character of Bertha-Antoinette is dramatically shifted and is given a previously unheard voice. Wide Sargasso Sea acts like a polyphonic novel in contrast with Jane Eyre which functions as a monophonic one. It is a post-colonial modernist narrative, in where we get a post-colonial point of view. It breaks all voices and perspectives together in which Antoinette has the role of a 19th century heroine in colonial Era. In effect, Wide Sargasso Sea challenges the point of view which we perceive from Jane Eyre since there is a different point of view than in Bronte’s novel. Briefly, Rhys' novel is a retelling of Bronte’s novel where Rhys particularly pays attention to the negative effects that the culture of the Caribbean went through, due to the European colonization...
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...In the novel, the marriage of Charlotte and Mr. Collins is one not of love, but of monetary and economic backing. “I am not romantic… considering Mr. Collins character, connections, and situation in life…” goes to show that Charlotte did not marry Mr. Collins for love, but for financial support. Both authors also view society and social classes in a similar scale. In both works, society is separated in relation to money and power. As mentioned before, the lower class try to marry into the elite, while the elite take advantage of their status to “strut their stuff.” The themes in both works vary between both societies, but at times, correlate with each other. Dominant themes of society, class, love, and deceit are depicted in the novel and play. In the novel, society and class is expressed in the way financial status separates the elite from the Ms herrera: Munoz 2 lower class. In the play, society and class play a mirroring role, as the elite receive many more benefits that those in lower classes. Love is an apparent dominant theme in both works. Austen and Wilde depict love as either faithful and real or materialistic and monetary. In the novel, the marriage between Charlotte and Mr. Collins is materialistic, while the marriage...
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...On Jane Austen’s Point of View of Marriage in Pride and Prejudice Acknowledgements This thesis has finally come into being to meet critical eyes through two months of hard work. From the very beginning when I chose the topic till the completion of the thesis, I have benefited from many people . First of all I would like to show my sincere gratitude to my tutor, Shen Guozheng. Without his sincere and trustworthy guidance，valuable suggestions and critical comments，it would be difficult for me to accomplish this thesis．His loyalty to teaching and punctilious work style has profoundly impressed me. Moreover, I heartily thank all the teachers who have helped me in the past four years, who have provided me with incentives and direction for my study. Thanks are also due to my classmates and friends for their constant encouragement and their ways of assistance in the course of writing. Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family members, for their selfless support，thoughtfulness and encouragement． Abstract Jane Austen was one of the distinguished realistic novelists in the nineteenth- century-English literature．Pride and Prejudice is a world wide popular novel published in 1813．Austen set the story in the first decade of the nineteenth century．At that time，marriage was the only way for women to gain social status and recognition. The author of the present thesis will analyze the five marriage patterns from the perspective...
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...sees expressions of female autonomy and liberty as unfavourable trends. Antigone and Jane Eyre both live in societies where a patriarchal culture dictates how these women should act within society, and what type of behaviour is acceptable, and which isn't. The control and subjugation of women – and the way they express themselves – can be seen as a consequence of discursive formations which aim to define the intrinsic qualities of men and women. It is in this context that the stories of Antigone and Jane Eyre can be seen as challenging conventional notions of gender and gender stereotypes, a highly pervasive discourse which affects a cluster of other ideas. This essay will argue that the characters Antigone in Sophocles' Antigone and Jane Eyre in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre are characters who challenge gender discourses which were very prominent during their time, and subsequently, the ideational influences which structured leadership, the creation of identities, opinions regarding natural attributes, and cultural . While Antigone lives in a pre-modern society dominated by males who take the subservience and submission of women to be a given, Jane Eyre is a young woman within modern society who also challenges residual gender discourses which have normalized the importance of men within society. The following paper will attempt to first understand what a “discourse” truly is, and...
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...Sept 3, 2014 The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice is a play written by Shakespeare, the most influential writer in history. The Merchant of Venice is about a variety of relationships: “Father-daughter; husband-wife; male friends; female friends; money lender-borrower; and Christian-Jew.” The relationship explored in this essay is the father-daughter relationship of Shylock and Jessica. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender in Venice, and he is so immersed in the business that he neglects his daughter Jessica. Shylock despises Christians, because of the mistreatment he suffered at their hands, and he encourages Jessica to do the same. Jessica is very different from her father. She is in love with Lorenzo, a young Christian boy, who her father disapproves of. The relationship between shylock and Jessica is very dysfunctional. Example is when Jessica is talking with Launcelot and she says “I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so; our house is hell, thou a merry devil” (p.30). Jessica detests her home life and wants to leave it behind. She also states “Alack, what a heinous sin is it in me to be ashamed to be my father’s child...I shall end this strife, become a Christian, and thy loving wife” (p.31). Jessica is confined to her father’s wants and wishes, but she is very unhappy. Therefore, when a chance of freedom came she took it. Jessica chooses to elope with Lorenzo, the one she is in love with and convert to Christianity. Shylock was a bad father. For instance, he says...
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...Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one of America’s most well known feminist writers and social reformers. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses exaggerated literary elements such as setting, symbolism, and character to illustrate the dangers of the mistreatment and disregard of female intelligence during the early 19th century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman grew up in Providence, Rhode Island with her mother after having been abandoned by her father. Gilman’s mother refused to show any form of comfort or affection towards her daughter because her mother believed that this made women weak and did not want that for Charlotte. Gilman’s mother however would, on rare occasion, caress her daughter while...
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...Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego Personified in Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre follows the story of Jane, an orphan, as she develops from a young girl to a young woman of marriageable age. While there are many other characters in the novel, the most developed ones are Jane and the two men that propose marriage to her: Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers. Almost a century after Bronte published her novel, Freud theorized that the psyche developed into three different parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. Jane Eyre’s three main characters personify these parts of the human psyche: Rochester represents the id, St. John the superego, and Jane the ego. Edward Rochester, Jane’s employer and the master of Thornfield, exemplifies Freud’s id. The id, as interpreted by Saul McLeod, is the part of the psyche that is the most basic, unconscious, instinctual part; it begins at birth and demands immediate satisfaction, it is also contains the libido. It acts according to the “pleasure principle” and seeks only self-gratification and pain avoidance (McLeod). Mr. Rochester, wealthy and with few responsibilities, is left free to spend his time pursuing pleasure, traveling Europe, and having an affair with the French singer and dancer Celine Varens. He is not bothered by society’s morals when he tries to marry Jane, even though it would make him a bigamist because he is already married to the woman hidden in his attic. The marriage to Jane also flaunts society’s norm of class...
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...Rachael Paige 6/14/15 Introduction to Literature Writing Assignment 1 “The Yellow Wallpaper” Analysis After reading the short story again, my views of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman have stayed mostly consistent with a few deviations from my original reaction. I’ve read the story with a more focused desire on understanding it much more in depth than the first time. I tried to pick up on some more literary details like the tools Gilman uses to tell the story; theme, irony and the symbolism. I’ve also looked into the character John, the narrator’s husband, once more to better understand him. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a short story that showcased the troubles of women in marriage, the evils of depression, and the importance of independence. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses theme and symbolism in great volumes to portray her ideas. First, to break down the meaning of the title and essentially the room the narrator is “caged” into, the author uses great symbolism and imagery. The yellow of the wallpaper is very dingy and gross, the color yellow even symbolizes decay, rotting, violence, and approach of death. Choosing this color not only characterizes the way the wallpaper already appears, but foreshadows the way the narrator feels by the end of the story. The walls of the room are barriers both physically and emotionally for the narrator; walls are typically symbols of barriers between people or barriers that shut out the world. Together...
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...DESCRIPTION is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, argumentation, and narration. Each of the rhetorical modes is present in a variety of forms and each has its own purpose and conventions. Description is also the fiction-writing mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story. Description as a fiction-writing mode Fiction is a form of narrative, one of the four rhetorical modes of discourse. Fiction-writing also has distinct forms of expression, or modes, each with its own purposes and conventions. Agent and author Evan Marshall (agent) identifies five fiction-writing modes: action, summary, dialogue, feelings/thoughts, and background (Marshall 1988, pp. 143–165). Author and writing-instructor Jessica Page Morrell lists six delivery modes for fiction-writing: action, exposition, description, dialogue, summary, and transition (Morrell 2006, p. 127). Author Peter Selgin refers to methods, including action, dialogue, thoughts, summary, scene, and description (Selgin 2007, p. 38). Currently, there is no consensus within the writing community regarding the number and composition of fiction-writing modes and their uses. Description is the fiction-writing mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story. Together with dialogue, narration, exposition, and summarization, description is one of the most widely recognized of the fiction-writing modes. As stated in Writing from A to Z, edited by Kirk...
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...WUTHERING HEIGHTS: IDEAS AND THEMES Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym “Ellis Bell”. Charlotte presented her sister Emily as an unconscious artist who “did not know what she had done”. Unlike what Charlotte thought of her sister, some literary critics agree on the fact that it is a very carefully constructed novel. The main problem of critical response was that critics could not work out its moral standpoint. Both lovers deliberately marry other partners. As Catherine Earnshaw dies halfway through the novel, which pair of lovers is meant to carry our approval, Catherine and Heathcliff or young Catherine and Hareton? Moreover their voices reach us through a medley of others: Mr Lockwood, Nelly, Isabella, who are often ignored by readers. A parable of a natural equilibrium disturbed by an external force and eventually somehow restored. The theory that a principle of calm and storm informs the novel provided a comprehensive interpretation. The two aspects (calm and storm) are not necessarily conflicting and will ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium. The world described by the novel is pre-moral, and the drives of the main characters seem to reach beyond their death and strive for transcendence. (Early Victorian Novelists, Lord David Cecil, 1934) A restless force, represented by C and H, which continually pushes against a framework of religion, propriety, social expectations. The novel represents a clash of social classes and economic...
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...Pedagogy, Volume 4, Issue 2, Spring 2004, pp. 337-343 (Article) For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ped/summary/v004/4.2murphy.html Access provided by SULTAN QABOOS UNIVERSITY (29 Dec 2014 03:14 GMT) The Pedagogical Possibilities of Covering Gilman’s Wallpaper Karla J. Murphy In his introduction to The Pedagogical Wallpaper, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock notes how the pedagogical diversity of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” prompted him to collect essays for this book. He goes on to explain that “given the ubiquity of the text within various academic settings, I was also struck by the absence of attention to the text within pedagogical contexts. Despite the large (and steadily growing) body of criticism to the story, very little of it explicitly addresses its importance as a tool to facilitate learning or various ways in which to make use of the text in the classroom” (3). As a collection, Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper contains informed, detailed, and diverse analysis that attempts to shore up the absence of “pedagogical possibilities” concerning Gilman’s transgressive short story (9). Among the contributors are a MOO space specialist, a Gilman scholar, a queer theorist, an existentialist, a formalist, and several reader/student-response theorists. Because each essayist presents a distinct critical perspective on Gilman’s text, each essay is likewise concerned with “how the narrative teaches and how to teach...
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...Krista Dorn Professor Aguilar English 1302-059 July 22, 2015 Narrator Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, gives readers a first hand glimpse into the mind of a mentally disturbed woman fighting numerous and constant battles within herself and with others, one of them being post partum depression. The story is set in a historical period when it was typical for men to dominate over women. As illustrated in this story, the mentally disordered woman, possibly named Jane, is clearly at the mercy of her physician husband, John. He tells her what she can and cannot do, where she will sleep, and when she will take her medicine. Stetson consistently portrays the narrator as a progressively mentally disturbed woman that cannot seem to escape the thought that the wallpaper in her room takes on a life of its own while having some sort of power over her that she is not able to control. The unreliable narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” piques unceasing curiosity while describing more and more detailed and subjective ways she is reaching total insanity; telling the story from a first person point of view makes this story much more captivating than if told in a third person limited type narrative. By the woman’s early admittance that she is suffering from a temporary nervous depression, she immediately establishes herself as an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is specifically defined as a...
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...Analysis on “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman was a writer and social activist during the late 1800s and early 1900s. She had a tough childhood. Her father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, but he abandoned the family, leaving Charlotte's mother to raise two children on her own. Gilman moved around a lot as a result and her education suffered greatly for it. Gilman married Charles Stetson in 1884 and the couple had a daughter named Katherine. Sometime during her ten year marriage to Stetson, Gilman experienced a severe depression and suffered a series of uncommon treatments for it. This experience is believed to have inspired her to the short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892). The story takes the form of undisclosed journal entries written by a woman who is supposed to be recovering from what her husband, a physician, calls a "temporary nervous depression”. This haunting psychological horror story chronicles the narrator's descent into madness, or perhaps depending on your interpretation, into freedom. The author’s use of setting, conflict and point of view, provide this short story with the drama needed to capture the reader’s attention. The author begins the story using the key element setting to keep the readers mind in a constant roam. The narrator's view of the setting is colored by her limited and troubled perspective. She sees the yellow wallpaper in the room as a mostly evil and troubling...
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...and Feminism I. Introduction 1.1 A Brief Introduction of Jane Eyre and Lin Daiyu “A Dream of Red Mansions” is one of the most outstanding works of China’s classic novels of realism. It bases on the background of Jia, Shi, Wang, Xue four families’ rising and falling, with the clue of the love tragedy of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. It truly and artistically reflects the historically declining trend of China’s feudal society. “A Dream of Red Mansions” can also be described as “Girls’ Country”, which is the anthem of female, but also is the threnody of women. The heroine Lin Daiyu, Annatto Fairy, wants to repay the goodness of God Shen Yin, taking her lifetime of tears in exchange for his being saved. Her rebellious sprit and solitary character, makes her as a lotus opening at a secluded place, clinging to her own pureness—for pure you came and pure shall go. She is sentimental and unfortunate, and is doomed to being lonely and pathetical .She, Lin Daiyu, lives under another’s house—Rong mansion, Grand View Garden, and she has no one to complain her sadness to. She is “Yea to the very end of heaven, Where I could find a fragrant grave!” in frustration, “What time the third moon comes, the scented nests have been already built. And on the beams the swallows perch, excessive spiritless and staid” in sorrow, and finally ends up with the sadness of “Flowers fade and maidens die; and of either naught any more is known” (Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, 2003: 213) “Jane Eyre” shapes...
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