Entrapment in A Country Love Story
May and Daniel, in Jean Stafford's "A Country Love Story," epitomize the essential differences between men and women. Once apparently a happily married couple, May and Daniel exhibit their engendered differences after Daniel falls ill. While Daniel becomes more reclusive, May longs to reestablish the intimacy that they once had. Daniel's self-consumed and overbearing attitudes will not allow for such a relationship, though. The growing tension between them reflects the traditional sexual politics in their culture. As a result, May struggles to free herself from not only her husband, but also from the patriarchal code that entraps her.
This patriarchal code in which May is caught is portrayed throughout the story. First, May is cast into a stereotypical and generalized female role. While Daniel begins his own work as he recuperates from his illness, May does "nothing more than cook three meals and walk a little [. . .] and pet the cats and wait for Daniel to come down [. . .] to talk to her" (415-16). When she is not going about her daily tasks of cooking, cleaning, and shopping, May sleeps for hours at a time like a cat. Furthermore, her occasional conversations with other women over tea are quite the stereotypical female chats: gossip concerning other women.
May also fulfills the stereotypical role of a dutiful, submissive, and even weak woman. Her engendered name seems evidence of this, acting as a constant reminder to her that she is an inferior being. Like a child who must ask "may I?" to obtain permission, May also seeks to gain permission from her husband to live a happy life. Also like a child, May tends to yield to her "superiors'" desires. When the doctor ...
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...els "her lover's presence protecting her" (422). In her attempt to get away from Daniel, May uses the "safety" of another man.
In the end, however, May finally comes to the realization that she has failed in her pursuit of happiness and self-reliance. Notably, she feels like a trapped bird, like the ones she and Daniel have talked about earlier in the story. Although May wants to be set free, she is tragically aware of the patriarchal privileging of her culture a privileging that will not let her go. So, as the story closes, May sits in an abandoned sleigh (an image suggesting the uselessness that she feels) and wonders how she is going to "live the rest of her life" (425).
Works Cited
Stafford, Jean. "A Country Love Story." 1953. Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine. New York: Dell, 1958. 411-25.
Katherine Porter's The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place written by Ernest Hemmingway
Francis Macomber is a middle age man that is good at court games such as: tennis or squash, competitions where there are set standards and rules for play. Also, there are confined areas of play for his games. He is quite wealthy and some say handsome which add to Francis masculinity. His wife on the other hand does not think that much of him and thinks of him as a coward. Margot on the other hand his “beautiful wife”, whom really does not like Francis but stays with him anyway. She cheats on him and despises, basically because he married her only for her looks. Margot on the other hand is part responsible for the same thing because she only married him for his money. They are both stuck in a situation because they both married for the wrong reasons. Their gender roles are sort of fighting against each other because she doesn’t care about the relationship and cheats; and he tries to prove that he is a man and yet fails because he tries too hard. Masculinity is something that Margot and others at the Safari think it is an aspect of manhood that Francis lacks.
O’connor, Flannery. "Good Country People" The Bedford Introduction To Literature, 5th ed. Ed, Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,1999. 393-406
In individual searches to find themselves, Frank and April Wheeler take on the roles of the people they want to be, but their acting grows out of control when they lose sense of who they are behind the curtains. Their separate quests for identity converge in their wish for a thriving marriage. Initially, they both play roles in their marriage to please the other, so that when their true identities emerge, their marriage crumbles, lacking communication and sentimentality. Modelled after golden people or manly figures, the roles Frank and April take on create friction with who they actually are. Ultimately, to “do something absolutely honest” and “true,” it must be “a thing … done alone” (Yates 327). One need only look inside his or her self to discover his or her genuine identity.
The aim of this paper will be to point out some crucial factors which ultimately shaped the understanding of slavery in the lives of Jacob
... when his son learns a story of his relations with Ellen and speaks to him about it many years after (Wharton 41). The lesson that he learns is that society is very concerned with the affairs of its members and even his wife had heard the rumors about the two cousins. While May was busy upholding her traditional role as faithful wife, she also was acting within social norms and ignoring his infatuation with her cousin Ellen, and allowing a facade of a strong marriage to continue. The violence presented in this book, while not as obvious as that in The Piano or Medea, is no less intense. May's innocent look but underlying manipulation of Archer's feelings towards her and his feelings of obligation demonstrate a great struggle between the "innocent" May Welland who looks "blankly at blankness" and the "fiery beauty" of Ellen, and both of their desires for Archer.
Shear, Walter. "Cultural Fate and Social Freedom in Three American Short Stories", Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S.C., 1992 Fall, 29:4, 543-549.
Using the movie Love Jones I will talk about the characteristics of male/male and female/female relationship as they are portrayed in the film. Then I will talk about how different the female/male relationship is and focus primarily on their communication styles. There is some harsh vocabulary included in my essay but only in quotations that I have taken from the movie itself to communicate what was going on in the scenes I have chose to talk about.
Brockmeier’s short story represents a damaged marriage between a husband and a wife simply due to a different set of values and interests. Brockmeier reveals that there is a limit to love; husbands and wives will only go so far to continually show love for each other. Furthermore, he reveals that love can change as everything in this ever changing world does. More importantly, Brockmeier exposes the harshness and truth behind marriage and the detrimental effects on the people in the family that are involved. In the end, loving people forever seems too good to be true as affairs and divorces continually occur in the lives of numerous couples in society. However, Brockmeier encourages couples to face problems head on and to keep moving forward in a relationship. In the end, marriage is not a necessity needed to live life fully.
O'Connor, Flannery. Good Country People. Literature an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, And Drama. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Longman. 2002. (247-261)
...n’t have any friends. Due to the Ewells cruel and injustice past, innocent and loving Mayella could not get a chance to make any friends. Even though Mayella has done nothing wrong, she is tortured and punished for standing up for justice and contributing goodness to the society. All these identify her as one of the mocking in the story.
(I know I've missed out a bit here, but I think 4 pages is enough and
The opening scene of Jacob’s Room depicts Mrs. Flanders and Archer searching for a young Jacob along the beach, already showing that the titular character is detached and separate from those around him. Instead of walking with his mother and brother on the shore, Jacob is more interested in the escapades of a crab in a tidal pool, an early indication of his future pursuit of knowledge and his penchant for isolation. Aside from this first mention, Jacob’s biological family is mentioned very rarely throughout the remainder of the novel, as Woolf focuses on his social and academic family instead. However, Jacob’s tendency to distance himself from many of his friends probably stems from the slightly distracted air of his mother, who seems to love and care for him but at the same time is scatter-brained and somewhat unaware of her surroundings. Jacob i...
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