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Roles of women in literature
Roles of women in literature
Character analysis of miss brill
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In the short stories “Miss Brill” written by Katherine Mansfield and “It would be different if” by Maggie Mitchell, focus on two characters who are different but also very similar. In “Miss Brill” we meet Miss Brill who is an old lonely English teacher. Miss Brill goes to the park every Sunday and just watches life happen before. She does this to escape the reality. In “It would be different if” we meet Nikki who is a hair dresser who wishes her friend from high school was with her. Niki had plans in high school to be with her friend Jeff but, Jeff ends up being with a girl named Amber. Niki gets very jealous and ends imaging What life would be Jeff was with her. Both of these women have a lot of differences but they are both in denial of …show more content…
Miss Brill is an older woman who is a English teacher, is a very lonely women. Every Sunday she dresses up in nice clothing and sits in the park to watch people. On one particular Sunday Miss Brill put on her nice fur, “She had taken it out of the box that afternoon, shaken out the moth powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes.”(259). In this quote it gives the reader the first hint the Miss Brill is depressed and lonely. This quote also hints that the fur symbolizes Miss Brill. When it says that the dusting of the moth powder and the rubbing of the eyes gave it life, symbolizes that going to the park gave Miss Brill life. Throughout the whole story the author proves the point that Miss Brill is truly depressed. Like on page 259 at the end of the first paragraph, Miss Brill is talking to herself and admits to herself that she is depressed. This is shown on page 259 when the author states, “She felt a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she supposed. And when she breathed, something tight and sad-no, not sad, exactly…” (259). She …show more content…
They both do not want to face their own struggles. For Nikki she wants that to be Jeff, she spends her time imagining what life would be like if it went by her plan. Miss. Brill is very lonely, she spends her time surrounding herself around other people’s conversations. While they are both similar in that matter they are also different. Miss Brill is older and is an English teacher who is not comfortable with the idea that she is lonely. Niki is a hairdresser who is very envious of the girl that ended up with Jeff. Miss. Brill who every Sunday goes to the park and sits on the bench. She watches people walk by and listens to the people next to her. She does that to fill the void of being lonely. At the end of the story the young couple made her face reality. Niki on the other hand never faced her reality. Nikki spent her time imagine Jeff coming in to her hair salon and sitting down. She took that as a sign that Jeff wanted her to wait for him. She never faced her reality like Miss. Brill did. Although, the one thing they do have in common is their fear of facing
The two pieces of writing that will be compared are The Yellow Wall Paper and The Bell Jar. Both these two pieces of writing are very similar yet very, different. The two main characters being compared are Jane from The Yellow Wall Paper and Esther from The Bell Jar. Both of the women in these stories let the expectations of society get the best of them. The expectations of society drive both these women to the point of becoming almost insane. Both these women just want to be as good as everyone else but it just isn’t possible for them. Also these women let others control their fate. These two characters can be very different as well. As society changes Esther from The Bell Jar has more flexibility of what choices she wants to make, then Jane
“Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her “fur” for that Sunday afternoon in the park. Her little friend she wore around her neck would be the perfect companion to enjoy such a beautiful day. After going to the park and sitting down, Miss Brill wishes to talk with the other people sitting about, but they never make a sound, though after this she admits to listening to their conversations. “She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked round her.” Within moments, Miss Brill is commenting on other people: The old people who sat on the benches like statues, the little children running here and there, a beautiful woman accidentally dropping violets on the floor, and once a little boy picks them up and tries to...
...ners and set on their dreams. However, as Bechdel grew older, she became aware of the reality of her childhood. She was able to become a strong and confident women who is not ashamed to show her true identity to society. In contrast, Allison wanted to stay true to who she was as she matured into adulthood and did not allow any person alter her path. Even if she does become self-conscious at times, self-identification is held high on her priorities. Both women discovered and formed exclusive personalities through life experiences and are not going to alter their ways for any one person or societal pressures.
Like Gail Hightower, Joanna Burden is an outcast because of the past. However, Hightower idealizes the heroic southern past, while Joanna was raised to reject southern ideas of race. Hightower’s ancestors inadvertently affect his present state; Joanna’s ancestors directly influence her social position in the town. When her family first arrived they were outcast, “they hated us here. We were Yankees. Foreigners. Worse than foreigners: enemies. Carpet baggers . . . Stirring up the negros to murder and rape, they called it. Threatening white supremacy” (Faulkner 249). The hatred that the townsfolk held for them stemmed from the fact that her family did not hold the same southern values that they did. While Hightower’s family were heroic Civil
The comparison and contrast between these two stories is evident. They both developed as characters in similar settings but have different situations and outcomes. They differed in their goals and how they would achieve their goals and their mental health status sets them apart. These stories have contrast and similarities, over all the differences outweigh the comparisons.
Both stories give off an unexpected twist, each woman helps to make each title into an object of either denial or exception. Even though both stories have great similarities, the authors' individual points of view resulted into the concerning of their surroundings. In the end of both stories, the items that they psychologically and then physically create take over the wife and Emily, their minds became weak that quickly took over them completely. Soon finalizing their mental and/or physical illness to their own time of death.
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
Both stories show feminism of the woman trying to become free of the male dominance. Unfortunately, the woman are not successful at becoming free. In the end, the two women’s lives are drastically
The modern age is full of innovations but also social reforms and cultural integration. The sad story of Nikki begins when her “boyfriend” dumps her during high school. Those memories during that night at the docks in Canada has forever changed her emotionally and physically. The contemporary short story, “It would be different if”, by Maggie Mitchell, shows the pervasiveness of a broken heart seeking to mend itself back to normal by highlighting the emotional responses which has been affected by the perspective of Nikki.
Some people write for entertainment and some people write for fortune, but other people write to tell the world their story and enlighten us to life’s lessons. Literary fiction is created to do more than just merely entertain. It is created to tell a story, to take the reader from one mindset to another and bring about the reader’s understanding of the purpose. Literary fiction explores innate conflicts of the human condition through cosmic writing. Richard Wright chooses to use this kind of writing to reach the world. Wright grew up in a time where he was denied many privileges because of his color and he really made a point to express his feelings to us through his writing. His life, works and short story “A Man Who Was Almost a Man contribute directly to his literary style.
She describes the September morning as “mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than the summer months.” She then goes on to describe the field outside her window, using word choice that is quite the opposite of words that would be used to describe a depressing story. She depicts the exact opposite of death, and creates a feeling of joy, happiness, and life to the world outside her room. After this, she goes into great detail about the “festivities” of the rooks among the treetops, and how they “soared round the treetops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air”. There is so much going on around her that “it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book.” Descriptions like these are no way to describe a seemingly depressing story about a moth, but by using these, joyful descriptions, Woolf connects everything happening outside to a single strand of energy. These images set a lively tone for the world around her, and now allow her to further introduce the moth into the story.
In both of these stories there are certain characteristics of females that are the same, they are inner strength, obedience, honor and respect, the good of the family is better than the good of the individual.
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” are two short stories that incorporate multiple similarities and differences. Both stories’ main characters are females who are isolated from the world by male figures and are eventually driven to insanity. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the unidentified narrator moves to a secluded area with her husband and sister-in-law in hopes to overcome her illness. In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily’s father keeps Emily sheltered from the world and when he dies, she is left with nothing. Both stories have many similarities and differences pertaining to the setting, characterization, symbolism, and their isolation from the world by dominant male figures, which leads them to insanity.
Both stories show the characters inequality with their lives as women bound to a society that discriminates women. The two stories were composed in different time frames of the women’s rights movement; it reveals to the readers, that society was not quite there in the fair treatment towards the mothers, daughters, and wives of United States in either era. Inequality is the antagonist that both authors created for the characters. Those experiences might have helped that change in mankind to carve a path for true equality among men and women.
Christianson, J. R. On Tycho's Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 1570-1601. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print.