One of the most important yet ignored features of any situation in life or literature is the setting. The literal background has a profound effect on the actions and characters, making it one of the most powerful elements of a story. Virginia Woolf’s “Kew Gardens” displays the revelations of the inhabitants in the gardens and Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” follows Kathleen Drover as she visits her home in London during World War II. These stories both concern the effects of one’s surroundings and past as well as the overarching theme of loneliness. Both "The Demon Lover" and "Kew Gardens" use setting to convey the idea that loneliness leads to reflection of the past; Bowen uses the setting as a symbol while Woolf uses the setting as a character.
Kathleen’s former house, the main setting for “The Demon Lover”, symbolizes her own self and its current state triggers her delusion of her old fiance and life before the war. One of the most important aspects of the story is the setting, which not only acts to represent Kathleen, but also shows her extreme sense of desolation when visiting her old home. For example, it was a strange, unsettling experience for Kathleen to visit her old
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Although all the characters experience nuances toward the future, Kathleen’s reflection is the most intense. Unlike the characters in “Kew Gardens”, Kathleen experiences a possibly lethal hallucination due to such intense reflection of the past. She is concerned for her own future because of the intense return of memories from her past. On the other hand, the characters in “Kew Gardens” use revelations to aid in the smaller, non life-threatening situations as well as in more subtle, indirect ways. The cause of all this thought resulting in specific action is all due to the power of the
Diane Urban, for instance, was one of the many people who were trapped inside this horror. She “was comforting a woman propped against a wall, her legs virtually amputated” (96). Flynn and Dwyer appeal to the reader’s ethical conscience and emotions by providing a story of a victim who went through many tragedies. Causing readers to feel empathy for the victims. In addition, you began to put yourself in their shoes and wonder what you would do.
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
In Mary Downing Hahn’s “The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall,” Downing Hahn shows that sometimes the best of people who deserve the best end up getting the worst. In this companion book, you will see the difference between the two main characters; Sophia and Florence. You will also find out about the setting and what dangers can go on at Crutchfield Hall. You will see what something in the book symbolizes, including the cat and the mice, and the cold. I will show you Sophia’s mind and her thoughts, and what she is planning on doing, more about her death, and possibilities of what could’ve happened.
After all, Melinda Sordino overcame her tramatic experience that led her to open up and release the painful silence she was carrying inside. The flashback that is shown of her traumatic makes up the symbolism of the tree and the closet that reflects on herself, and the conflict the character Melinda faces with her rapist, are the main literary devices that both the film and novel probes.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Louise, the unfortunate spouse of Brently Mallard dies of a supposed “heart disease.” Upon the doctor’s diagnosis, it is the death of a “joy that kills.” This is a paradox of happiness resulting into a dreadful ending. Nevertheless, in reality it is actually the other way around. Of which, is the irony of Louise dying due to her suffering from a massive amount of depression knowing her husband is not dead, but alive. This is the prime example to show how women are unfairly treated. If it is logical enough for a wife to be this jovial about her husband’s mournful state of life then she must be in a marriage of never-ending nightmares. This shows how terribly the wife is being exploited due her gender in the relationship. As a result of a female being treated or perceived in such a manner, she will often times lose herself like the “girl
The story starts out with a hysterical.woman who is overprotected by her loving husband, John. She is taken to a summer home to recover from a nervous condition. However, in this story, the house is not her own and she does not want to be in it. She declares it is “haunted” and “that there is something queer about it” (The Yellow Wall-Paper. 160). Although she acknowledges the beauty of the house and especially what surrounds it, she constantly goes back to her feeling that there is something strange about the house. It is not a symbol of security for the domestic activities, it seems like the facilitates her release, accommodating her, her writing and her thoughts, she is told to rest and sleep, she is not even allow to write. “ I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”(162). This shows how controlling John is over her as a husband and doctor. She is absolutely forbidden to work until she is well again. Here John seems to be more of a father than a husband, a man of the house. John acts as the dominant person in the marriage; a sign of typical middle class, family arrangement.
The setting or settings in a novel are often an important element in the work. Many novels use contrasting places such as cities or towns, to represent opposing forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work. In Thomas Hardy's novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the contrasting settings of Talbothays Dairy and Flintcomb-Ash represent the opposing forces of good and evil in Tess' life.
The scene in Jane Eyre in which an adult Jane revisits her place of childhood residence showcases her emotional connection to the gloomy setting. Jane’s fatigued tone, specific placement of detail, and use of imagery upon entering the bedroom contribute to a building sense of both unsettlement and familiarity, taking readers through her thought process as she journeys through the room. The first two sentences of the selected passage use an exhausted tone to highlight Jane’s apprehension as she approaches the once frequently-visited space. In the opening sentence, Jane describes the bedroom as so “well-known” that she does not need guidance to locate it, and she states that she had “so often been summoned” to receive punishment in this room, immediately indicating that the area is very intimate to the narrator.
Myra, who is dying of illness, escapes the confinement of her stuffy, dark apartment. She refuses to succumb to death in an insubordinate manner. By leaving the apartment and embracing open space, Myra rejects the societal pressure to be a kept woman. Myra did not want to die “like this, alone with [her] mortal enemy” (Cather, 85). Myra wanted to recapture the independence she sacrificed when eloping with Oswald. In leaving the apartment, Myra simultaneously conveys her disapproval for the meager lifestyle that her husband provides for her and the impetus that a woman needs a man to provide for her at all. Myra chose to die alone in an open space – away from the confinement of the hotel walls that served as reminders of her poverty and the marriage that stripped her of wealth and status. She wished to be “cremated and her ashes buried ‘in some lonely unfrequented place in the mountains, or in the sea” (Cather, 83). She wished to be alone once she died, she wanted freedom from quarantining walls and the institution of marriage that had deprived her of affluence and happiness. Myra died “wrapped in her blankets, leaning against the cedar trunk, facing the sea…the ebony crucifix in her hands” (Cather, 82). She died on her own terms, unconstrained by a male, and unbounded by space that symbolized her socioeconomic standing. The setting she died in was the complete opposite of the space she had lived in with Oswald: It was free space amid open air. She reverted back to the religious views of her youth, symbolizing her desire to recant her ‘sin’ of leaving her uncle for Oswald, and thus abandoning her wealth. “In religion , desire was fulfillment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded”( Cather, 77), it was not the “object of the quest that brought satisfaction” (Cather, 77). Therefore, Myra ends back where she began; she dies holding onto
Throughout the novel “Beloved”, Toni Morrison who is the author used the setting of this book to keep the reader not only engaged but lost and thrown into an alien environment. By using the past and giving the reader pieces of the past to show why the future begins to alter. Along with Toni’s use of setting, she also gave a special significance for the ghost in house 124.
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
The setting is the backbone for a novel it sets the tone and gives the reader a mental image of the time and places the story takes place. The Wuthering Heights Estate in Emily Bronte’s novel “Wuthering Heights” is one of the most important settings in the story. Wuthering Heights sets mood for the scenes taken place in the house, and reflects the life of Heathcliff through its description, furniture, windows, gates, and the vegetation.
Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is an intricately layered post-modernist text, entwined with a complex narrative that even the most intrepid readers would find difficult to navigate. The novel follows the dialogue of an array of characters in their experiences with the ‘haunted’ house located on Ash Tree Lane. The house, ever changing in structure, is in many ways a direct reflection of the form of narration employed by Danielewski in tracing each character’s journey. In her article, “What Has Made Me? Locating Mother in the Textual Labyrinth of Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves,”” Katherine Cox argues that Johnny Truant, one of the main characters, utilizes the structure of the labyrinth “to reinvestigate his mother and to recover
In Kew Gardens, Virginia Woolf takes advantage of the liminal quality of the short story in order to highlight the suspended world that she creates in the garden. For Woolf, the lyrical short story’s subversion of traditional narrative structure allows her to focus on creating a world rather than a plot. Further, the short story creates a liminal space by the very nature of its form. Caught in a space where it is not considered a poem or a novel, the short story exists as undefined. The liminality of the short story, however, is both liberating and restricting. Woolf explores this feature in order to suggest the unsustainable nature of Kew Gardens. While Woolf utilizes the form of the short story to create a liminal, impressionistic space that eradicates the boundaries between human and nature, she also uses the transitory quality of the short story to suggest that such a space can only exist for a short duration due to the restrictions of the imposing outside world.