The Trophy Husband
Editha meets her fiancé under rather boring and lackluster circumstances. She is seeking her knight in shining armor. She wants to experience the high of being in love. Upon meeting there was no magic or electricity in the air. Her fiancé, George Gearson was simply a male friend and in a moment that she could not take back, she had accepted his proposal of marriage. This woman, not satisfied with this relationship chooses to change it. Editha sets into motion a plan of action. This story by W.D. Howells illustrates the brainwashing techniques of an idealistic woman in her quest for the “trophy husband”.
Throughout history men have lived and died for their religious beliefs. Wars have been and won and battles have been lost in the name of higher deities. Both men and women have taken up the sword in the name of a higher power. Specifically, in our country, the first English settlers sought to convert the heathen Indians and many Indians died in the process. From the Crusades to the recent tragedy in New York, strong and charismatic leaders have taken men and filled them with religious fervor. Editha attempts to convince George that recent events, a war has been declared, are part of God’s master plan. Editha assumes the role of the charismatic religious leader in her attempt to sway George. George has an antiwar mentality and Editha seeks to change this by bringing into question his loyalty to God.
Editha continues to use her powers of persuasion. Editha tries to approach his manhood. She knows that a man will fight for what he believes in and if he will not fight for God then she is going to convince him to fight by appealing to his sense of patriotism. She tells George that the war has united the country. This war was being fought to free others from oppression just as this country once suffered from oppression at the hands of a faraway nation. She states that if a man loves his country then there is only one thing to do. It was his duty to fight for his country.
Editha threatens George by bringing the status of their engagement into question. Before their discussion, Editha is very passionate towards George and she speaks to him in deep, throaty, sexy voice, “and uttered from deep in her throat, “How glorious!”“ (258). George’s charm with Editha comes from her not being able to predict what he is thinking, but she is getting bored with his expected antiwar sentimentality.
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 issue of betrayed expectations in love from is confronted in both The Prince’s Progress and Goblin Market. In both stories the topic of the power of temptation to entice man from the worthy and earnest work of life is common. In Goblin Market the temptations are both resisted and overcome; in The Prince’s Progress they succeed over the main characters. Also, in the case of Goblin Market the main temptations taking over Laura were sensory and in the end were equated with sexual pleasures. She allowed the goblin men to ravage and soil her with the juices of their fruits with the end objective as Lizzie breaking away from her spell. Only one of the two central temptations, lust, in The Prince's Progress prevents the understanding of the implied ideal that married bliss is not only...
This young woman’s story also reflects the crazy desire of Alice Kelling for Chris Watters. Alice is crazy and follows Chris everywhere in the hopes of having sex with him. In Alice’s craziness for Chris, she verbally abuses Edie under the mistaken impression that Edie and Chris had sex. An over possessive person, just like Alice, can do a lot of damage to others thinking something that is not true. Chris never loved her the way she thought he did. Chris was never engaged to her like she thought by the ring he had given her. Chris never sexually desired Alice the way she thought. Alice created a fantasy world in her mind where this pilot, who traveled all over the world, would love her and be faithful to her the rest of his life. In this present
When discussing religion, conflict, and the nature of man, President Richard Nixon has been quoted as saying, “In the long term, we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious war.” When examining the countless massacres and other acts of man’s inhumanity to man that occurred during the Crusades, Nixon’s statement undoubtedly rings true. Occurring from 1095 to 1272, the Crusades triggered a progression of conflicts in which European Christians sought to regain control of the Levant from Muslim control, in addition to Europe’s response to the threatening expansion of Islam. It was during the Crusades that both groups
Just like Sarah, Editha has similar characteristics. Editha is crazy. Editha receives news from George that war is back and it's very much real. Editha shows signs of being crazy by cheering for war instead of wanting peace. Editha not only cheers for war, she cheers for George to go to war and have fun. Editha is also very crazy for trying to persuade George to join the war, as well as calling George a coward and a punk for having second
Dorothea Brooke is a very bright and beautiful young lady that does not much care for frills or getting ahead in society. She wants more than anything to help those around her, starting with the tenants of her uncle. She desires to redesign their cottages, but Arthur Brooke, her elderly uncle with whom she and her younger sister Celia Brooke lives with, does not want to spend the money required. So Dorothea shares her dream with Sir James Chettam, who finds her fascinating, and encourages her to use the plans she has drawn up for the tenants on his land instead. He falls in love with her, but does not share his feelings for her quickly enough. Edward Casaubon, an older scholarly clergyman asks Dorothea to marry him, she does not accept until she finds out Sir James means to seriously court her, then turns around and tells Casaubon yes. What she does not te...
My initial response to having read Editha is that I feel Editha is so blinded by her religiosity towards war that, and so vehement in her defense of said religiosity, that it could be said that she is a zealot. In my view, I feel she represents the humanitarian interventionist/religious imperialist view when, after George tells her that it's come to war after hearing of it, she says to him, “But don't you see, dearest, that it wouldn't have come to this, if it hadn't been in the order of Providence? And I call any war glorious that is for the liberation of people who have been struggling for years against the cruelest oppression” (Howells 127). She suggests
Love is something not easily or even completely understood, it is an always too hard to but its only to look but not touch. But how far can temptation go before it turns into desire? In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “The Gilded Six-Bits”, marriage and betrayal are something that is wired in the heart of many people. Marriage creates a bond within the institution of any relationship that can make it more emotionally connected to the spouse. Betrayal can tear the most delicate flower into dust; it violates any type of trust in the relationship. Hurston gives an example of three stages in a relationship which consist of Love, Admiration, Betrayal and Forgiveness in this story. The character Joe Banks loves his wife Missie May, but her infidelity
When George leaves Editha after war has been declared, George’s mother says that she prays that George will not enlist, but Editha hopes that he will. Editha places her engagement ring and various other keepsakes into a package with a letter to George telling him to keep them until he enlists. She chooses to save the package for a while longer in case George does the “right” thing. George goes back to Editha’s house that evening with the news that he led the pro-war speeches at the town meeting and was appointed captain of the local volunteers. He is in the midst of the first wave of soldiers who died, and Editha properly wears black out of respect, but she does so with a great deal of pride and goes to visit George's
	George and Editha got in a heated argument about the war and their different opinions and he left to go out. George told her he would come back for dinner. At this point Editha considered their relationship over. She did not see how she could continue to love a man who did not love his country as much as she did. When George left, that was it for Editha. She decided that if he could not believe the way she did then he did not deserve her. She sat down and wrote him a letter and gathered all the things he had ever given her and put them all in a box. In the letter, she told him that she could not be with a man who was not loyal to his country first of all. She could not be with a man who did not believe the way she did and therefore she was breaking up with him. After thinking it over, Editha decided that she was jumping the gun and that since George said he would think about what she had said, that she would give him a chance to think her way, which she considered the only way.
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.
Much of the history we are taught in grade school and secondary education is filled with stories upon stories of political movements and uprising. The vast majority of these movements had one or two political leaders at the forefront whose ultimate goals included such things as liberating an oppressed people or reclaiming a status taken from a group of people by an outside force. Leaders of such movements have used a wide range of tactics to gain support for their political agendas, but one particular tactic has been so often used by said leaders that this tactic certainly deserves a closer examination. This tactic is religion. No matter what the nature of the movement may have been, so often we have seen and continue to see today how political leaders have made claims that God is supporting their cause. From the Crusades to the recent activities of Al Qaeda, the need for God’s support has been shown to be very important to establishing the legitimacy of a political agenda. What happens when the political agenda fails to faithfully correspond with the religion it claims as its backing? Is there a relationship between the effectiveness of a political agenda and the faithfulness with which it adheres to the tenets of the religion it claims as its support? Indeed there is such a relationship, and upon closer examination, we will not only see that political agendas that faithfully adhere to the tenets of a proposed religious affiliation tend to be successful, but we will also see why this is the case. We will then consider how this knowledge can be used today to address current instances of oppressive regimes. First, however, let us examine why it is at all desirable for a political leader to ...
William Dean Howells' opinion of romanticism is his novel "Editha" by having the character of Editha symbolize his views on romanticism. When George announces that there is war, Editha surprises her lover and audience by saying "how glorious." She romanticizes the war by calling "any war glorious that is for the liberation of the people who have been struggling for years against the cruelest oppression." It's hard to figure out if Editha truly loves George, or if she is overtaken by the thought of having someone heroic to love. One of the ways Editha views life is that to have good things one must prove himself or herself worthy of it, for instance her love. In the story when she's thinking about George, she says George, "had simply asked for her love... and she gave her love... but if he could do something worthy to have her, be her hero- it would be grander." What better way to prove his love to Editha by doing something he was not favorable towards for Editha's sake and allowing himself named captain of Company A for her amusement. Her true feelings for George come to light when she writes him a goodbye letter saying why she was breaking her engagement with him since the man she marries "must love his country first." She wrote that letter as soon as he left, it's quite unfair and she even realizes it yet still writes it to satisfy herself. Even when he enlisted, she knew that he was not for him but for her. Editha noticed he became a different person after enlisting, " he made her feel as if she had lost her old lover and found a stranger in his place," if she had truly loved him she would not have felt giddy at the thought of kissing a stranger after losing her true love.
Although the couple is on a romantic vacation, George proceeds to neglect his wife. This is evident not only in his mannerisms but also in his lack of involvement in her want for the cat. When the wife says that she wants to go get the cat, George makes a poor attempt at offering to help. Unmoving and still laying in his same position on the bed, he remains focused on his book, and offers a half-hearted ?I?ll get it?(533). Since she is not looked after by her husband, she takes comfort in the fact that the innkeeper takes a liking to her and a concern to her well-being. By offering her an umbrella and his assistance ?the pardone made her feel very small and at the same time very important. She had a momentary feeling of supreme importance? (534). Often times women who are neglected need to seek outside attention, whether negative or positive. The fact that the pardone gave the American wife this feeling of importance reflects the lack of attention or even affection she receives from George. On the other hand, she can be like most women who are, in fact, attention whores. These are the typ...