D.H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" could be described as a story in which boy meets girl. Its plot, on the surface, resembles that of any number of traditionally romantic pastorals: a country boy saves a country girl from drowning, sees something in her that he never saw before, and, at the end of the story, proposes marriage. In this day, this story would get made into a soap opera, and would be called ?Mabel?. This story deals with everyday soap life and has the thick plot that only soap can hold a candle to.
In this story, the horse dealer's daughter is a young woman named Mabel, who has recently discovered that her family has lost all its money, her brothers can go off and make their own way in the world, but Mabel has nowhere to go. There are a few options open to her -- going to live with a sister, becoming a servant -- but she has run her family's household ever since her mother's death and none of these options are acceptable to her.
Her third option is introduce, while Mabel is cutting the grass around her mother?s grave. This option is what brings the soap form dry and boring, to a matter of ?life and death?, going to her mother literally, through death, rather than just figuratively through a sense of unity with the departed one. This is also the part when the man, who is Dr. Jack Fergusson, comes in and sweeps her off of her feet. Now logic would tell us that the reason Jack felt free to undress Mabel was that he is a doctor. Doctors do not look at naked women in the same way as, for example, a lover would, there is absolutely no reason to believe that he has ever looked at Mabel lustfully, or even lovingly, before. But Lawrence seems to argue that by plucking the doomed Mabel out of the water, by bringing her back into the world, Jack has assumed responsibility for her. The most traditional way for a young unmarried man to assume responsibility for a young unmarried woman is to marry her. Consequently Mabel assumes that Jack must love her, since he has brought her back to the world of the living and purports to take care of her. The fact that he has removed her clothes (as a husband would) only seals their compact.
Eliza’s sickness made Patsy want to get money for a doctor to save her. When Patsy went to the fair looking for extra work, he learned that he could ride in the race. Patsy knew the horse whose owner needed a rider. The horse was Blackboy, who had killed Patsy’s father while Patsy was young and still in the south. Patsy knew that riding Blackboy would be dangerous, and that he could die like his father, but if he does not ride in
After Toosweet (Anne’s mother), quit a domestic job she had with a lady that worked her so hard, she got another domestic job with the Johnson’s. Mrs. Johnson was a school teacher and Mr. Johnson was a rancher who bought and sold cattle. The Johnson were very nice to Anne and her family. However, it was Mr. Johnson mother, Miss Ola, who lived with the Johnson’s that appeared to have impacted Anne the most in the household. Though Anne did a lot of chores for Miss Ola, Anne learned to like Miss Ola very much and they had lots of fun together. Miss Ola would bake cookies for them every Saturday and had a bell she would ring when she had cooked something for them or wanted them to do something for her. The old lady (Miss Ola) who would call
In the two short stories “The Finish of Patsy Barnes” and “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh”, two boys overcome obstacles such as poverty and fighting in a war. Patsy is a young boy who moved to the north for his mother to seek a job that pays better. Patsy is extremely truant and his mother is disappointed in him for that. Instead of school Patsy would go to the stables, but when his mother became sick Patsy matured. He looked everywhere for a job and just as he was about to lose hope; a man was in need of a jockey. Obviously, Patsy took the offer and when he looked into the horse’s eyes he knew this was the horse that killed his father. Patsy thought that if rode the horse that took his father gave his mother back.
Soon after relocating to the camp her husband was killed in a mining explosion when he drilled into a “missed hole” and struck dynamite. She was now a widow and had children to support. To support herself and children she accepted an offer to open a boarding house for miners. The owner of the mine allowed her to live in/own a home in the mining camp. In return she would house miners and cook and clean for them. As the mining company moved locations, so did she. While living in these small boarding boarding homes, she details how her house was only one small room, was commonly filled with fifteen miners and had a dirt floor. These conditions made it very difficult for her to care for her children. She lived very poorly and often could only feed her children rice and
Mare and her family, like most Reds, barely manage to scrape by. Her three brothers are off at war. Her sister, Gisa is an apprentice of a seamstress and makes the money for her family. Mare assists with money made from pickpocketed items. Her father is a disabled war veteran. Mare’s best friend, Kilorn, is nearing the age when he must go off to fight. This breaks Mare’s heart. Mare, having been arrested numerous times for crimes, decides to meet with Will Whistle, a member of the underground black market to see if he can offer help.
The everyday life of a slave was a harsh reality. The typical slave working on a plantation would wake-up at sunrise and start picking cotton. Much of the cotton cultivated in the South was sold to England, fueling their industrial revolution and enriching the plantation owners. A “privileged” slave might be seen working in the house of a plantation owner as a nurse to their children, a cook, or a housekeeper. While it may appear that working in the home of the slave owner was preferred over the grueling physical labor taking place in the hot and humid Southern climate, such was not the case. In the book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her experiences working in the home of Dr. Flint.
She and her siblings have little jobs they do to gain more money, but it doesn't add up to much. “But at least we had money. While I’d been bringing in a little extra cash babysitting, Brian was cutting other people’s weeds, and Lori had a paper route, it did not add up to much” (196). Jeannette got her first actual job at a jewelry store. The money she got there was real cash that could be saved up. “Mr. Becker hired me on the spot for forty dollars a week in cash. I was thrilled. It was my first real job. Babysitting and tutoring and doing other kid’s homework and mowing the lawn and redeeming bottles and selling scrap metal did not count. Forty dollars a week was serious money” (215). Jeannette and her older sister, Lori, decide to go to New York together once they are old enough and escape their parents. “Lori would leave by herself for New York in June , after she graduated. She’d settle in, find a place for us, and I’d follow her as soon as I could” (223). Jeannette finally takes matters into her own hands and leaves her parents to go live where she can make her own money and own decisions about how to live her
Mrs. Clairbone, as Johnson’s friend, offered a job to her. At that time her family was struggling to survive. Her mother was getting paid five dollars a week. It was really hard for her mother to maintain three childrens and feed them. They were hungry and eating milk and bread to survive. Then Anne met Mrs. Claiborne and started working for her as a maid. She pay her three
There is an elderly woman, Bertha, who lives in a small town. She drives an old, beat up car to save money on gas and works two jobs as a cashier and a waitress. She does not have a
fairy tale. On the other side, the Courtship of Mr Lyon by Angela Carter generally takes
Growing up as an orphan, Jane longs for someone to love her and care for her. Her benefactress, Mrs. Reed, and her children neglected her. On one occasion, John Reed told Jane, “You have no business to take our books; you are a dependant, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us”(10). Jane endured that kind of treatment for ten years, then she moved to a boarding school where she found a friend. A kind teacher, Miss Temple took Jane under her wing and became like a mother to J...
The Key Conventions of Soap Operas Soap operas have many conventions that make them different to the other types of programs we watch on TV. Soaps can be separated from even their closest types of programs by looking into and studying their conventions. The Bill for instance shares many of the conventions of a soap, but not all of them, which separates it from being a soap. Broadcasting To get a wide range of viewing, almost every single soap is broadcasted before the 9 o'clock watershed. So children can watch them as well as adults.
In all honesty, I chose to read The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien because it was the only text that I could get my hands on. After reading it though, I’m glad I had the luck of choosing it. I realized, while reading the trilogy, that throughout my course of study, I have not read very many female authors. I may have read a few short stories along the way, but most books that I have read for classes and for pleasure have been written by men. I saw the difference in writing styles as I read the first paragraph of the book and immediately liked the change of pace and detail-oriented style. I also found that I really connected with the main characters, Caithleen and Baba, whose real name is Bridget. I found it interesting that I invested such interest in two characters whose personalities are so different from my own. Caithleen was the narrator in the first two books, and I found that I connected with her most because of her details and innocence. The trilogy represents three phases of these women’s lives from their girlhood, to losing loves and the trials of marriage. Through it all, their interesting friendship changes according to the events in their lives until a sad and untimely end. I’m not sure that that I would want a friendship like Caithleen and Baba’s, but at least that had each other in the end, when the rest of the world seemed to have forgotten them. The excerpt in Colm Toibin’s anthology, The Penguin book of Irish Fiction, is from the first book in O’Brien’s trilogy called The Country Girls. For purposes of this paper, I will discuss the excerpt itself, and then the rest of the first book of O’Brien’s trilogy.
This story is about a girl named Mabel who tries to commit suicide by drowning herself in a pond. A young doctor, Joe Ferguson, saves her. She then believes that he loves her. Although this idea never occurred to Joe, he begins to find that he indeed loves her. However, Mabel thinks she is "too awful" to be loved, and finds that when Joe declares over and over that he wants her and that he loves her, she is more scared about that than of Joe not wanting her. So does Joe really love Mabel? Somehow, he is convinced that he is. I don't think the idea of love or marriage ever occurred to him. When Mabel finds out that he saved her, she convinces herself that he loves her. "Do you love me, then?" she asks him. Then, more confidently, she says, "You love me. I know you love me, I know." The reason why I think she committed suicide is because she felt unloved at her home. Her father had recently died and her brothers were unkind to her. The father had left the family in debt, and the family will soon have to leave their house and move somewhere else. When asked which path she would pursue, she did not answer. I don't think she had anything planned. She probably didn't have a good education so there were few options for her. Perhaps she felt overwhelmed with the pressure to decide what to do, and decided to commit suicide. Thus, when Joe Ferguson saves her, her hope in life is renewed and she convinces herself that Joe loves he...
The Popularity of Soap Operas Television researchers have established a number of reasons why soap operas appeal to such a large and diverse audience. In this essay I will be examining these reasons with reference to my own attraction to soaps, and seeing how they fit into the everyday lives of the millions who watch them. Furthermore, I will investigate the way in which the construction and conventions of a soap opera aids its appeal. I will be considering such aspects as class, race, ethnicity and gender in order to determine the pleasures of soap opera viewing and will briefly look at their international appeal.