Gledhill knew that Mary was dying. She seemed sure to die before the night was much older. A man of the cloth used to death and grieving might not save Mary but he would be able to soften the family’s grief. Death was a daily experience for parsons and Martin had been well provided with opportunities to serve the dying in the little parish of Holmeside where the Dark Angel was a regular visitor. Gledhill arrived at the imposing residence breathless. Mistress Joanne Martin, the vicar’s wife answered his frantic knock. She was a large woman with ruddy features, a shade acquired, it is told, from continually exhorting her husband to common sense. Gledhill’s presence on the doorstep disconcerted her. Working men rarely came to see the vicar. However, as was her wont, she quickly got over her surprise.
“What do you want, eh?” she asked coarsely, making it plain by her tone that whatever it was that he wanted he had come to the wrong place to find it.
“My little girl is dying, and my wife and children need comfort. I am here to ask if the reverend gentleman will attend.”
“Wait there. I’...
On the surface, a beautiful, poisonous girl and a preacher shadowed by a black veil share no similar characteristics. However, in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, these characters share two remarkably comparable stories. The Minister’s Black Veil and Rappaccini's Daughter both share the symbolic use of colors, yet the characters’ relation to the outside world deviates. Hawthorne expertly contrasts colors to illustrate the battle of good against evil. In The Minister’s Black Veil, Mr. Hooper’s black veil contrasts sharply against the pale-faced congregation, just as Beatrice’s likeness to the purple flowers, described as being able to, “...illuminate the garden,” contrasts the darkness of Dr Rappaccini’s black clothing. These clashes of colors
We take a trip back to the lovely Puritan era to understand the content matter of Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil. In this tale, Reverend Hooper, a young, unassuming, and unremarkable minister in everyway, suddenly dons a black veil, to the shock and mystery of the small town he preaches in. He becomes a pariah with his insistence to remove it, and loses his following and even his fiancee. He insists even on his deathbed to keep the veil into the grave.
In comparing McMurphy to Jesus, Kesey questions the true nature of Christ’s service while also conveying how negatively minorities are considered. By portraying McMurphy as a Christ figure who dies, Nurse Ratched and the black boys are being considered “sin”. According to the Bible, Jesus’s death brought the remittance of all sins and so when comparing the two, McMurphy’s sacrifice is meant to be the absorption of all of Nurse Ratched’s evil onto him. The author creates a social commentary this way to show that assertive women in higher positions are generally regarded by white men as being inhuman tyrants, or evil. While it could be mistaken that Kesey truly feels that way against women, the resolution of th...
There is no end to the ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”; this essay hopes to explore this problem within the tale.
... was with a man. Although the story is a ghost story first of all, it is also a comment on the Victorian society, its cruelty, "destructive pressures" and "restrictive code of behavior," that led to many tragedies. The ghost motive is unquestionably the prevailing one and can be understood in the realistic as well as the symbolic way. As symbols, the ghosts stand for the restrained love and the corrupted psyche of the woman getting mad, who cannot control her sexual desires. The ghosts themselves are not scarier than the condition of the mind of the woman who in pursuit of love becomes insane.
The gothic characteristics that are found in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” delve into the dark side of the human mind where secret sin shrouds the main characters in self anguish and insanity. Both Poe and Hawthorne focus on how much of a burden hiding sins from people can be, and how the human mind grows weak and tired from carrying such a burden. Poe illustrates that with his perturbed character Roderick Usher who was rotting from the inside like his “mansion of gloom” (Poe 323). Hawthorne dives deep into the mind of one Mr. Hooper, a minister, a man admired by all, until he starts wearing a black veil to conceal his face because “ The subject had reference to secret sin” (Hawthorne 311) . An analysis of both Mr. Hooper and Roderick Usher show through their speech, actions, behaviors, and interaction with other humans, the daily strain of hiding sin from one another.
Medbourne’s, Mr. Gascoigne’s, and the Widow Wycherly’s prime days of vitality were perished due to their reckless expenditure of their prosperity (youth, money, power, beauty), leaving them in a pitiable condition as the elderly. Each character surrenders himself/herself to a certain temptation; the widow was once beautiful, but “certain scandalous stories (...) had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her”; the Colonel was a relentless pleasure-seeker, “wast[ing] his best years in the pursuit of sinful pleasures”; Mr. Gascoigne was a power-hungry “ruined politician, a man of evil fame,” but is now so old that he is obscure; and Mr. Medbourne was greedy, having been a successful businessman, he lost everything “by a frantic speculation.” Such feeble resistance against life’s temptations is evidence of an absence of responsibility and control over their actions. In fact, desire “had [the three men] once (...) on the point of cutting each other's throats for [the Widow Wycherly’s] sake.” Their desperation for more of the liquid after they initially had a glass ("’Give us more of this wondrous water!’ cried they, eagerly. ‘We are younger--but we
ane Eyre is a story filled with many forms of abuse and bad customs. In this essay I will bring you close to these. I will point out tyrants and abusers that Jane faces throughout her life. Jane Eyre Is also filled with hypocrisy and I will expose that. The suffering that Jane endures will be discussed. The book Jane Eyre starts out very powerful. Our first meeting of Jane is at Gateshead. Jane is an orphan who is being taken care of by Mrs. Reed her aunt by marriage. There is no love for Jane here; not only that the only thing here for Jane is abuse. “Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?”(Pg.11) Keep in mind that this girl is only 10 years old. She is all alone. She is on her own. “I was a discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there”(Pg.12) Within the First ten pages we learn of the harshest abuse Jane has to face in the book. The infamous “Red Room.” Jane is sent to the “Red Room” after a dispute with John. John is Mrs. Reeds favorite, but he is a little tyrant. The foul part is that Jane was injured by him and she got punished. The reason the “Red Room” seems scary is that it is the room Mr. Reed passed away in. “ And I thought Mr. Reed’s spirt, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode.” So Jane feels that his spirit is present and her harassment of him might keep him from showing himself.” As Jane sits in the “Red Room” a shadow of some kind begins to move about the wall like a dancer. Jane starts to worry to the point that her mind becomes overwhelmed and she passes out. When she wakes up, she begs Bessie and Miss Abbot the help to let her out. They run to Mrs. Reed to tell her of Jane’s high fever. As the sunsets a new found factor of worry is thrown at Jane. It becomes evident that she may not make it through the night. Mr. Lloyd the doctor arrives to tend to Jane, and he recommends that Jane attend a school called Lowwood. Jane makes it through the night but her abuse and torments have just begun. She will soon face a monster and a tyrant far worse than that of young John known as Mr.
In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway undergoes an internal struggle between her love for society and life and a combined affinity for and fear of death. Her practical marriage to Richard serves its purpose of providing her with an involved social life of gatherings and parties that others may find frivolous but Clarissa sees as “an offering” to the life she loves so well. Throughout the novel she grapples with the prospect of growing old and approaching death, which after the joys of her life seems “unbelievable… that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant…” At the same time, she is drawn to the very idea of dying, a theme which is most obviously exposed through her reaction to the news of Septimus Smith’s suicide. However, this crucial scene r...
Jane presents one aspect of woman in The Waking collection (1953): Ross-Bryant views Jane as a young girl who is dead. The poem expresses concern with the coming of death. This poignant elegy is presen...
Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women." New Essays on Poe's Major Tales. Ed. Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 113-129.
Five years later her father retired from his job to take care of all of the children and happened upon Lazarus’ poetry notebooks. After reading them and taking a great liking to them, he carried the poems off without Lazarus’ consent and had them published for private circulation. When Lazarus was informed, her poems had already received much praise so, adding t...
Gray, Thomas. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." in Damrosch, David. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1C The Restoration and the 18th Century. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 1999.
Clare, whose name even comes from evangelism, or the spreading of the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness (Stowe, chapter XXVI). And as Jane Tompkins argues, this is the most offensive event of the novel to modern critics, and they dismiss it as “nothing more than a sob story that the whole case against sentimentalism rests” (124). But, Tompkins correctly points out that “in the system of belief that undergirds Stowe 's enterprise, dying is the supreme form of heroism” (124). This notion of the meek dying for a powerful cause has its roots in the death of Jesus Christ in the bible, and was a powerful literary tool that naturally appealed to the nineteenth-century reader. Eva’s death is not the only example of this belief portrayed in the novel. Also, Uncle Tom’s death from the beatings of Legree, Sambo, and Quimbo is almost Christ like in nature, as Tom even forgives his killers (Stowe, chapter XLI). Both Eva and Uncle Tom attempt to convert many characters in the novel as well, showing, as Tompkins points out, “a novel that insists on religious conversion as the necessary precondition for sweeping social change” (130). In the modern day, society more often calls for change to come from sweeping laws and regulations from the government, but in Victorian America, most of society believed that true change came from a spiritual awakening. And, this would help
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...