Patterns by Amy Lowell
On the outside, the speaker in Amy Lowell's "Patterns" acts the way Victorian
society expects of her. However, on the inside, she expresses her emotions and what she
truly feels. The speaker is confined to each "button, hook, and lace" of society's values.
When confronted with an emotional situation, she bottles her feelings and only confesses
them to herself. The "patterns" serve as guidelines for the speaker's life.
The speaker is constantly bombarded by what Victorian society expects of her.
Her "stiff, brocaded gown" serves as a stand to hold her up. Without it, she would
crumble with emotion. She mustn't show any form of feeling, so she feels as if there is
"not a softness anywhere" about her. Confined by "whalebone and brocade," the speaker
continues to live up to the expectations society enforces upon her. While she remains
"guarded from embrace" by her gown, she contains emotions that she knows she can't
express. Doing so would brand her improper.
Once the speaker comes to terms with the bestowed values of society, she
becomes overwhelmed with the news of her fiancées demise. However, she does not
express her depression or sadness. Instead she keeps her feelings hidden because she
knows that behavior is expected of her. She even makes sure "that the messenger takes
some refreshment" when the news is delivered to her. The only time the speaker
confesses her feelings is when she is alone. She shows emotions such as passion when
she fantasizes about her lover, who causes her to feel "aching, melting, unafraid." She
does this as she sits by herself "in the shade of a lime tree," while her "passion wars
against the stiff brocade."
Throughout the poem, "patterns" govern the speaker's life. The path that she
walks down at the start of the poem is a pattern. After her fiancée perishes she says that
she will continue to walk "up and down" the path, as if she will remain without love for
the duration of her life. The gown is also a pattern. It confines the woman, blending her
into the rest of society, as patterns do. The speaker says that with her "powdered hair and
jeweled fan," she too is a "rare pattern." When the speaker is alone, she separates herself
...e can, however, signal her virginal status by dressing in a way that represents its equivalent: as a southern belle. In addition to her low-cut blue dress, with its feminine, puffed sleeves, Arvay wears a floppy-brimmed “leghorn-intention” (straw hat), decorated with a “big pink rose” (suggestive of reproduction). Most tellingly, we are told that she is wearing a corset that is “laced very tight” – so tight that she cannot eat her dinner. Corsets hold in the flesh and nip in the waistline to an attractively small diameter. By narrowing the waist, they emphasize the swellings of the hips and breasts, a contrast intended to stimulate sexual arousal. Thus Arvay’s wedding/reception attire emphasizes her fragility and innocence while highlighting her desirability. The clothing signs her as an object for consumption, rather than celebrates her as a beautiful companion.
The dress was adorned with ruffles all the way around the top of the sweet-heart neckline and sleeves, and also all along the bottom. The garment also had multiple layers. One layer was of a lavender color. There was also a layer on top of that, which was made of a more sheer-material and had stripes of off-white and lavender. This second layer was subtle enough to add shiny detail, without taking away from the beautiful purple color. The dress also had a sash of the second layer’s same material, around the waist. My garment was rich in
with people. In order to find her own "voice" in a society that is not
herself and her attempt to break through the strict bonds of society that all the other
...eath" a song, a secular, correlates to her thoughts. Repetition is of course, used in the song with a trace of syncopation in the first line "oh Death, oh Death, where is thy string." The oral tradition is unmistakably. The chapter then concludes with the song--- a cathartic release.
same time imposes his will on her. He hinders her from having her own thoughts.
The exterior influences of society affect a woman’s autonomy, forcing her to conform to other’s expectations; however, once confident she creates her own
Lisa Genova, the author of Still Alice, a heartbreaking book about a 50-year-old woman's sudden diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She is a member of the Dementia Advocacy, Support Network International and Dementia USA and is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's Association. Genova's work with Alzheimer's patients has given her an understanding of the disorder and its affect not only on the patient, but on their friends and family as well (Simon and Schuster, n.d.).
The preserving modern folk tale that is the invasion of aliens, is fully knotted within the cultural fear that one day in the near future, a threat of some unknown origin will be more powerful, more capable at warfare than we American’s can ever be. No mater the impossibility, it is a perceived end to the very short colonization of the North Americas. In 1947 a few miles from Roswell, NW, Mack Brazel found debris from an unidentified flying object scattered in a three-mile arc on his land. According to the myth told by the International UFO Museum Research Center in Roswell, NW, the metal had strange pictorial writings on the “I” beams and were purple in color. (IUFORMC NM Inc.) This tale is so widely told in Roswell, that there has been a whole industry developed there to preserve this ledged of the alien crash landing and the Military’s collection of the debris and cover-up of the visitors from outer space.
not have time to consider her own personal feelings. She may believe that she is constantly being
Additionally, she stresses that the values of her childhood helped her to develop respect for different people. Her father influenced her a lot to feel comfortable just the way she is around her hometown; ...
The Flowers By Alice Walker Written in the 1970's The Flowers is set in the deep south of America and is about Myop, a small 10-year old African American girl who explores the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different situations. She writes from a third person perspective of Myop's exploration. In the first two paragraph Walker clearly emphasises Myop's purity and young innocence.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
...what she needs. She, an elder who should be respected, submits in a manner befitting of a female in that society. This further exemplifies the inherent control that men exert over women.
An individual’s welfare can be explained as their state of contentment that can be achieved throughout one’s life. Increasing this state of well-being can be obtained by pursuing and gaining what is intrinsically good for the individual. Experientialism states that subjective experiences are the sole things which are intrinsically good and capable of promoting welfare in individuals. The plausibility of this view arises from the fact that we desire experiences not just for their instrumental benefits, but because they are good ‘in and of themselves’. This view has faced some fervent opposition though, most strongly in the form of Nozick’s Experience Machine. Robert Nozick conveys that experiences are not the only things that are intrinsically good and that we desire genuine connections to reality as well. In response to this, I will present Shelly Kagan’s argument that genuine connections to reality are unrelated to an individual’s welfare and therefore, cannot contribute to the well-being of an individual and Experientialism remains standing as a strong philosophical theory.