Louise was an orphan whose parents died when she was very young. So the only thing she hated very much was separation. Her parents left an ancestral gemstone ring for her, which suited her very well. She did not sell it for money, instead of which, for more than ten years, she earned her living as a tailor assistant. She hoped one day she can become a designer and make really beautiful clothes. Her ultimate goal was to design soldiers’ clothes since she really admired soldiers due to their heroic spirit and machismo. Now, since she was eighteen years old, she reached the age of marriage. Hearing the kindness and braveness of the General, Louise felt that she fell in love with him even if she had never seen him before. So in order to see the General, Louise worked day and night. She wished in the near future she can be interviewed by the General and get his praise because of the nice clothes she designed. Moved by her determination, a fairy decided to bring the General in front of Louise; however, because the magic was low, the meeting could only last 7 days and the General would forget what he experienced during the seven days. For Louise, she was so sad about the fact but she also knew she was lucky.
Louise met the General and the General was attracted by her temperament immediately. Seeing her hard work and talents for designing clothes, the General also fell in love with Louise. Every day, Louise drew nice clothes pictures for the General and then they talked a lot about themselves. The General knew Louise’s pitiful childhood experience and Louise learned that the General also felt lonely sometimes. After seven days, they loved each other deeply. Before the General left, Louise gave him her ring without saying a word. She just...
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...came back, his mother can accept her. His mother of course did not want Louise to come back forever first.
However, several years later, a parade to celebrate the return of a successful designer marched on the street. Music of Suona, sheng, bass drum and other folk instruments mixed together to show the excitement of the girl. People were talking about the girl. “Who is the young girl?” “I knew her! She was once a tailor assistant!” “I knew she felt in love with the General once.” “The General has been alone these years.” “Now she came back to marry the General?” It was Louise who came back successfully. Separation was due and she looked forward to living with the General happily. The General was also a man who was loyal to his love, so he had been waiting for Louise all the time. Seeing Louise’s success, the General’s mother at last agreed with their combination.
“The dowry promised me was 600 florins. I went to dine with her that evening… The Saturday after Easter… I gave her the ring and then on Sunday evening, March 30, she came to live in our house simple and without ceremony.”
This is a story of a series of events that happen within an hour to a woman named Louise Mallard. Louise is a housewife who learns her husband has died in a train accident. Feeling joy about being free she starts seeing life in a different way. That is until at the end of the story she sees her husband well and alive. She cries at the sight of him and dies. The story ends with a doctor saying “she had died of a heart disease—of the joy that kills” (Chopin). Even though the story doesn’t describe Louise doing chores at the house like in The Storm we know that she was a good wife because of the way she reacts when she learns that her husband is dead. Louise gets described as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength” (Chopin). From this line we get a bit of insight into her marriage and herself. We get the idea that she wasn’t happy being married to her husband but still remained with him and did her duties as she was supposed to. In reality her being a good wife was all an act to fit in society’s expectations of a woman being domestic and submissive. As she spend more time in her room alone thinking about her dead husband she realizes life would finally be different for her. She knows that “there would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself” (Chopin) For a long time in
He is described in appearance by the first object of his obsession, Louise Barant, as projecting a disarming innocence, while still being brutish looking. At the time of their meeting he was wearing the dress uniform of the French army and had sergeant chevrons on his sleeves. On the night of their first meeting that he showed his tendency toward obsession by abruptly proposing marriage. The realization that Ms. Barant has made a mistake became relevant when he threatened to kill her if she every betrayed him. The weeks following his proposal he pursued her with a series of threats, pity, and charm which lead to the assault of another man that attempted to talk to her at a dance.
The window was cold to the touch. The glass shimmered as the specks of sunlight danced, and Blake stood, peering out. As God put his head to the window, at once, he felt light shining through his soul. Six years old. Age ceased to define him and time ceased to exist. Silence seeped into every crevice of the room, and slowly, as the awe of the vision engulfed him, he felt the gates slowly open. His thoughts grew fluid, unrestrained, and almost chaotic. An untouched imagination had been liberated, and soon, the world around him transformed into one of magnificence and wonder. His childish naivety cloaked the flaws and turbulence of London, and the imagination became, to Blake, the body of God. The darkness lingering in the corners of London slowly became light. Years passed by, slowly fading into wisps of the past, and the blanket of innocence deteriorated as reality blurred the clarity of childhood.
It is quite peculiar that “the young girl talking to the soldier in the garden had not ever completely seen his face” (Bowen 2). When has a person had a positive relationship with someone they never knew, much less fall in love and vow to marry a man whose face she has never seen nor known. Kathleen makes one mistake after another with the faceless soldier over her promise to him. She ...
condition and realizes that she does not want to marry him. The war serves as an tool of
She seemed to have felt free for the first time in who knows how long. “She was drinking in the very elixir of life through the open window.” [18] Louise’s seemed to be getting a fresh start at life and she seemed so relieved to be able to enjoy it. Her marriage sounded problematic in her eyes. She could have been a house wife who grew bored after countless years of the same song and dance. I see marriages all the time that seem to have “stood the test of time” and both the husband and the wife seem miserable. The death of Brently may have opened up a door to a new life that Louise was anxious to
Louise left the country to go stay with Albert Hardy and his family in the city, so she could attend school. Louise was very lonely growing up, her mother died when she was an infant and her father never showed her much love. When moving to the city she found herself to be even lonelier than before. Although she was living with the Hardy family which consisted of Mr. Albert, his two daughters, and his son John Hardy. Louise craved some type of companionship. Louise had a plan to make John Hardy her new companion, she
Louise is trapped in her marriage. The lines of her face "bespoke repression" (paragraph 8). When Louise acknowledges that her husband is dead, she knows that there will "be no powerful will bending her" (paragraph 14). There will be no husband who believes he has the "right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature" (paragraph 14). Louise knows that her husband loved her. Brently had only ever looked at Louise with love (paragraph 13). This tells the reader that Brently is not a horrible ma...
Louise has turned into a little girl that must depend on man to take care of her. Louise pleads with Brently to go to the gardens of Paris. She begs like a child begging for something that is impossible to give. Brently must lock her up in their home to protect her from her curiosity and need to see the world. The filmmakers do not give her the commonsense to realize the dangers she would face in seeing Paris and all the other places she would like to visit. Louise remains the little girl in the flashbacks and Brently has replaced her dead father as the soul keeper of her world. Brently must protect her from the world and herself. She is made to be completely dependent on him from her everyday needs to being her only window into the outside world. There are no female positions of authority in her life. Aunt Joe is left in the background and Marjorie must ultimately answer to Brently. Louise is left to see men as the only authority in her life. She herself as a woman must feel powerless to the will of men. Brently even chooses the destinations of their daily visits to far off and exotic places. These excursions are Louise's only escape. Brently is made to be her captor and savior at the same time. Her fate is completely dependent in his yet she is given no control of either.
Curley’s wife is a beautiful woman, whose blossoming with love, with big hopes for the future. She dreams of becoming a big actress n Hollywood. She wants to become rich and famous, and have nice cloths. She wants to make something from her life. Because of her beauty she was promised great things. But in reality her dreams never came true, the letters she awaited never came, the promises that were maid to her were never fulfilled. “Could’ve been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes”. She refused to stay where she would be a nobody. “Well, I wasn’t gonna stay no place where I couldn’t get nowhere or make something of my life”. So one night she meat Curley at the Riverside Dance Palace, and she married him, he became her ticket out from her desperate life. She never married him out of love and passion just of desperation. “I don’t like Curley. He aint a nice fella”.
As Mrs. Mallard lets her realization take root she begins to chant, “free, free, free” (Chopin, 75). This shows that she accepts her new fate and knows that she will be okay without her husband. Louise becomes aware that she has been dictated by social expectation and requirement, but now can live for herself once again with no one to answer to. Louise admits, “she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death” (Chopin, 75), but sees her future beyond that now. Social expectations no longer obligate her to be the woman she was. Louise is now able to do what she feels is most beneficial for her as an individual, and not what would be expected in her monogamous
Louise Mallard finds personal strength in her husband's death, ready to face the world as a whole person "She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday (prior to her husband's death) she had thought with a shudder that life might be long." The strength conveyed in the image of Louise carrying "herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory" is unmistakable. However, the irony that her husband lives, and therefore, she cannot, conveys the limited options socially acceptable for women. Once Louise Mallard recognizes her desire to "live for herself," and the impossibility of doing so within the bounds of her marriage, her heart will not allow her to turn back.
The young beautiful girl Nina is the intricate character that Alice Munro reviews in her short story “Wenlock Edge”. Nina living in a fantasy that one day she will live in a castle with her prince happily ever after. In this story, Nina turns some lives upside down with her adventures of following her dreams. Nina is the classic example of a girl that lives with Cinderella complex, where her emotional instability falling apart with her castle.
Louise’s fate was tragic. But still I think that it’s better to live an hour of freedom and happiness than to spend an entire lifetime in the shadow of the “gray cloud”. Louise experienced real freedom that meant the absence of her husband’s domination. The irony of life killed her too early, but it seems to me that there is no need to feel pity for her. Even if it was a short hour, it was the time when all her dreams came true. She found the freedom from her husband that her lonely soul was searching for, and just for this we can consider her as a really happy woman.