Barren Ground: The Life of a Farm Girl
Barren Ground by Ellen Glasgow follows the life of Dorinda Oakley, a poor girl living in a desolate town in Virginia. At the beginning of Barren Ground, twenty-year old Dorinda Oakley lives with her family in the town of Broomsedge. She dreams of escaping her farm house for a life in New York when she meets the son of the village doctor, Jason Greylock, and almost instantly, she develops feelings for him. He becomes the “object of her passion” (Bunch). But when she loses him, her life is forever changed. In Ellen Glasgow’s novel Barren Ground, the main character Dorinda Oakley leaves her life of poverty in order to pursue her dream of happiness and in her journey experiences love, loss, and despair.
Ellen Glasgow, southern writer in Richmond, Virginia. As the daughter of a mismatched couple, Glasgow felt pulled between her father's stern pioneering background and her mother's aristocratic Virginia family. As the ninth of ten children, young Glasgow felt isolated growing up. Her mother constantly in poor health and her father worked in manufacturing, while she attended private schools (Glasgow). “At the age of sixteen, Glasgow began to lose her hearing, which increased her sense of isolation” (Glasgow). “Glasgow wrote nineteen novels, a collection of stories, an autobiography, and other works, with many centering on the oppression of women in the South. Among her major works are Barren Ground (1925), Veins of Iron (1935), and In This Our Life (1941). Although involved in several passionate romances with men, Glasgow never married. She suffered heart trouble in her late 60s and did not live to see In This Our Life win the 1942 Pulitzer Prize” (Glasgow).
Barren Ground narrates the life of the Oa...
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... as if it’s been reprogrammed (“Roy Lichtenstein Foundation”).
Thinking of Him depicts a girls sitting by herself thinking of a guy. It connects to my theme, pursuit of happiness because before Jason Greylock, Dorinda would get up, go to work at Nathan Pedlars store. On her way there, she stop and stare at the passing trains near the store, wishing she too could one day leave Broomsedge. It’s not till she meets Jason that she’s able to leave. Dorinda Oakley, pursued her dreams. However, in the end, she gave up on love. My art is a representation of the love she had for Jason.
Leaving her family was a good experience for Dorinda. She got the opportunity to leave her life for a “better life”. But unfortunately, she got suffered multiple losses; the death of her unborn child and almost marrying fiancé Jason. She then went back home and married Nathan Pedlar instead.
Breen, T. H., and Stephen Innes. Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia 's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. 25th anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 142 pages (kindle edition).
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, to KeziahWims Brooks and David Anderson Brooks. Brooks’ family didn’t have much income. Her father David Brooks was a janitor. Keziah Brooks, Gwendolyn’s mother was a school teacher. Soon after Gwendolyn was born her family moved away from Kansas. The Brooks family relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where Brooks remained the rest of her life. Brooks, as a child, loved to read. She was encouraged by her family and friends to do so. She spent most of her childhood immersed in her writing. Gwendolyn became a published poet at an early age. At age 13, Brooks’ poem Eventide was published. Her poem appeared in “American Childhood.” Brooks’ poems were frequently published in the Chicago Defender. At age 16, Brooks had written over seventy poems (J.Williams 28).In Brooks’ early years of writing she spoke on a lot. She talked about racial discrimination and praised African American heroes. Also, Brooks satirized both blacks and whites (A.williams1). In 1993, Gwendolyn meet poet James Weldon Johnson and writer Langston Hughes. The two influenced Brooks’ writing tremendously. The influence lead her to write over seventy poems (Bloom 12).
This book is about a girl name Ellen Foster who is ten years old. Her mother committed suicide by over dosing on her medication. When Ellen tried to go look for help for her mother her father stopped her. He told them that if she looked for helped he would kill them both. After her mother died she was left under her fathers custody. Her father was a drunk. He would physically and mentally abuse her. Ellen was forced to pay bills, go grocery shopping, cook for herself, and do everything else for herself. Ellen couldn't take it any more so she ran away her friends house. Starletta and her parents lived in a small cabin with one small bathroom. One day at school a teacher found a bruise on Ellen's arm. She sends Ellen to live with Julia the school's art teacher. Julia had a husband named Roy. They were both hippies. Julia and Roy cared a lot about Ellen. After Ellen turned 11 years old she was forced to go live with her grandmother. Ellen didn't want to leave Julia and Roy but her grandmother had won custody. Her grandmother was a cruel old lady. Ellen spends the summer with her grandmother. Living with her makes her very unhappy. Since her grandmother owns farmland she forces Ellen to work on the field with her black servants. Ellen meets a black woman named Mavis. Mavis and her become good friends. Mavis would talk about how she knew Ellen's mother and how much Ellen resembled her mother. Her grandmother didn't think the same. She thought that Ellen resembled her father. She also hated that man. Her grandmother would often compare her with her father. Her grandmother would torture her because she wanted revenge from her father. Her grandmother also blames her for the death of her mother. While Ellen was staying with her grandmother her father died. When her father died she didn't feel sad because she had always fantasized about killing her father. Ellen just felt a distant sadness. Ellen cried just a little bit. Her grandmother was furious because Ellen showed some emotions. She told her to never cry again. After that Ellen becomes scarred for a long time. One day her uncle Rudolph bought the flag that had been on Ellen's father's casket. Her grandmother turns him away. Later that day she burned the flag.
Many writers begin writing and showing literary talent when they are young. Paul Laurence Dunbar, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, was already editor of a newspaper and had had two of his poems published in the local newspaper before he’d graduated from high school. His classmate, Orville Wright, printed The Tattler which Dunbar edited and published for the local African American community. After graduating from high school, he was forced to get a job as an elevator operator which allowed him spare time for writing. He finally gained recognition outside of Dayton when, in 1892, he was invited to address the Western Association of Writers and met James Newton Matthews who praised his work in a letter to an Illinois newspaper. In 1892, he decided to publish his first book of poems entitled Oak and Ivy and four years later his second book of poems Majors and Minors was published. People began to see him as a symbol for his race, and he was thought of artistically as “a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being… in a log cabin amid fields of cotton” (Dunbar, AAW 2). Dunbar’s poems, written alternately in literary and dialect English, are about love, death, music, laughter, human frailty, and though Dunbar tried to mute themes of social protest, social commentary on racial themes is present in his poetry.
Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley "Scarlett" is about a southern woman who had survived the Civil War, had been widowed twice with two children. She got married again to Rhett Butler, and they had a daughter who was killed when she fell off a horse. Since the death of the child, her husband did not want anything to do with Scarlett. Rhett gave Scarlett all the money she needed, but she wanted him. Heartbroken, she went to Ireland where her father came from. She did not tell anyone in America that she was going, except for her lawyer. She met her Irish relatives, and loved them. She bought a town and a Big House in Ireland and had it refurbished. Scarlett found out that she was pregnant with Rhett's child, but before she could tell him, he divorced her and married someone else. She vowed to not tell Rhett about the baby until it was grown, even though she loved him. She told her Irish friends that she was a widow and that her two children lived with her sister on a plantation in Georgia, which she owned two-thirds of. She gave birth to a girl on Halloween and a wise old woman had to deliver her because the doctor couldn't get there. The Irish called the woman a witch and the baby a changeling because of when she was born for they were very superstitious people. They never liked the little girl and were always scared of her. One of Scarlett's cousins in Ireland was a priest, whose name was Colum O'Hara, and they had become good friends.
"Good Country People", by Flannery O’Connor, presents us with a look into the monotonous lives of three women living together on a rural farm. All three women are set in their old-fashioned ways, having experienced very little of life, out on the farm. A bible salesman named Manley Pointer, appearing like nothing more than simple, "good country people"(1), pays them a visit one day. It turns out that this simple countryboy is actually a brilliant con artist who scams the pretentious daughter, Hulga (also known as Joy) into removing her wooden leg, which he proceeds to steal. A great change in Hulga is triggered by her experience with Manley Pointer. Although it was a cruel scam, the bible salesman helps her to see the truth about her education and human nature. Hulga realizes that in addition to book smarts, people skills are also crucial in navigating the real world.
...mple of imagery is when Richard’s friends run up to him with his article in their hands and a baffled look on their faces. This shows that Richard is a very talented writer for his age and that Richard is a very ambitious person because his school never taught him to write the way he does. This also shows that Richard took it upon himself to become a talented author and wants to be a writer when he grows up.
Paula Gunn Allen was an American Indian Poet that was the middle child of five siblings. She grew up on the Cubero Land Grant Reservation in New Mexico where she started her early education at St. Vincent Academy, followed by attending Missions School until the seventh grade at San Fidel in Pueblo town. She furthered her education by attending Colorado’s Woman’s College. Paula obtained her B.A. in 1966 and her M.F.A. in 1968 at the University of Oregon, that led to her receiving her Ph. D at the University of New Mexico in 1976. Paula was best known as the best Poetic, Novelist, and Critic. She wrote six volumes of poetry including her poem Recuerdo.
Welty, Eudora. "A Worn Path." The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. 142-49.
Each one of these writers is a reflection naturally of their times but what causes their work to continue to resonate is the absolutely honest way the hardships of womanhood and colonial life inform our national demeanor. All three in their writing are trying to cope with the conditions in front of them, the perils of being a woman of their times. The heartbreak of watching their children and grandchildren die in front of them, starvation, the loss of livelihood and the ever evolving definition of having a homeland. For all three women death was a constant companion, as was God and a sense of duty to their ventures in their new lands, mostly though I see a deep kind of resilient love in their bodies of work. It is that resilient love and optimism that makes American writing, American writing.
Tate, Linda. "No Place Like Home": Learning to Read Two Writers' Maps // A Southern Weave of Women. Fiction of the Contemporary South. The University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia & London, 1994
While black women had the potential to make their mark on the Earth, women did not receive, if at all, the proper education they deserve. Instead, “the agony of the lives of women who might have been Poets, Novelists, Essayists, and Short-Story Writers (over a period of centuries), who died with their real gifts stifled within them” (403). Walker strongly believes that these intelligent, powerful black women held the potential to change lives by writing stories about their lives, but they were never given the chance due to their lack of education.
Hughes Gertrude Reif. (Spring 1986). Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson’s Critique of Woman’s Work. Legacy. Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 17-2
Born February 09, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia and the last child of eight, from sharecroppers Willie Lee and Minnie Grant Walker, Alice Walker was one of the bestselling African American authors of all time. At eight years old, Walker experienced a terrible incident that caused her to be blinded in one eye. Her brother shot a BB gun at her, praying and pleading to not mention to her parents the truth of what was done. She lied, just so that he could not receive a beating, but the worse of it all, she became blind with a white surface covering her eye that caused her to be picked on in school. Walker’s grades plummeted and she hated the way that she looked. She moved in with her brother and his wife at 14 years old in Boston to care for his family. They paid the doctor for her eye to be fixed, removing the white cataract so that her eye can have a normal look. She fell in love with herself and she finally felt beautiful (Blooms, 11).
Hughes, Gertrude Reif. "Subverting The Cult Of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique Of Women's Work." Legacy: A Journal Of American Women Writers 3.1 (1986): 17-28. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 9 May 2014.