In both Ann Beattie’s story “Janus” and in Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”, the protagonists demonstrate a strong aesthetic sense and show their great appreciation towards beauty. (…) Through an analysis of a key object in each story, of both characters interactions with others and the final scenes, I will argue that Laura’s sense makes her feel connected to her surroundings whilst Andrea’s causes her to alienate herself (class notes).
Initially, Beattie employs the unanimated bowl as the main reason for Andrea’s successful career. She would bring it along to each listing to add to its appearance, almost the same way she would bring her dog Mondo along “when she thought that some prospective buyers might be dog lovers” (Beattie 69).
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The way she sees the bowl is the same way she sees herself, thus why she has such an attachment to it. When the narrator mentions how “she didn’t keep it carefully wrapped (although she transported it that way, in a box)” (Beattie 70), this shows how Andrea doesn’t think of the bowl as something fragile, the same way she doesn’t perceive herself as a fragile woman (class notes). Nevertheless, she is still incapable of expressing her emotions to her husband, thus being on of the main reason to believe that there’s an issue in their marriage. When mentioned how “she never talked to him about the bowl” (Beattie 71), this means she never talks to her husband about her feelings or what’s bothering her. Andrea is the epitome of Janus. As much as she is happily alienated and doesn’t seem to be missing anything, she shows that second nature by secretly wanting that human connection with her husband (class notes). Andrea distances herself from her husband as she is unhappy about their relationship, but hides behind the bowl to avoid confrontation. On the contrary, Laura distances herself from her family, but gains an appreciation for the working classes and manages to connect better with them than her own. As Laura meets with the workmen outside to discuss the party plans, she walks out with bread and butter. Laura may …show more content…
The main focus on the last passage of the story is the bowl, but it can be interpreted as how Andrea is feeling. When the narrator states that Andrea is “alone in the living room”, we are also told the same about the bowl. This shows how Andrea is aware of her current state and, as she doesn’t deny it, she also doesn’t try to change her situation. The bowl, described as “still and safe, unilluminated”, suggests that she feels the exact same way about being alone. The word “safe” in the passage demonstrates that she is happily distanced from the rest of her surroundings. The final scene proves everything that has previously been said. She is the bowl, and the way she sees it (alone, unilluminated), is also the way she views herself. At the end of Mansfield’s story, Laura has an epiphany but is afraid of what she experienced and runs away from her newly understood conception of death. She realizes that life is a great thing and that, in the end, class distinctions don’t mean anything, we are all set to die anyways. When she meets her brother, she is incapable of putting into words what she is feeling, but states how it was “simply marvelous”. Finishing the story with “he quite understood” shows that Laura, who feels disconnected from the world, connects with her brother, the only person who seems to understand
...t in outlook. By using such an evocative word as “seductive”, Tsukiyama appeals to the readers’ emotions and convinces them that the garden’s beauty was able to distract Stephen from the initial loneliness of his situation.
Mitchell, Helen Buss. "Aesthetic Experience." Roots of Wisdom: A Tapestry of Philosophical Traditions. 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 303-24. Print.
Physical elements such as composition, position of figures in space, brush work, color, viewpoint, and surface treatment all contribute to this separation of similar subject matter. The composition of The Weeders is un cropped, fairly balanced and symmetrical. The foreground is bold, the middle ground is expansive and the back ground strong and deep. Our view is that of perhaps a weeder on the field. Homer’s Carnival is cropped and less symmetrical with figures emerging from off the canvas. Less emphasis is placed on use of foreground, in turn creating less depth. Breton’s figures hold much movement and expression, women working the field are crouched close to the viewer. Farther back a woman stands alone, basket full, gaze and body positioned toward the setting sun. The women weeding are bent and tired.
There is beauty and there is beauty. The two are not mutually exclusive, but rather represent two poles on a continuum. At one pole is the beauty that is associated with a sense of lightness and balanced order. It has a faintly decorative quality to it. At the other extreme is the much darker form of beauty that we associate with profundity and truth. This latter form of beauty I will analyze in terms of the containment of the sublime. The distinction between these two extremes of beauty has less to do with the objects under consideration, whether a flower, a sunset, a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, than it does with the attitude of the considerer of the object. That is, anything that possesses beauty of the first kind can also be viewed as possessing beauty of the second kind, if the attention of the viewer is directed appropriately. The differential across the continuum is constituted by the degree of awareness of the element of the sublime in the beautiful.
It is easily inferred that the narrator sees her mother as extremely beautiful. She even sits and thinks about it in class. She describes her mother s head as if it should be on a sixpence, (Kincaid 807). She stares at her mother s long neck and hair and glorifies virtually every feature. The narrator even makes reference to the fact that many women had loved her father, but he chose her regal mother. This heightens her mother s stature in the narrator s eyes. Through her thorough description of her mother s beauty, the narrator conveys her obsession with every detail of her mother. Although the narrator s adoration for her mother s physical appearance is vast, the longing to be like her and be with her is even greater.
As in this example in “Flower Garden,” Shirley Jackson uses color throughout “The Lottery,” “Elizabeth,” and “Flower Garden” to symbolize a persistent theme of underlying cruelty in everyday life. Although she achieves it sometimes through a shocking twist as in “The Lottery” and sometimes through subtle characterization as in “Elizabeth,” human malevolence is common in Jackson’s works. It is difficult to imagine a writer with a greater focus on the subject. Jackson has taken a clear position regarding the question of the humanity’s true nature. It is up to the reader to decide whether to follow her views or reject them.
When Miss Brill is sitting in the park observing passers-by, she notes “two young girls in red” who were met by “two young soldiers in blue … and they laughed and paired and went off arm-in-arm” (Mansfield 176). And later Miss Brill sees “a beautiful woman [come] along and [drop] her bunch of violets” (Mansfield 177). Miss Brill admires the beauty of these young people with their bright and vivid colors. To her the vivid colors represent life, passion, beauty, and happiness, all fulfilling elements that she believes she lacks. Later when she is studying herself she realizes that now in her older age “her hair, her face, even her eyes, [were] the same color as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw” (Mansfield 177). All the colors that she notices in herself are dim and muted, communicating to the audience that Miss Brill feels her life much reduced from the brilliant excitement and color that it had once been. When observing the young people she sees red, which is commonly symbolizes passion and love; blue, which is frequently associated with innocence, youth, order, and serenity; and purple, which conveys richness, vibrancy, and royalty. In contrast the only colors Miss Brill mentions when critiquing herself are a muted brown and a yellowish color. The brown represents the confusion that is
Under the pear tree on that spring afternoon, Janie sees sensuality wherever she looks. "The first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously" (10). Gazing across the garden...
Adèle Ratignolle uses art to beautify her home. Madame Ratignolle represents the ideal mother-woman (Bloom 119). Her chief concerns and interests are for her husband and children. She was society’s model of a woman’s role. Madame Ratignolle’s purpose for playing the pia...
Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,
(1) See "Judgment, Aesthetic" in A Companion to Aesthetics edited by David Cooper (Basil Blackwell, Oxford: 1992).
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Cliche as it may be, this maxim holds true throughout the world, whether it be in regards to celebrities, cars, rural lanscapes, gritty cityscapes, your co-worker’s children, or your father-in-law’s turkey carving skills. Holding differing points of view in regards to what is considered beauty is something that humanity has argued over for centuries. What one sees as merely a rundown subway car, another may see the small sparks of creativity in the walls’ grafitti, the colorful bursts of commuters’ clothing, the sheer beauty of humanity itself in the hidden spaces of the train. Discussions over what is truly beautiful are common throughout humanity’s history, though nowhere are they as obvious or as well documented as they are in the art world.
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.
The women which Stephen comes across in his journey in becoming an artist define him and change him by nurturing him, fascinating him, and inspiring him. Stephen was forever changed by his mother, the Virgin Mary, Eileen, the prostitute, and the seaside woman. The object of the artist is to create the object of the beautiful, I argue that it was the beauty in the women of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which created the artist in the end.
Woolf, therefore, takes advantage of the lyrical short stories’ structure to create a liminal space that both breaks through barriers to form a unified, impressionistic world and to emphasize the imposing negative aspects of such a transitory structure. As a result, Woolf prompts the reader to question whether the liminal space created within the short story is positive in its ability to unite nature and human or negative in its apparent unsustainability. Regardless, the form and structure of the short story are pivotal in Kew Gardens. Without the liminal space of the short story, it is questionable if Woolf could have succeeded in creating the unstable, yet peaceful, world in Kew Gardens.