Seasonal Imagery in Wharton, Le Guin, and Johnson
Summer Now in November The Left Hand of Darkness The expression of Yeats's circularity of seasons goes back in literature at least as far as the poet Horace (Wirtjes 533). Traditionally, women's lives, centering on family maintenance, have mimicked the cycles of the seasons far more than men's. Theirs have been the lives that repeat the motifs of each preceding year, always reborn yet never wholly new. Women, then, have less experiential reason to view their lives as a part of an inexorable forward march rather than as several turns on the great wheel of birth and death. Women writers, likewise, may pay more attention than their male counterparts to the seasonal, circular nature of their protagonists' lives. This is the case with Edith Wharton's Summer, Josephine Johnson's Now in November, and Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. All three novelists set current protagonist movement against a backdrop of immobility. Both Wharton and Le Guin set their protagonists' change against the seeming constancy of summer and winter, while Johnson sets a critical spring-to-fall family transition against her protagonist's assertion of year-to-year sameness. Thus, each novelist, while depicting the movement necessary to build a story arc, sets this movement within a larger context of circularity and sameness, represented for each by the recurring seasons.
Edith Wharton's Summer, written in 1916, charts the sexual awakening of young Charity Royall from her carefree abandon in June through her affair with visiting Lucius Harney in July and August, ending in autumn with her de facto abandonment and marriage of convenience to the man who raised her, Lawyer Royall. As Peter L. Hays notes, the seasonal imagery provides "an appropriate metaphor for Charity's development" (114). Hays links this development explicitly to the seasons, albeit simplistically, with Charity's "growth and maturation" during the summer leading to her "impending harvest, both of wisdom and child" in the fall (116). Yet, like Kate Chopin several years earlier in The Awakening, Wharton, I believe, avoids this simple ending. Indeed, another critic notes that "What Elizabeth Ammons says of The Reef applies with equal force to Summer: 'The fairy-tale fantasy of deliverance by a man appears to be but is not a dream of freedom for women. It is a glorification of the status quo'" (Crowley 87). Charity at novel's end neither achieves her dreams (love and freedom with Harney) nor endures her nightmares (destitution and prostitution as a single mother).
In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Piece, the main Character, Gene Forrester, has to learn to become friends with his hazardous roommate, Phineas, at his school, Devon, in New Hampshire. The novel is affected by a number of changes, however the largest and most significant change is the change in seasons. In Thomas C. Foster’s novel, How to read literature like a Professor, chapter twenty explains the significance of the seasons. Foster states that, “Summer [symbolizes] adulthood and romance and fulfillment and passion,” while, “ winter [symbolizes] old age and resentment and death.” John Knowles’ book A Separate Peace, all aspects of Summer, Fall, and Winter are excellently represented as explained in Thomas C. Foster’s novel, How to read
In “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why?” Edna St. Vincent Millay says that “the summer sang in me” meaning that she was once as bright and lively as the warm summer months. In the winter everyone wants to bundle up and be lazy, but when summer comes along the sunshine tends to take away the limits that the cold once had on us. She uses the metaphor of summer to express the freedom she once felt in her youth, and the winter in contrast to the dull meaningless life she has now. There are many poets that feel a connection with the changing of seasons. In “Odes to the West Wind” Percy Bysshe Shelley describes his hopes and his expectations for the seasons to inspire the world.
The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E.E. Cummings talks about the cycle of life and the importance of structure, symbolism, and language of the poem. For instance, the poem has nine stanzas, which has a rhyming pattern of AABC. The rhythm of the poem is significant for it supports one of themes, the cycle of life. Cumming uses season to explain the poem's progress. “spring summer autumn winter” (3) and “sun moon stars rain” (8) symbolizes time passing, which represents life passing. In the poem, as the seasons and skies rotate, life continues along with them. In addition, the uses of the words “snow” (22), “buried” (27), “was by was” (28), and “day by day” (29) leading to death. Towards the end of the poem, the depression of death was mention, but Cumming was just stating the n...
For each seasonal section, there is a progression from beginning to end within the season. Each season is compiled in a progressive nature with poetry describing the beginning of a season coming before poetry for the end of the season. This is clear for spring, which starts with, “fallen snow [that] lingers on” and concludes with a poet lamenting that “spring should take its leave” (McCullough 14, 39). The imagery progresses from the end of winter, with snow still lingering around to when the signs of spring are disappearing. Although each poem alone does not show much in terms of the time of the year, when put into the context of other poems a timeline emerges from one season to the next. Each poem is linked to another poem when it comes to the entire anthology. By having each poem put into the context of another, a sense of organization emerges within each section. Every poem contributes to the meaning of a group of poems. The images used are meant to evoke a specific point in each season from the snow to the blossoms to the falling of the blossoms. Since each poem stands alone and has no true plot they lack the significance than if they were put into th...
Seasonal Affective Disorder: A Clear Link Between the Outside and the Inside of the Brain
It is also mentioned that the story begins on June twenty-seventh. “With the fresh warmth of a full summer day (p.445). ” Again, the setting is depicted as a bright, happy place. The date is important, because the end of June is a time when the summer has fully set in, possibly giving the meaning that change is up ahead.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Winter Dreams.” American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. Seventh ed. Vol. II. New York: Norton & Company, 2008. 1010-25. Print. The Norton Anthology.
Margaret Atwood's renowned science fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale, was written in 1986 during the rise of the opposition to the feminist movement. Atwood, a Native American, was a vigorous supporter of this movement. The battle that existed between both sides of the women's rights issue inspired her to write this work. Because it was not clear just what the end result of the feminist movement would be, the author begins at the outset to prod her reader to consider where the story will end. Her purpose in writing this serious satire is to warn women of what the female gender stands to lose if the feminist movement were to fail. Atwood envisions a society of extreme changes in governmental, social, and mental oppression to make her point.
On January 24, 1862, Edith Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander in New York City. Wharton’s family were decedents of English and Dutch colonists who had made fortunes in shipping, selling and banking. Wharton, the youngest and only girl of 3 children, spoke 3 languages and was taught by a series of governesses. Because Wharton was taught only with the intention to provide her with the proper social skills needed to become a good wife, she began to read books from her father’s library, especially western culture books. At the age of 18 Edith Wharton feel in love with Walter Berry, but could not truly pursue the relationship because Berry was not from the same social class as Wharton, which in Old New York, was not socially allowed. However, in 1885 at the age of 23, Wharton married Edward Wharton who was 12 years older then her. Edward Wharton was a gentlemen and a sportsman from a well-established family in Philadelphia. Edward shared her love of travel and was acceptable in eyes of Edith’s parents. From the late 1880’s to 1902 Edward Wharton suffered from acute depression and at this time they stopped traveling and lived exclusively at “the Mount” – the home Edith Wharton designed in Lenox, Massachusetts. Edward Wharton’s depressed really put a strain on their relationship and in 1913 Edith Wharton divorced Edward Wharton. After the divorce Edith returned to writing, at this time she wrote a lot of books that often dealt with divorce, unhappy marriages, and free-spirited people who are trapped by social pressure.
Throughout her life, she only experience with a little love and no attention. She would come home from work, cook, dealing with Mr. Royall drunk behavior, and going to her room afterward. Charity has never think about herself, what she really wanted. In the other way, she would do what others say and follow their needs instead. Despite, Charity didn’t expected everything to happen all in one summer. Consequently going through with Harney engagement, finding out about her birth mother who doesn’t really care about her, pregnant with Harney’s child lead her to marry Mr. Royall. Without knowing what to do or someone who she can trust, being that she give up her life to someone who is like a father to
“Four Summers,” written by Joyce Carol Oates, is a short story describing four summers in which Sissie’s family stays at their lake house. This story is told from four different years of her life, as she transitions from a child to adult. Sissie encounters obstacles holding her back from her aspirations, such as her family background, and she must learn from her parents mistakes and move on with her
Morrison has divided her portrayal of a fictional town of blacks, which suffers from alienation and subjugation, into four seasons. I believe that her underlying message is to illustrate the reality of life's travails: the certain rhythms of blessings and tragedies. Some blacks understand and acccept this philosophy and Morrison's use of the seasons portrays and echoes the bible verse, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven"(Ec. 3.1). Perhaps this is a fatalistic approach or as Darrow says,
A. A. Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends & Rivals.
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