Rethinking Female Friendship
Friendship has been crucial to the survival of women especially those whose social class puts at a disadvantage. Margaret Andersen, in her book, Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender, asserts that “Despite long-held assumptions that women’s primary identity was attached to men, research now shows the important role that friendships between women have, including women who live within stable heterosexual relationships” (94). While her claim on women primarily being identified with men is an assumption maybe contested, she points out the importance of friendship to women, which necessarily does not have a sexual undertone.
In The Bean Trees and Home, these women despite the challenges in their lives bonded together to make a safe community for themselves. This is against the notion that women are emotional beings, and at times not capable of rational decisions. Like Taylor, Miss Ethel leads all the
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That’s why you have to stay awake – otherwise it just walks in on your door…You are good enough…that’s all you need to know.” (122)
She learns a lot from these group of strong women, which is what she has been missing in the cocoon of her brother’s protection and comfort. Although Ethel and the other women are lower class women judging by where they live and their occupation, they are in charge of their lives. Live to them, irrespective of social circumstance is meant to be lived to the fullest, a lesson that helps Cee later in the novel.
Ethel can be read as the surrogate mother to Cee, the same way Mattie is to Taylor in The Bean Trees. Both women have positive impact on the younger women. The moment for Ethel is when she tells Cee not to let her grandmother’s inhumanity, the doctor’s cruelty and her ex-husband’s trifling decide who she really is “That’s slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I’m talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world” (126).
In this story “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingslover we meet Taylor Greer, an average teenager from Pittman, Kentucky. Even though Taylor has never been through anything truly horrific in her life how can she truly understand how unpleasant the world can be? Taylor’s personal growth in the “The Bean Trees” is a part of an uncertain journey because Taylor is thrown into motherhood and forced to see the bad experiences people go through in life.
Uncertain journeys are numerous in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees. Many characters in the novel put their current lives aside to go off in hopes of finding a better one.
They say that growing up is hard to do, and it certainly was for Taylor Greer, which is why she couldn't wait to leave her home in Pittman County, Kentucky. The novel, The Bean Trees, written by Barbara Kingsolver, follows Taylor's story of growing up, leaving home, and accepting responsibility. Along the way Taylor is given a child, Turtle, and she struggles with accepting the responsibility of raising a child. Kingsolver's choices for point of view, setting, conflict, theme, characterization, and style throughout the plot help create an uplifting story about love and what it means to be a family.
In consideration, many unexpected events can occur to us, which helps to shape one’s belief in something that they should avoid having. The novel, The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver portrays the life of Taylor Greer, a young and spirited woman who is brave enough to move out of a rural home in Kentucky with the goal of avoiding pregnancy. Little did Taylor know, she faces a human condition of accepting a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle. Throughout her journey, she creates many friendships with other people and love toward Turtle so there are many things that
Abandonment plays a major role in Barbara Kingsolver's novel. It links all the characters together. Once one abandons, or is abandoned, they find someone else. They all help each other grow and become stronger. Even with something as horrible and hurtful as abandonment, hope can be found. Taylor explains it perfectly to Turtle when she talks about bean trees, "'There's a whole invisible system for helping out the plant that you'd never guess was there.' I loved this idea. 'It's just the same as with people. The way Edna has Virgie, and Virgie has Edna, and Sandi has Kid Central Station, and everyone has Mattie" (227-228). Everyone is linked together and each person has someone to help. This whole cycle is caused by abandonment. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver shows that can be hope and love found in any situation, even in abandonment.
Ethel was a person that many members of the Lacks family felt was jealous of Henrietta and her life. Evidence of this jealousy is seen on page 111 in the book stating “A good handful of cousins still think that Ethel moved into that house and started up with Day just to get out all the hate she had for Henrietta by torturing her children” (Skloot 2010, 111). This shows the jealousy and hatred that Ethel had for the family before she had even begun to take care of the children. Each child suffered at the hands of her suspected
arose very few women poets; however, Katherine Philips not only became a poet, but she also displayed
After five years of being raised and living with their grandmother whom they truly loved, the girls had a rude awakening. Their grandmother, Sylvia had passed away. “When after almost five years, my grandmother one winter morning eschewed awakening, Lily and Nona were fetched from Spokane and took up housekeeping in Fingerbone, just as my grandmother had wished” (Robinson 29). This was the final attempt that their grandmother had made in order for the girls to have a normal and traditional life. This is a solid example of how the sister’s lives are shaped by their family and their surroundings. Lucille’s ultimate concern in life is to conform to society and live a traditional life. She wishes to have a normal family and is sorrowful for all of the losses that she has experienced such as her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths. On the other hand, Ruthie, after spending more time with her future guardian, Aunt Sylvie, becomes quite the transient like her.
Through difficulty and many obstacles, the four friends appear to actually improve and strengthen their bond by working together in order to find freedom from the intimidating wilderness in Maine. Wini and her friends realize throughout the novel that the most important thing is to stay together and not turn against one another. At the most rough times one must need their friends to be with them, “A bound in our lostness as we ever were as friends, we blundered through the living darkness as soundlessly as we could, but it was hard to believe that every footfall, every unintentional snap of branch or rustle of lead didn’t wake the world and call the hounds of hell down upon us” (Ferenick, pg. 181). During tough times in Erica Ferencik’s novel,
The novel challenges the contradicting sides of the expectation and reality of family and how each one contains a symbiotic relationship. The ideal relationship within families differ throughout The Bean Trees. Kingsolver focuses on the relationship between different characters and how they rely on each other to fill the missing gaps in their lives. When Taylor and Lou Ann meet, they form a symbiotic relationship and fill the missing gaps in each others lives. Once the two women move in with each other, Lou Ann fills Taylor’s missing gap of motherly experience and opens her eyes to a life full of responsibilities.
Diane von Furstenberg once stated “I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life.” Independence plays a big role in being able to be successful in life. Taylor, a girl that can be described as “different ,” is a person who is a strong believer in doing things by herself. She moved out when she learned how to drive and never went back. She gains a child and soon settles down in Tucson Arizona, where she starts her own life. In the novel The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, there are many obstacles Taylor goes through to set the theme of independence.
The main characters in The Bean Trees are Taylor and Lou Ann. The first chapter is about Missy leaving Kentucky to find a better life. This chapter is written is 1st person, with Missy being the narrator. She is a person that is tired of her boring life, she changes her name to Taylor, and wants an adventure. She leaves home and goes on a road trip across America. Before Taylor began her trip, she stated, ?And so what I promised myself is that I would drive west until my car stopped running, and there I would stay? (Kingsolver 16). She later continued on Tucson, Arizona.
The Bean Trees is a novel which shows Taylor’s maturation; it is a bildungsroman story. Taylor is a developing or dynamic character. Her moral qualities and outlook undergo a permanent change. When the novel begins, Taylor is an independent-minded young woman embarking on an adventure to a new world. She has no cares or worries. She is confident in her abilities, and is determined to make it through life on her own. As she discovers new things and meets new people, Taylor is exposed to the realities of the world. She learns about the plight of abandoned children and of illegal immigrants. She learns how to give help and how to depend upon the help of others. As she interacts with others, those people are likewise affected by Taylor. The other developing characters are Lou Ann Ruiz, Turtle, and Esperanza. Together they learn the importance of interdependence and find their confidence.
...inds that she can be happy and content having her own life, without being treated like a doormat by others. She is finally truly happy with her life and the way it is going, except for one thing. Her life is complete when, after years of wondering about her sister, and then years of waiting, Nettie finally comes home, bringing “their” children, and Adam’s wife from Africa. As Celie puts it, “I feel a little peculiar around the children. For one thing, they grown. And I see they think me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sophia and Jack and Odessa real old and don’t know much what going on. But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.”(295) With her long lost sister, and her kids reunited with her after so much time, there really wouldn’t be any other way to feel besides young again, except for maybe an urge to make up for lost time. Now that she’s being treated like she should be, it should be easier to make up the time to her family, because she can be herself, and be happy about it. That’s saying a lot after all she’s been through, and Celie will surely make the best of her from this point on.
Gender is a socially constructed phenomenon, and how acceptable one’s relationship is determined by society’s view of gender roles. Because the majority of the population is characterized as heterosexual, those who deviate from that path are ...