Just as how Geraldine’s arrival marked an appearance of homosexual desire, it also marks the entrance of disability. Upon her entry, Geraldine is described as a “weary woman, scarce alive” (95). She claims to be disoriented, neither able to decipher the passage of time nor trusting what she hears, such as the “sounds … of a castle bell” (101). Whether Coleridge is attempting to imply that Geraldine’s disorientation has descended into some form of madness is unclear (though her “unsettled eye” insists that it has), but Geraldine’s inability to walk quickly and her tendency to “[sink], belike through pain” insist that she is hurt in some shape or form (though she seems as if “she were not in pain” just a few lines later) (129-34; 208). The amalgam This excerpt makes it clear that Geraldine’s position is an unstable one. While the term “stealth” attracts connotations related to secrecy and duplicity, it can also insinuate a need for protection or privacy. To actively pass as straight or non-disabled in a society is to understand that dominant norms exist, and that certain beings do not naturally fit into the molds presented. In this case, dominant norms are not only present, but being reinforced by individuals of society, such as Saith Bracy. Sir Leoline’s unwillingness to sympathize with his daughter upon non-normative actions only strengthens the scrutiny of the environment. In light of as much, Geraldine’s reaction to the surveillance surrounding her may expose her duplicitous and villainous nature, but it also presents her as more socially cognizant in comparison to characters such as Christabel who are unable to stifle certain portrayals of frailty. Geraldine’s multiplicity of identity is a direct move against the “pain and rage” which Sir Leoline feels in response to Christabel’s “dizzy trance/[as she stumbles] on the unsteady ground/[and shudders] aloud, with a hissing sound” (642; 591-3). The audience remains aware that Geraldine mimicked such shuddering while undressing before Christabel, but understands that she is safe from Sir Leoline’s damnation and dishonoring because of her ability to pass. A nuanced understanding of stealth, then, as provided by this analysis, shows that while passing can signify something sinister, it also represents an attempt to protect one’s self from acts of violence and aggression, as well as to preserve one’s possibly upward mobility in society. Stealth remains relevant in texts such as “Christabel” because it aids
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
Edna’s first action that starts off her route to freedom from her relationship is when she fell in love with Robert. Edna had already married a man that she had not loved but he has not been treating her a...
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
The reader reads in order to feel sorrow for the protagonist in a manner the reader can assimilate. Yet, it seems that the nature of Margaret’s thoughts is inherently dialogic or, to work with Duke’s terms, empathic: neither Margaret nor the reader uses the text in order to solicit pity from the other. What function would a “pity party” serve a reader by herself? To the contra...
The notion of love is nothing but a shadow that covers the truth of ones’ own struggles and the improbable triumph of love over isolation is nearly impossible in his eyes. By complicating his poem through the filter of the maid and the frame of traditional love poetry, Clare’s portrait of isolation and social death becomes even more moving, for it is just as obvious to the reader as it is to Clare that such an “eternity” is unlikely to be
While we all may be shown different faces and persona’s each day, it never becomes clear which a true personality is and which is just a mask. Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates the need for her characters to disguise themselves from the rest of society in order to either be accepted by others or to be seen in a more pleasant manner. However, these characters who conceals themselves are ultimately hurt because of their inability to shed their false fronts and accept who they truly are.
The book raises issues about the role of women in society, not only in the time period in which it is set, but also in the modern world. Edna was truly brave in the way that she slowly began to defy society's conventions. She was never unfaithful to her husband because he had betrayed her by seeing her as an object. This contributed to her yearning for truth and freedom. Her husband was a well-meaning man, but Edna had no real trust in him. She felt empty with him and their children. Once Leonce was gone and Edna had been with Robert, she felt like she had found true and passionate love, but she had not. Robert was like Leonce. Robert speaks of her being "set free and given to her" and she realizes that Robert also viewed women as possessions. This was a trouble that she could not get away from. Robert loved her, but the way that he thought was still being controlled by the society and time that they lived in. Edna realizes that her loving and lusty relationship with Robert would still be repressed by the society that they were
Until her moment of illumination, Mrs. Mallard’s emotions have been suppressed to fit into the mold of societies way during that time frame. In paragraph ten, Louise “abandons herself” and allows the ...
In the novel, during many instances, intricate intimacies are illustrated. “No multitude of words could have been more significant than those moments of silences, or more pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.” (30) Robert, in pursuit of Edna unlocks her sexual awakening alongside his social awakening. Robert becomes aware that he must step out of the boundaries and evolve as a man. Yet Robert still stumbles in his path. He and Edna have a common bond. They both attempt to defy the norms of society. Robert respects Edna’s yearning for individualism and only seeks to accompany her on that journey by form of marriage. However, he struggles to fight what societal ordainment. He lacks the key to break societies chains. He can’t simply let go of the expectation of marriage within this era. On the contrary his relationship with Edna gives him an optimistic view on his love life. “His search has always hitherto been fruitless, and he has sunk back, disheartened, into the sea. But to-night he found Mrs. Pontelllier.” (29) His passion for Edna, conveys his innocent hope for repressive love between himself and Edna. He and Edna
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
The heroine, Mrs. P, has some carries some characteristics parallel to Louise Mallard in “Hour.” The women of her time are limited by cultural convention. Yet, Mrs. P, (like Louise) begins to experience a new freedom of imagination, a zest for life , in the immediate absence of her husband. She realizes, through interior monologues, that she has been held back, that her station in life cannot and will not afford her the kind of freedom to explore freely and openly the emotions that are as much a part of her as they are not a part of Leonce. Here is a primary irony.
...etative community of patriarchal language, does not allow for the existence of female desire and kills what little life it had in Eliza in these last lines. In the end, the characters of Edna and Eliza reveal the impossibility of female desire, of their having desire, within a culture that cannot articulate or name it.
Mrs. Mallard is an ill woman who is “afflicted with heart trouble” and had to be told very carefully by her sister and husband’s friend that her husband had died (1609). Her illness can be concluded to have been brought upon her by her marriage. She was under a great amount of stress from her unwillingness to be a part of the relationship. Before her marriage, she had a youthful glow, but now “there was a dull stare in her eyes” (1610). Being married to Mr. Mallard stifled the joy of life that she once had. When she realizes the implications of her husband’s death, she exclaims “Free! Body and soul free!” (1610). She feels as though a weight has been lifted off her shoulders and instead of grieving for him, she rejoices for herself. His death is seen as the beginn...
Later on in the story, the narrator begins to act different from the social norms. It may have been portrayed as her going mental. “I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round – round and round and round – it makes me dizzy!” (Gilman 325). The narrator also notices how other women were affected by the pressure and social stigma from society. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman 325). Many other women in that era are being suppressed, not just the