Hope by Emily Dickinson
As a literary woman of the nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson wrote, ? ?Hope? is a things with feathers- that perches in the soul- and sings a tune without the words- and never stops- at all.? Are you listening? Does your soul too sing a melody, an ongoing tune to which you delicately move, and never stop? Here Dickinson suggests an aspect of life, a struggle for spiritual freedom, that applies to many women within the nineteenth century, as well as the women of today. My consciousness speaks to me; a spark of hope rests inside my soul, hoping to emerge into the sunlight of each new day. I am a woman; I am a delicate woman who listens to Dickinson?s fine words. I listen to the tune that never ends, in a constant search for achieving my own ?space.? Everyday, I struggle to free my feathered bird from its cage. Dickinson has identified with her internal struggle as a woman, to achieve an outer space, and as the bird, she freed herself from the cage that held her spiritual soul.
A caged bird symbolizes Dickinson?s soul. Similarly, fictional women in nineteenth century literature are caged birds. Consider for example, Kate Chopin?s, Edna Pontellier in The Awakening and Charolette Perkins Gilman?s, Woman, in ?The Yellow Wallpaper.?
Initially in Kate Chopin?s, The Awakening we meet a fair, frail, passionate woman, Edna Pontellier, whose destiny is to fall into spiritual depression. She is a caged bird that cannot be released from her own spiritual confinement until she recognizes her own strength to do so. Edna?s childish, capricious tendencies, concerning her submissiveness towards her ?lovers? and adultery towards her husband create confusion in finding the outlet for her freedom and passion.
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...soul within me? Who keeps the bird from singing a melody which I understand?? I ask the same question for the fictional women I have studied. ?Is it within one?s strength to determine who has the key to the cage?? As I continue to struggle for the answers to my questions, I continue to listen to the bird that is perched within my soul, singing the ongoing tune- that never stops at all. I too, one day, hope to free myself from the cage that holds me back from life, a free spiritual life.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, Susan Gilbert, Ed. The Awakening and Selected
Stories. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.
Dickinson, Emily. ?Hope.? The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas
H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1960.
Gilman, Charolette Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Wallace Stegner and Mary Stegner,
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Kate Chopin’s The Awakening takes place in the late 19th century, in Grande Isle off the coast of Louisiana. The author writes about the main character, Edna Pontellier, to express her empowering quality of life. Edna is a working housewife,and yearns for social freedom. On a quest of self discovery, Edna meets Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, falls in and out of love,and eventually ends up taking her own life. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening shows how the main character Edna Pontellier has been trapped for so many years and has no freedom, yet Edna finally “awakens” after so long to her own power and her ability to be free.
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Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” is wrought with symbolism, foreshadowing and careful diction choices. Many of the passages throughout the novel embody Edna’s awakening sense of self-reliance, independence and sexuality. These are sy...
In I Know why the Caged Bird Sings the author uses many different literary devices and various figurative language examples. The use of metaphors, imagery, similes, and Symbolism has a great effect. They’re effective due to the fact in how they inform the reader of various important details needed to understand the story completely. The use of specific, different, and various types of language illustrate to the reader the effect of racism on many characters in the novel.
Throughout The Awakening, a novel by Kate Chopin, the main character, Edna Pontellier showed signs of a growing depression. There are certain events that hasten this, events which eventually lead her to suicide.
In The Awakening, caged birds serve as reminders of Edna's entrapment. She is caged in the roles as wife and mother; she is never expected to think for herself. Moreover, the caged birds symbolize the entrapment of the Victorian women in general. Like the parrot, the women's movements are limited by the rules of society.
Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and awakening.
Longing for the freedom that the beautiful blue-eyed white bird holds, the ugly black bird violently throws herself against the bars that ensnare her. After countless failed attempts, the black bird eventually understands that her cage is her identity. Believing her femininity and African American race are the cages that capture her, Maya Angelou relives the unfortunate incidents of her life in her 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. At age three, Marguerite (Maya) and her brother Bailey are abandoned by their divorced parents and sent to live with their paternal grandmother and crippled uncle in the strongly racist and rural town of Stamps, Arkansas. From refusal to receive dental treatment, to being told Blacks only amount to maids and handymen at her eighth grade graduation, racism sinks its way into Maya’s spirit. A turning point occurs when their father unexpectedly arrives in Stamps and leaves them in St. Louis, Missouri with their mother. At just eight years old, Marguerite is sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who is ironically named Mr. Freeman. Although found guilty, Mr. Freeman is killed one night. Maya is overwhelmed with guilt for his death, and withdraws from everyone but her brother Bailey. She is allowed to spend a summer her teen years with her father, and after verbal abuse, becomes homeless for a short period. At the end of the summer, she goes back to live with her mother and just before graduating high school becomes pregnant. The book ends with the acceptance of her child and the realization that the love she yearned for from her parents is one that she can now give. By boldly sharing her intimate experiences, Maya Angelou uses imagery, characterization, and symbolism to ce...
The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a truly enlightening novel about a young woman who begins to really live her life for herself, breaking out of the various barriers of society and family. Chopin uses symbolism as an excellent tool to slip her ideas to readers, causing them to think, giving readers a glimpse into the life of this young woman at a time when women were harnessed by many restraints. The birds that appear throughout the novel are the most intriguing symbols; they are used many different ways, to mean many different things, and to portray various emotions and situations.
Kate Chopin brings out the essence of Creole society through the characters of her novel, "The Awakening". In the novel, Edna Pontellier faces many problems because she is an outcast from society. As a result of her isolation from society she has to learn to fit in and deal with her problems. This situation causes her to go through a series of awakenings which help her find herself, but this also causes problems with her husband due in part for her loss of respect for him and the society she lives in. Throughout the novel she is faced with unfavorable circumstances that confuse and eventually kill her.
In the poem “Sympathy” the author explains why the caged bird sings, this is said many times through the poem. The caged bird attempts to get out of his cage, he doesn’t stop trying to escape. “I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till it’s blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would
Prose, Francine (September 1999). "I know why the caged bird cannot read". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2011 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/2315657/HarpersMagazine1999090060648.
No matter how bad things may seem, there is always hope for things to ameliorate. When people believe that the future will be promising, they can have something to look forward to as opposed to dwelling on the past or the problems of the present. This hope can give a person a positive outlook on life and motivate him or her to look past what is happening in the present. In the poems “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson and “The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy, they both convey similar messages about hope. Both works display the theme of hope being present at all times no matter how bad things may seem and is a consistent option for anyone in need of help.