The award-winning contemporary book, The Hired Girl, by Laura Amy Schlitz, tells an easily relatable tale. Initially set in Pennsylvania in 1911, the protagonist, Joan (later christened Janet), wants nothing more than to leave her pedestrian farm life behind. The only female in her family since her mother died, Joan takes on cooking every meal for five people, cleaning a two-story house, gardening, and the tending of animals at 14 years old. After reading an advertisement for a hired girl performing fewer duties than she and being paid six dollars a week, Joan asks her father if she could keep the money for the eggs she sells and he blatantly refuses. Her merciless father pulls her out of school despite her love of reading and burns her …show more content…
An element that I enjoyed was how historically accurate it was, both in language and context. The author keeps the setting consistent by incorporating the cleaning and cooking being a woman’s work and girls reading being frowned upon. Another instance when the time period is apparent is when Joan is reading the advertisements and they say, “First-class white girl for COOKING and HOUSEWORK…” (Schlitz 39). As the author explains, “In The Hired Girl, I have tried to be historically accurate about language. This has led me to use terms that are considered pejorative today…” (Author’s Note). The author’s word choice authentically shows the time period by using words like Hebrew, Mahomet, and Mahometan. Furthermore, another element of the author’s style that I noticed were the author’s allusions. They provided additional insight to Joan/Janet’s inner desires. Schlitz often alludes to Jane Eyre, a favorite of Joan/Janet’s. She constantly compares herself to the heroines of novels like Ivanhoe and Jane Eyre and Dombey and Son. The allusions allow the reader to compare elements of the story and therefore constitute depth in the characters and
In the course of reading two separate texts it is generally possible to connect the two readings even if they do not necessarily seem to be trying to convey the same message. The two articles, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, and “Coming Into Language” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, do have some very notable similarities. They are two articles from a section in a compilation about the construction of language. The fact that these two articles were put into this section makes it obvious that they will have some sort of connection. This essay will first summarize the two articles and break them down so that they are easily comparable; also, this essay will compare the two articles and note similarities and differences the texts may have.
Rebecca Sharpless’ book “Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices” tells the stories of everyday women in Central Texas on cotton farms. She argues that women were not just good for keeping house, cooking, sewing and raising children but that they were an essential key to the economy. Whether they were picking cotton alongside men or bearing children
Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice is about a young homeless girl who doesn’t know anything about herself. This girl is found sleeping in a dung heap by a village and the village’s Midwife decides she’ll give her shelter if she’ll work as her apprentice. From that moment, her new life starts and she finds an identity that fits her and a new name, occupation and a place she belongs to. Alyce’s smartness, empathy and curiousness are a great combination that leads her to become a midwife’s apprentice, and as she works she starts to learn how the world works.
In Chapter One she makes a start in Key West. In this chapter she learns a lot about low-wage-job applications. Each application she fills out has many multi choice questions and later on a urine test. She ends up waiting many days hearing nothing back and then applying for a job waitressing. She's hired and is paid $2.43 and hour plus tips.
For example, she shares details that young children “ make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories. They spin and weave our cotton underwear in the cotton mills.” These details of labor suggests that there are many children working a wide variety of jobs. The details also indicates the severity of the situation: child labor is immoral. Kelley also enumerates specific laws that are outrageous that support child labor. She asserts that in Georgia, a girl who is as young as six could be working. A child of the age of six should be enjoying childhood — not working at a factory — which adds to the immoral view of child
The novel “The Orphan Train” written by Christina Baker Kline is a fictional portrayal of a young girl who migrated to America from Ireland, and found herself orphaned at the age of ten in New York City in the year 1929. The book tells the story of the pain and anguish she suffered, and the happiness she would later find. From the mid 1850’s through the early 1900’s there was an surge of European immigrants just like Niamh and her family who came to America in search of a better life. Unfortunately, most were not as prosperous as they had hoped to be. As a result, many poverty-stricken children were left orphaned, abandoned, and homeless. They roamed the streets looking for food, money, and refuge by any means necessary. Since there
Prior to World War II women were expected to be housewives by cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. Women were discouraged to work outside of the home and often judged by the rest of society. Bobbie Ann Mason gives great examples of the duties expected by women of the time period and her grandmother is a perfect model of domesticity. At one point Mason talk about a conversation between her grandmother and mom. Mason’s mom, Christy, decides to go back to work, but her grandmother disapproves and says she should be home taking care of her girls (Mason, 116). Christy on the other hand is an example of the modern woman. A woman willing to go to work outside of the home to help support her family when needed. Christy gets a job at a clothing company. Mason says that many women were leaving the farm and taking work in factories (Mason, 83). During and after World War II many women began to work outside of the home changing the idea of what it meant to be a women and the duties that accompanied.
The thought of her brothers still being in her former home environment in Maine hurt her. She tried to think of a way to get at least one of her brothers, the sickly one, to come and be with her. She knew that her extended family was financially able to take in another child, and if she showed responsibility, there would be no problem (Wilson, 40). She found a vacant store, furnished it, and turned it into a school for children (Thinkquest, 5). At the age of seventeen, her grandmother sent her a correspondence, and requested her to come back to Boston with her brother (Thinkquest, 6).
In this story, the horse dealer's daughter is a young woman named Mabel, who has recently discovered that her family has lost all its money, her brothers can go off and make their own way in the world, but Mabel has nowhere to go. There are a few options open to her -- going to live with a sister, becoming a servant -- but she has run her family's household ever since her mother's death and none of these options are acceptable to her.
Levine, Marvin J. "Mines, Mills, and Canneries." Children for Hire: The Perils of Child Labor in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 21. Print.
In the Child Labor in the Carolinas, photos and depictions of children working in mills show how working class children did not have the opportunities to branch out and have a childhood as defined by today’s standards. Though the pamphlet creators may have been fighting for better standards for child labor in textile mills of the Carolinas, they simultaneously show how working class families depended on multiple members to support the family: in “Chester, South Carolina, an overseer told me frankly that manufacturers [in] all the South evaded the child labor law by letting youngsters who are under age help older brothers and sisters” (McElway, 11). Children were used because they were inexpensive labor and were taken advantage of in many ways because they were so...
In the movie Mean Girls, and in life, individuals run into nonverbal communications, whether they desire to or not. As said in Communicate! The Fifteenth Edition, “Nonverbal communication is inevitable,” (Verderber, Sellnow, & Verderber, 2017) and the audience can see that clearly in the movie. One way to convey nonverbal messages is through the use of paralanguage. This is when an individual uses vocal effects to communicate underlying meanings (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). These effects range from pitch, to volume, to rate, and many others. Regina George takes control of these forms of paralanguage while interacting with the principal after “finding” the Burn Book. Regina uses her high pitch and soft volume to demonstrate she is sad and hurt when in reality
Labrie, Janet M. "The Depiction of Women's Field Work in Rural Fiction." Agricultural History 67 (Spring 1993): 119-33. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
...g the Girl's Own Story." The Girl: Construction of the Girl in Contemporary Fiction by Women. Ed. Ruth Saxton. New York: St. Martin's P, 1998. 21-42.
“Boys and Girls” is set in a rural town in the Northern United States, on a fox farm, where a family of four lives. The narrator is the daughter of the farmer and she works tirelessly for her father trying to prove that she is worthy of his acceptance and love. The narrator views her father as the person she would gain her identity from she, “was shy of him” but “nevertheless, worked diligently under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride” (Munro 155). The narrator finds her father’s approval when he introduces her to a salesman as his “new hired hand” (Munro