The Profound Ideas of Honore de Balzac's Pere Goriot
Honore de Balzac published Pere Goriot in 1834 (1), one of the outstanding novels in his panoramic study of Parisian life, the Human Comedy. Throughout Pere Goriot, Balzac's narrator oscillates between the roles of social historian and moralist. Although the presence of both observer and commentator may initially seem mutually exclusive, it also is a large part of what makes this novel interesting and entertaining. Balzac's readers, as flesh-and-blood humans, do not segregate perception and judgment routinely in their everyday lives. By packaging profound ideas in a way similar to natural human expectation, Balzac's narrator achieves an especially comfortable and effective rapport with readers.
One of the central threads of Pere Goriot is the story of Eugene de Rastignac's rise from provincial obscurity to success in Paris. Along the way he learns much about Parisian society and human nature. In the following passage from Pere Goriot, Rastignac pursues success through fashionable dress:
Eugene had begun to realize the influence a tailor can exercise over a young man's life. He is either a mortal enemy or a friend, and alas, there is no middle term between the two extremes. Eugene's tailor was one who understood the paternal aspect of his trade and regarded himself as a hyphen between a young man's past and future. The grateful Eugene was eventually to make the man's fortune by one of those remarks at which he was in later years to excel: "I know two pairs of his trousers that have each made matches worth twenty thousand francs a year."
Fifteen hundred and fifty francs, and all the clothes he cared to have! At this point the poor southerner felt all doubts van...
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...ank and the English mathematician Charles Babbage developed the "analytical engine", precursor to the modern computer.
2 This quote from Henry Reed's 1962 translation, pages 99-100. (Honore de Balzac. Pere Goriot. New York: Penguin Books, 1981)
3 The emphasis is mine.
4 Daedalus was a great inventor in Greek mythology who escaped from prison with his son, Icarus, by flying away on wings of feathers and wax. Not heeding the advice of his practical father, Icarus dared to fly close to the glorious sun. The wax wings melted, and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea below.
5 A corollary is that no one who hasn't been to the "provinces" knows a thing about human life, for a person who lives only in the city will also have a skewed perception.
Work Cited
Honore de Balzac. Pere Goriot. Translated by Henry Reed. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.
Davis fashions Arnaud as the link between the popular and elite cultures – using his self–molded role play of the elite circles of the 16th century. Does Arnaud successfully demonstrate the 16th century sense of personal identity using his own brand of self-fashioning into another man’s identity? He does successfully recognize this self-identity and delivers this role play with ease. However the ease and acceptance of ...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an observation on the male oppression of women in a patriarchal society. The story itself presents an interesting look at one woman's struggle to deal with both mental and physical confinement. Through Gilman's writing the reader becomes aware of the mental and physical confinement, which the narrator endures, and the overall effect and reaction to this confinement.
The very popular short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a compelling story of a woman with a mental illness. Every aspect of this story contributes to its success, including the characters and their interactions, the plot, setting, the most apparent symbols, the point of view used, and the overall message of the story. This story is a great representation of mental illness in the time when it was written – misunderstood, and feared.
It’s 2:00am and I cannot sleep. I toss and turn while the question, “Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?” keeps playing over and over in my mind. The picture in my mind of a subjugated woman who feebly attempts to fight against feminine oppression and her impending insanity is vivid and disturbing and continues to slap against the recesses of my mind with an angry hand. What was Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempting to convey to her readers when she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” and created the characters of the narrator, her husband John, Mary and her sister-in-law Jennie? Obviously, in an exaggerated version of her own experience with post-partum depression and its prescribed “rest cure”, Gilman speaks of a world in which the female is forced into a role of the submissive counterpart to male dominance. In the following pages, I will describe how Gilman has effectively created characters that draw us into their view of control, dominance and frustrated silence against imprisonment in a paternalistic society, and how we are given a view into a perfectly healthy mind that goes awry.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The short story speaks of a young mother (narrator) who is suffering with post-partum depression and is given the treatment of “rest cure” by her over controlling husband/physician. The narrator is kept in a nursery with yellow wallpaper in the couple’s summer home. As the story progresses the narrator becomes immensely intrigued by the patterns in the yellow wallpaper. The narrator begins to pick and scratch at the wallpaper because she sees a women behind it, a women trapped in the patterns. The narrator becomes so obsessed with the wallpaper she loses complete touch of reality itself. The woman trapped behind the wallpaper represents the narrator. The narrator
In the short story “An Adventure in Paris” by Guy De Maupassant an unnamed woman seeks for adventure, love, and excitement. An unnamed narrator starts to explain the inner nature and curiosity of a woman. The story transitions to the point of view of an unnamed lawyer’s wife which allows us to see her deepest desire to travel to Paris and be part of the lavishing life she has seen in the magazines. To escape her regular routine she makes a plan to go to Paris; however, her family members are only middle class and cannot help her fulfill her desire to live the life of a celebrity, fame, and fashion. Just when her trip seems to be monotonous she comes across the chance to live the life of an extravagant person. This chance happens when she meets Jean Varin, a wealthy author, in a store wanting to purchase a Japanese figurine. When Varin decides that the figurine is too expensive the lawyer’s wife steps up to buy the figurine which causes Varin to notice her. She flirtatiously invites herself into Varin’s daily activities which intrigue Varin. As the day closes she invites herself to Varin’s house and has an affair with Varin; however, she doesn’t feel she is satisfied because of his many needs. She anxiously waits till morning to come so that she can leave which only confuses Varin. When Varin asks her why she is leaving after all they have been through she states that she wanted to know what depravity felt like; however, it was not what she expected. The central idea of the story is about a woman’s psychological desire for romance, adventure, and an opulent lifestyle that leads to curiosity and the immoral act of adultery.
Baudelaire, Charles. The Parisian Prowler. Trans. Edward K. Kaplan. 2nd ed. Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
With hard work comes the success of the opportunity to open up the shop and be able to have more money. As a result of her laziness, she begins to rack up debt in turn leading to the loss of the shop. After a while, Gervaise becomes lazy and expects to receive all the benefits of the shop without working hard. “In the central phases of her development, a dynamic combination of factors and forces is brought into play: the outrageous ill-luck of Coupeau’s fall, the debilitating effects on her will of the dirty laundry in the shop, her first ‘spells of laziness’ seemingly prompted directly by the ‘asphyxiatng’ air of the shop, her excessive generosity to Coupeau, his drunken kiss ‘amid the filth of her trade’, which ‘was like a first fall, in the slow degradation of their life” (Baguley, pg. 57). Gervaise is intoxicated by the possession of things such as the shop. There is the development of her going from possessing very little to owning more, but then abusing it to the point where she loses it. Gervaise loses her ambition for the future and slowly becomes lazier and is consumed by her spending. She is spending more than she is working which causes her to lose the shop over time. This is on the downward part of the inverse parabola as she descends into her own filth. “Of course, with laziness and poverty, in came dirt. It was impossible to recognize the lovely sky-blue shop that had once been Gervaise’s pride
Vintage short stories are meant to entertain their readers. However, many passive readers miss the true entertainment that lies within the story in the hidden context. Most short stories have, embedded in the writing, a lesson or theme attached to them. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman demonstrates a woman who has suffered from repression and longs for the freedom from her controlling husband. Gender conflicts play a major role throughout this story. The author portrays these kinds of conflicts through the three main characters, John, Jennie and the narrator. The theme of this story is a woman's fall into insanity resulting from isolation from treatment of post-partum depression. Gilman is also telling the story of how women were thought of as prisoners by the demands of the society throughout that time period. She also expresses the punishments these women had when they tried to break free. As a reader, we see how much control John had over her and how it ended up affecting her individuality.
When Jane arrives at the summer estate with her husband, a physician of some repute, she immediately begins to fantasize that the location is haunted, at the least strange, she can “feel it” (479). We begin to see that something is occurring with her mentally, that possibly she is the one feeling strange. “This is our first intimation that all is not right, though whether with the house, or with Jane, we have yet to be told. However, the fact that she tells us at the beginning that this is not a haunted house, suggests that the "queerness" will lie with her” (Kerr). This is again reinforced in the next lines when she confesses that she get “unreasonably angry” with her husband (479). She is sure that she “never use to be this way” (479). This is the effects of her suffering from postpartum depression, finally falling under a psychosis by story’s end.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the reader journeys into the complex, deteriorating mind of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Through symbolism, Gilman issues a profound statement against the accepted subjugation of women during the 19th century. The narrator's internal dialogue sets the tone of the story and allows the reader to experience her horrifying delusions. Additionally, the use of irony illustrates the repressive nature of her marital relationship. In the end, both freedom and insanity lie behind the yellow wallpaper of the narrator’s world.
Lacking any mode of self-expression, except for the few times she can sneak writing into her journal, the narrator looks for something to occupy her mind and the yellow wallpaper is the answer. Gilman points out the fault of psychiatrists at the time. Even though doctors believe that starving the mentally ill of any sort of stimulus is a cure of mental health issues, Gilman illustrates that this only creates an environment for even further deterioration of the mind. Instead, what the narrator initially suggests to her husband is right. Allowing those who suffer from mental health issues to express themselves and explore what’s out there is the real cure.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it reveals the oppression women had gone through during that time period, but then escaping from the confinements of men's hold against them. The narrator is the woman whose only job was to sleep in bed all day, not to write, not to strain herself from the bedroom. She listens to her husband’s requests because of his doctoral status, thus making it difficult for her to really do as she pleases; she doesn’t want her husband to stress. The yellow wallpaper is a hideous horrid thing that she hates at first, but as she continues to stay in that room she less disgusted when she sees the patterns and the woman in the wall, who is in relation of her situation. Towards the end of their three month stay she’s suspicious with everyone including her “loving” husband messing with her wallpaper, not wishing for anyone else to figure out the pattern of the wallpaper, but her.
The fist computer, known as the abacus, was made of wood and parallel wires on which beads were strung. Arithmetic operations were performed when the beads were moved along the wire according to “programming” rules that had to be memorized by the user (Soma, 14). The second earliest computer, invented by Blaise Pascal in 1694, was a “digital calculating machine.” Pascal designed this first known digital computer to help his father, who was a tax collector. Pascal’s computer could only add numbers, and they had to be entered by turning dials (Soma, 32). It required a manual process like its ancestor, the abacus. Automation was introduced in the early 1800’s by a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage. He created an automatic calculation machine that was steam powered and stored up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Unlike its two earliest ancestors, Babbage’s invention was able to perform various operations. It relied on cards with holes punched in them, which are called “punch cards.” These cards carried out the programming and storing operations for the machine. Unluckily, Babbage’s creation flopped due to the lack of mechanical precision and the lack of demand for the product (Soma, 46). The machine could not operate efficiently because technology was t adequate to make the machine operate efficiently Computer interest dwindled for many years, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that people became interested in them once again.
Technology continued to prosper in the computer world into the nineteenth century. A major figure during this time is Charles Babbage, designed the idea of the Difference Engine in the year 1820. It was a calculating machine designed to tabulate the results of mathematical functions (Evans, 38). Babbage, however, never completed this invention because he came up with a newer creation in which he named the Analytical Engine. This computer was expected to solve “any mathematical problem” (Triumph, 2). It relied on the punch card input. The machine was never actually finished by Babbage, and today Herman Hollerith has been credited with the fabrication of the punch card tabulating machine.