When reading Edith Wharton’s “The Other Two” it is easy to make immediate assumptions. Many will assume that Alice is the antagonist of the story because of the controversy surrounding her previous marriages. Others may argue that there was nothing wrong with Alice whatsoever, she was simply a victim of her previous marriages and does not deserve to be defined by her past. However, Alice’s situation is not that black and white. Mr. Waythorn’s thoughts about his new wife are pulled in conflicting directions. The first being his idea of Alice as a perfect wife and the other is the idea that she is that she may have caused her past divorces. Waythorn’s conflict is caused by his perception of his wife when she is with him and the way her ex-husbands act when he is forced to interact with them. …show more content…
Waythorn is waiting for his new wife, Alice to come down for dinner. Immediately, it is evident that Mr. Waythorn thinks highly of his new wife, thus creating the illusion of perfection. It is clear that Waythorn is excited to have dinner with his new wife at his home for the first time since their honeymoon. He discusses for several lines about how much he adores her poise and grace despite the obstacles she has endured. “It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation.”(Wharton, 815) Waythorn is clearly stuck in the “honeymoon stage” and refuses to see the bad in his new wife. “Waythorn seems well aware of his own anxious nature, but he marries without concern about his wife 's past marriages, even when friends advise him to be cautious.”(Neary) At this point in time it was a scandal for a woman to be divorced much less being divorced twice. However, Mr. Waythorn does not let Alice’s previous marriages influence his love for his new wife. Rather, he rationalizes the situation by placing blame on Alice’s previous husbands. This further maintains the idea of his “perfect”
Throughout “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton renders the idea that freedom is just out of reach from the protagonist, Ethan Frome. The presence of a doomed love affair and an unforgiving love triangle forces Ethan to choose between his duty and his personal desire. Wharton’s use of archetypes in the novella emphasizes how Ethan will make choices that will ultimately lead to his downfall. In Edith Wharton’s, “Ethan Frome.” Ethan is wedged between his duty as a husband and his desire for happiness; however, rather than choosing one or the other, Ethan’s indecisiveness makes not only himself, but Mattie and Zeena miserable.
Mrs. Ames from “The Astronomer’s Wife” and Elisa Allen from “The Chrysanthemums”, two women in their best ages, did share similar lives. They were loyal wives, of decent beauty and good manners. They were married for some time, without any children and they were fighting the dullness of their marriages. At first, it looked like they were just caught in marriage monotony, but after the surface has been scratched deeper, it was clear that these two women were crying for attention: but they had different reasons.
To begin with, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor describe their marriage and spouse with a different tone. Bradstreet uses words that
In individual searches to find themselves, Frank and April Wheeler take on the roles of the people they want to be, but their acting grows out of control when they lose sense of who they are behind the curtains. Their separate quests for identity converge in their wish for a thriving marriage. Initially, they both play roles in their marriage to please the other, so that when their true identities emerge, their marriage crumbles, lacking communication and sentimentality. Modelled after golden people or manly figures, the roles Frank and April take on create friction with who they actually are. Ultimately, to “do something absolutely honest” and “true,” it must be “a thing … done alone” (Yates 327). One need only look inside his or her self to discover his or her genuine identity.
Eliza Wharton has sinned. She has also seduced, deceived, loved, and been had. With The Coquette Hannah Webster Foster uses Eliza as an allegory, the archetype of a woman gone wrong. To a twentieth century reader Eliza's fate seems over-dramatized, pathetic, perhaps even silly. She loved a man but circumstance dissuaded their marriage and forced them to establish a guilt-laden, whirlwind of a tryst that destroyed both of their lives. A twentieth century reader may have championed Sanford's divorce, she may have championed the affair, she may have championed Eliza's acceptance of Boyer's proposal. She may have thrown the book angrily at the floor, disgraced by the picture of ineffectual, trapped, female characters.
Nora and Mrs. Wright’s social standing when compared to the men in each play is inferior. Both works expose their respective male characters’ sexist view of women diminishing the women’s social standing. Each work features egotistical men who have a severely inflated view of their self-worth when compared to their female counterparts. The men’s actions and words indicate they believe women are not capable of thinking intelligently. This is demonstrated in “Trifles” when Mr. Hale makes the statement about women only worrying about mere trifles. It is also apparent in “A Dollhouse” when Torvalds thinks his wife is not capable of thinking with any complexity (Mazur 17). Another common attribute is of the women’s social standing is displayed as both women finally get tired of feeling like second class citizens and stand up to the repressive people in the women’s lives (Mulry 294). Although both women share much in common in their social standing there subtle differences. Torvald’s sexist view of Nora is more on a personal level in “A Dollhouse” while the male characters’ sexist views in “Trifles” seem to be more of a social view that women are not very smart and their opinions are of little value. This attitude is apparent in “Trifles” as Mr. Hale and Mr. Henderson’s comments about Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping (Mulry 293). As the women in both works reach their emotional
Two men directly influenced her fate, her father and her lover. Her father did not believe anyone was good enough for her; so he ran off all of her possible suitors. He is described as a "spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip" (Faulkner 469). Her first sign of insanity appears when her father dies; since she had no-one else, her mind refused to believe that he was dead.
On January 24, 1862, Edith Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander in New York City. Wharton’s family were decedents of English and Dutch colonists who had made fortunes in shipping, selling and banking. Wharton, the youngest and only girl of 3 children, spoke 3 languages and was taught by a series of governesses. Because Wharton was taught only with the intention to provide her with the proper social skills needed to become a good wife, she began to read books from her father’s library, especially western culture books. At the age of 18 Edith Wharton feel in love with Walter Berry, but could not truly pursue the relationship because Berry was not from the same social class as Wharton, which in Old New York, was not socially allowed. However, in 1885 at the age of 23, Wharton married Edward Wharton who was 12 years older then her. Edward Wharton was a gentlemen and a sportsman from a well-established family in Philadelphia. Edward shared her love of travel and was acceptable in eyes of Edith’s parents. From the late 1880’s to 1902 Edward Wharton suffered from acute depression and at this time they stopped traveling and lived exclusively at “the Mount” – the home Edith Wharton designed in Lenox, Massachusetts. Edward Wharton’s depressed really put a strain on their relationship and in 1913 Edith Wharton divorced Edward Wharton. After the divorce Edith returned to writing, at this time she wrote a lot of books that often dealt with divorce, unhappy marriages, and free-spirited people who are trapped by social pressure.
In a subtle way, Brush also makes the wife’s actions selfish. Even though her husband was wrong to react in the way that he did, she was also selfish in her actions. Clearly, her husband has a shy personality because “he was hotly embarrassed” (13) in front of “such few people as there were in the restaurant” (11). Using a couple of this age (“late thirties” (1)), Brush asserts that the wife should have known her husband’s preferences and been sensitive to them. The author also uses the seemingly opposite descriptions the couple: “There was nothing conspicuous about them” (5) and the “big hat” (4) of the woman. The big hat reveals the wife’s desire to be noticed.
Alice and Kevin have an interesting start to their relationship. Initially, it appears that Dana is not interested in Kevin, as she tries to reject communication and his advances through buying her lunch. This distance on Dana’s part allows readers to contemplate whether Dana is put off by Kevin’s obtrusive attitude because he is a man, because he is white, or a combination of the two. As the novel advances, Butler continues to focus Kevin’s faults in his marriage because of his identity as a white man.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
In conclusion, the author’s choice of utilizing the third person narration is what provided the high level of ignorance, as the voice concentrated on the protagonist husband. It brought the reader to the place of how inadequately the husband treated the wife and how he was oblivious of how his actions affected her. The reader is also able to envision that the protagonist is not cognizant that he is not being truthful to himself. It permits the reader to realize the how boring, prideful, thoughtless, and insensitive the protagonist is overall.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
Marriage is a powerful union between two people who vow under oath to love each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. This sacred bond is a complicated union; one that can culminate in absolute joy or in utter disarray. One factor that can differentiate between a journey of harmony or calamity is one’s motives. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, where Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Mr. Darcy’s love unfolds as her prejudice and his pride abate. Anton Chekhov’s “Anna on the Neck” explores class distinction, as an impecunious young woman marries a wealthy man. Both Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Anton Chekhov’s “Anna on the Neck” utilize
Two of the main characters, Jack and Algernon, strive to be "Ernest" and "Earnest" in the play, yet they both deceive others to escape lives which they grow tired of. They both hope to marry the girls that they love, yet they are starting the relationship based on false pretence and lies. It is ironic that they both call themselves "Ernest," a name that suggests honesty and sincerity, yet they both create stories to escape something or the other. Jack creates a brother called "Ernest" in the city that he uses as a scape goat' to leave his prim and proper, respectable country life, whereas Algernon creates a friend by the name of "Bunbury" to escape his aunt's high class society parties. He shows his lack of interest in such social events when he tells Jack.