blog number four

In ‘The Horse Dealers Daughter” by D.H Lawrence, we are introduced to a young woman named Mabel whom is left moneyless after the death of her parents. She is left to take care of her family’s big house year after year. “For months, Mabel had been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in perjury for her ineffectual brothers. She had kept house for ten years” (Lawrence 480). In the beginning of the story we learn that Mabel is the only sister and that she has three brothers. Mabel felt alone in the world without her parents not like her brothers who didn’t seem to show emotion after they passed away. “The girl was alone, a rather short, sullen-looking young woman of twenty-seven. She did not share the same life as her brothers” (Lawrence 477). We find out that this woman is twenty-seven years old and we get a short description of her physical appearance, we also learn that she has absolutely nothing in common with her brothers. Her brothers would say rude comments about her and even describe their sister Mabel as having a “bulldog” face (477). The only place Mabel felt at peace was at her mother’s grave site. “There she always felt secure, as if no one could see her, although as a matter of fact she was exposed to the stare of everyone who passed along under the church wall. Never-theless once under the shadow of the great looming church, among the graves, she felt immune from the world, reserved within the thick churchyard was as in another country” (481). Mabel lived a very cold, depressing life, she felt a comfort in taking care of mother’s grave site, and this was the one thing for her to look forward to.  That is until she meets Jack Fergusson, a doctor whom professes his love to her. This is not the typical love story between boy meets girl. This story is more complex. Fergusson also lives a meaningless life, he too is living his life in a routinely manner. These two are both lonely and living their lives in a similar way. Lawrence, proves what a dull, boring, and meaningless life two people without love can live. Without love there is no meaning to life, no reason to live this is how I see it.

Blog Number Three

In “The Story of an Hour” Kate Chopin begins her story introducing a lady named Mrs. Mallard as a woman who has been affected with a heart trouble due to hearing the news of her husband’s death from a railroad disaster. Mrs. Mallard receives the tragic news from her sister and husbands friend. Her sister and her husband’s friend know of her heart trouble and this is the reason they try to tell her the news carefully, thinking this news will greatly affect her heart condition. On the contrary, we soon learn that she is actually going through a series of different emotions and feelings after hearing the news of her husbands’ death. “Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brentley Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed” (Chopin 337). Because Chopin describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman with heart trouble, in the story you would think that since she has this type of illness hearing the news of her husband’s death would deeply sadden her and possibly make her heart condition worse. Ironically, in a weird, strange way she seems relieved that her husband has died and now she has become a free soul. “She walked into her room alone and wanted no one to follow her. “When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” (Chopin 338). The next statement from the narrator made me feel sad, and I don’t know why but it my favorite part of the story! The statement has such a deep meaning and with just that one statement alone you could really feel the pain and suffering she had been through as a married woman. During these old ages I get the feeling that many women who were married used to feel that way. “The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes” (Chopin 338). She had an empty stare and in her eyes you could see that she had been scared then suddenly it’s gone, you get a sense that she had been enlightened, reborn again. With everything discussed above and after reading this short story one begins to wonder whether this woman ever did love her husband. And it is almost as if the narrator knew we would begin wonder, in paragraph 15 we get some kind of answer along with an explanation. “And yet she loved him-sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” (Chopin 338). At the end of the story we learn some sort of mistake has occurred. Brentley Mallard opens the front door, after all he was alive and he had been far from the accident and didn’t even know about it. The doctors came in and said Mrs. Mallard has died of heart disease. Ironically, the doctors say that she has died of joy that kills. Now we are all left contemplating the reason Mrs. Mallard has died. She could have possibly been so shocked to see her husband alive and because of her heart condition she died suddenly with such utter disbelief.

Blog entry number two

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman Perkins describes how she lived her life in her upstairs bedroom. Her husband John is a physician and it seems he treats her as if she is not all there. Throughout the story, the narrator appears to be normal but at times she seems quite unreliable.  For example, in the beginning she describes how she is trapped in her bedroom and seems to have a logical explanation for being there.  She explains how her husband has her there due to a nervous condition.  In other words, the logical explanation is a medical illness.  Her husband John thinks that if she gets out of the house into the real world that her condition will only get worse. And she agrees her husband that is why she stays home all day, every single day with no job and no responsibility of any kind. She talks about some lady that takes care of their baby. I assume her husband doesn’t even trust is own wife with their own child. The only thing that makes her feel any better is writing. She writes and writes but has no one to share her writing with and she feels the need to sly behind her husband’s back to write a single word in her journal. I think this lady is getting worse and worse as the days pass by and I would partly blame it on her husband for keeping her inside the house all by herself. He is ruling her life and she is doing nothing to stop him. She listens to his reasoning on why she must stay at home. I feel like the more he tells her the more she believes his nonsense. And that what’s really must have caused her to get ill in the first place. She starts to believe there is something evil in the house but she’s not sure what came over her and he just told her she was felling tired so he closed the window to the bedroom.  She does get angry with John and I would imagine after being treated the same way for so long she definitely has all the right to be angry with him. After getting angry with him she then decided to blame it on her nervous condition as well. When the author begins to share what she sees when  she look at the yellow wallpaper in the upstairs bedroom she s been cooped up in, she says, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern looks lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman 57). She is discussing how she sees a pair of eyes staring back at her through this wallpaper, after this point she definitely becomes unreliable, from this pair of eyes she goes into further details and is still stuck on describing this yellow wallpaper over and over again. However, soon after this statement she talks about how she never would imagine anything like that out of any other object. As a child she would lay in her room staring at an empty room with blank walls and get more entertainment and eel more scarred than another kid going in a toy store. “I remember what kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one chair, that always seemed to be my friend” (Gilman 567).  After this statement I felt fooled as if maybe she really wasn’t all there even as a child and this whole time I was thinking it was her husband’s fault! I am totally unsure now and don’t even know what to think anymore.