Kate Chopin's Arguement for the Single Ladies

If you're a lady concerned about dying an old maid, you really ought to take half a moment to read this short story. If you're too busy updating your online dating profile to read this, that's fine. But let me just break it down for you.

This poor lil' wifey:

1) Thinks she's lost her beloved husband.
2) Mourns for 1/2 a second.
3) Realizes she really missed being a single lady.
4) Finds new joy in life for 1/2 a second.
5) Her hubby walks in the door.
6) She dies of disappointment.

How about that? Holy wow. If ever there was an argument against marriage, Chopin (Kate) has got it nailed: Don't get married because when your husband doesn't die you will die of sadness.

Also: did you know that Chopin (Fredrick) wrote the traditional funeral march? You know the one. (Dum Dum DaDum Dum DaDum DaDum DaDum)

Susan Glaspell & A Woman's "Trifles"

A good follow up to the Yellow Wallpaper, "Trifles" tells the story of a woman's place in country life after the civil war. Accompanying the County Attorney to the scene of the crime are two couples: the sheriff and his wife and the nearest neighbors. The men go about seeking information through empiricism and practicality and actually scoff at the ladies for thinking of things of the heart, like a wasted canning year or a tangled quilting block.

The ladies do not seem to know that they are "investigating" as such, until they uncover the truth of the couple that used to inhabit the house. When they do discover this vital information to the case, it is a great move of independence and power that they do not only NOT disclose the clues, but go to ends to keep them secret for their husbands and the attorney.

I love the feeling of unity and empathy these women feel with the "criminal" their husbands seek to encage. It is a clear example of the beginnings of the women's liberation, still several years away from its beginnings.

Why I'm OK Without "The Yellow Wallpaper"

I've read this Charlotte Perkins Gilman story several times throughout my education. The first time, in high school, I must have read and forgot it immediately because I didn't know a thing about it going into a study of it during a college writing class on American Women maybe 4 years later. Even after that, I'm not sure that I retained much as upon my most recent reading, I had little more insight to it. I think maybe this is a testament to the fact that - I hate it when people say this in response to assigned reading- I don't really like this story.

But maybe I haven't betrayed my dedication to openness toward all assigned readings. Maybe I don't like this story as a result of the intent of the author. Maybe I don't like this story because it's darn spooky and makes me feel claustrophobic. Poor Charlotte had a rough go at life and suffered from some serious emotional issues after the birth of her child. It seems that after a prescribed vacation from her writing life during this time of distress she siphoned all of terrible fears and overwhelming sadness into this story. Perhaps the creation of this spooky story acted like an amputation of a gangrenous limb, efficiently separating the sane, healthy woman from her insane, unhealthy past. Anyways, though I can understand the importance of the story in the context of history and literature, I enjoy reading this story about as much as I would surveying an amputated leg. Forgive me, I'm a wuss.

Edith Wharton & "The Other Two"

What a shift in the role of a woman from our romp with Jewett in the woods of New England. Wharton was raised a lady of status and primed and cultured to become the wife of a man of status. She did this and lived 28 years in that marriage, according to our bio in the Norton Anthology, to keep up appearances and societal expectations (1696). She also kept her writing excursions practically in secret until she embraced her author career in her late thirties. Her life was lived corseted (both figuratively and literally) by the standards of a woman in that time period.

It is very interesting, then, that this short story would ring with such relevance to the life of even a modern marriage. Set at the advent of the possibility of an independent woman due to divorce, the story addresses the inevitable effects of accruing past relationships.

I found one concept particularly applicable to my own experience in dating relationships. As Mr. Waythorn begins to feel more comfortable with his interactions with his wife's previous husbands he allows himself to think more deeply about the two previous lives she has certainly led. He realized that many of the things which made him love and appreciate his wife had been traits she had honed during her previous relationships. He knew that she was skilled in the "art" of "making a man happy" because she had a lot of practice in it. The text said, "he even tried to trace the source of his obligations, to discriminate between the influences which had combined to produce his domestic happiness" (1708). As he traced these origins, he realized that it was the characteristics that he liked least about his wife's ex-husbands that had resulted in the skills he cherished most in her.

It is easy to be jealous or wary of a current lover's "exes" because anyone would like to think that their lover's heart has only ever belonged to them. But the refinement that occurs during failed relationships cannot be synthesized. I'd like to think that my own adventures in dating are preparing me for the "big race" sometime in the future. When that day does come, with my list of exes, I should be pretty well-versed in the art of "making a man happy". Ha.

"Bitter Bierce" Lives up to His Name

Talk about a Debby Downer! Good ol' Ambrose really nailed the Negative Nancy routine in An Occurrence on the Owl Creek Bridge. After the intro, reading this story was a little like watching a horror movie. I knew something bad was going to happen- How could "Bitter Bierce" tell it any other way?- but I wasn't sure when exactly it was going to jump from behind the corner and stab me to death. Evidently, Bierce prefers the trick ending type of slip. (Case in point: Part II's final sentence- an unveiling of the passerby soldier as a Federal scout.)

If you didn't read the Norton Anthology author's bio introduction to this story, maybe you might not have been as wise to his ways, but he gave some clues along the way, generally through the means of grand statements and sarcasm.

Bierce lays out the scene at the Bridge very carefully in the first few paragraphs of the story. He depicts the machine of the military in exact form to the location of the butt of every rifle. But no sooner is the picture painted and he breaks the so-far objective narrative voice with a seemingly tongue in cheek military truism: "Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him" (1477). It's as though he's comparing this grim scene with the niceties of a setting formal tea service for the Queen.

I could tell that our pessimistic author would not provide an escape for the poor planter. He relates Peyton's plight of flat-footedness, or something of the like, which keeps him from assignment in the service of the Union. He describes him as man who "in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war" (1478). Bierce is mockingly applying a little lipstick on that pig. He might as well have said the man was simple, and quick to risk it all for a cause he didn't totally understand.

Bierce didn't just kill this guy. He killed him twice. Not only was the man hung at the bridge, but even in his dying dream state he imagines his escape only to be shot moments before love's embrace. For poor Peyton, it seems the brightness he saw in the world around him, the "revelation" of the "wild" region "he had not known he had lived in" came just a few minutes too late (1482). Bierce probably would have told him not to risk it all just for "an opportunity for distinction". Poor Peyton should have counted his blessings when he didn't have to fight in the first place.

I wonder what was so terrible about lil' Ambrose's childhood that he grew up so bitter.

Frogs & Herons = Twain & Jewett

What a lovely start to our readings for the quarter. On one level, it was a sampling of literature of place. Another look could uncover an investigation of mankind and his relationship with nature. (Though it is a challenge to read into a man's friendship with a frog.) Regardless of any similar underlying themes in their work, these contemporaries have very different voices.

Twain's stories are much better known in Literature, of course. Perhaps this is a result of his use of humor in his writing. He certainly worked it well in this little jaunt into Calavarus County. The storyline is clever and the (tall) tales amusing. Still, what really got me was the way Twain was itching to get out of earshot of the narrator. He took such lovely little jabs at the storyteller's deadpan way of orating, saying that the man "regarded [the story] as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse" (1273). It makes me wonder whether he included that description in order to supply the reader with the correct modifiers with which to describe Twain's writings themselves.

While Twain's story used dialect and its charming southern characters to compose a snapshot of place, Jewett painted a picture of a beautifully secluded, coastal New England life. White Heron is told from the point of view of a 9 year old girl with the perspective of a seemingly adult narrative voice. It is a story of cohabitation: of cow and girl, girl and grandmother, and eventually girl and nature. Jewett quite literally lifts the young girl out of her forest and gives her new perspective on life. When Sylvy climbs to the treetop she feels "as if she too could go flying away among the clouds". Atop the tree Sylvy is said to "[know] his secret now, the wild, light, slender bird that floats and wavers" (1597). I believe the secret to be more than the location of his nest. She has discovered the value of the world in which she lives. She has seen the world as the Heron does, from atop a tree.

There is a place I used to visit as a child growing up in Kentucky that gave me a similar feeling. Atop the mountain where I grew up, there was a rock formation with a limestone shelf- perfect for sitting on while wishing for wings.

First Day of School Jitters

I wasn't wearing galoshes or carrying a plastic lunchbox, but today did have some of those first-day-of-school feelings from back in the olden days. Hopefully, it's true that knowing how to be a good student is like riding a bike. Old muscle memories should just kick in.

I think I'm going to have fun with this blog assignment, and with the class. Here goes.

Happy Reading!