The Yellow Wallpaper Reaction

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman exemplifies what an affect sexism can have on a person. During the story, we see the narrator’s depression transform into madness. Because of her depression, the narrator is placed in an isolated room which is also likely due to her gender. Women were looked at to be so inferior to men at that time, so when the slightest weakness is seen in her, her husband takes advantage of the opportunity and suggests that she remain in confinement until she is well again. Consequently however, this drives her even deeper into her repression. During that time period, women were expected to be content with taking care of the housework and children, but because she was unwell, she was not even allowed to do that much. What is most interesting is how well she listens to her husband. Their relationship seems to resemble more of a father-daughter relationship rather than a married couple. This is exemplified when the narrator attempts to voice her feelings but, “stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say a word.” This implies that if she were able to actually have a true conversation with her husband, she may have been able to retain some sanity. Instead, she is driven crazy by this significant yellow wallpaper and a woman trapped behind it. By the end of the story, it can be concluded that the woman behind the wallpaper really resembled the narrator, trapped in her own mind. She seeks freedom through her writing but it is not enough to fulfill her. Instead, the loneliness she feels overtakes her and she physically becomes the woman by creeping about. By ripping off the wallpaper, she rips off the confinement her husband, John has placed upon her and she is now able to create her own identity. While she was slightly mad before she was placed in the solitary room, the inferiority and loneliness she feels drives her even further into insanity.

Ethan Frome Literary Criticism

In Alfred Kazin's "Afterword to Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton," a brief biography of Edith Wharton is provided along with the themes of class and morality found in Ethan Frome. In the beginning the author summarizes the aspects of Edith Wharton’s life which caused the melancholy tone throughout her novella. One main point is the unhappiness she had in her marriage to Edward Wharton. Along with much infidelity, their marriage consisted of envy and “extraordinary bitterness.” (279) The author believes that this is the main cause of the actions of Ethan Frome and the cause of the idea of forbidden love being the only real type of love. This is proven in his thesis which states, “In turning her jaundiced view of love and marriage on the hidebound New England farm folk of Ethan Frome, she was able, in the most gripping way, to project her dark view of marriage onto a class and its customs that were far removed from her socially.” (279) He supports this throughout the essay with statements such as, “there is no doubt that the overwhelming, painful starkness of Ethan Frome derives in part from Edith Wharton’s extreme consciousness of class.” (280) The author of the essay then goes on to describe just how hopeless the farm life in New England was at that time. Also, he points out that how due to his lack of money, Ethan is unable to pursue his lust for Mattie and is pushed to the option of suicide. This supports the Edith Wharton’s ideas regarding class, which is that the lower classes cannot find happiness, despite her lack of happiness while being in a higher class. Alfred Kazin also believes that the book was written on the basis that “love must transgress conventional morality, but it cannot. It consequently becomes a chimera, impossibility, a cheat.” This is supported by Wharton’s statement that “life is the saddest thing, next to death.” (280) Overall, the essay is based on the idea that love is impossible, especially for those in the lower class. As Alfred Kazin stated, Wharton believed that, “for love to really be love, it must be forbidden, it must fail, it must carry the doomed lovers down with it.”

In my opinion, the argument was not presented very well. The main point that the author was trying to make seemed unclear and nearly half of the essay was simply a biography of Wharton’s life. While this allows the reader to make connections between her life and her novella, it takes away from the main point that the author is attempting to make. Also, throughout the essay, there seemed to be a few contradicting ideas such as the statement that Wharton, “despite her sympathy for the lovers, she is in an old-fashioned American way the strictest of moralists.” However, Wharton’s affair with another man, due to her dislike for her husband, is mentioned earlier in the essay proving that her morality was not as strong as she may have claimed it to be and that she was quite a hypocrite. Due to the inconsistencies found in Alfred Kazin’s essay, I do not wholly support his claims. I believe that love can indeed be found without it being “forbidden” and that one does not have to be affluent in order to obtain it. What both Alfred Kazin and Edith Wharton failed to see is that with patience and persistence, love can be found. Neither money nor the ideas of forbidden love are necessary for one to fall in love and to be happy. While I find the information and ideas that Alfred Kazin expresses in his essay, “Afterword to Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton,” to be very interesting, I disagree with the stand he takes.

Sonnet 130

Sonnet 130 is one of the “Dark Lady” sonnets and while it is initially interpreted to be very offensive, when looked into, it can actually be quite sweet. Lines that are immediately are taken offensively are the first two quatrains and the first half of the last quatrain. They all criticize everything about the poor woman’s looks with phrases such as “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” and “in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” While these lines all seem to be so rude and demeaning for any man to say to a woman, they are simple a parody of the patriarchal sonnet, which would say the opposite of what Shakespeare said. However, at the end of the sonnet, Shakespeare says how none of those things matter. He claims that his love for her is still strong and that no woman has coral red lips or golden wires for hair so there is no need to falsely compare her. This I find to be quite romantic because he is not judging her on her looks but on her personality. Although I must admit, had this poem been read to me, I most likely would have been too insulted to read into the lovely meaning Shakespeare has provided.

Sonnet 116

I believe that the theme of Sonnet 116 is that love does not always exist in marriages and often what is called love is not really love. Based on the sexism of this time period, I believe that Shakespeare is implying that love does not exist in his own marriage. In the first line, he states, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” meaning that people with similar mental capacities should be married but in the following lines he goes on to describe a much stronger connection, perhaps the connection he feels with the young man. He describes this love as a strong, intangible idea that will outlive everything else. In the second quatrain he illustrates love as something that can firmly stand through storms and an everlasting star. Then, in the third quatrain, he depicts its everlasting life through phrases such as, “Love’s not Time’s fool." Shakespeare was ingenious in his way of describing the inexplicable feeling of true love.

Sonnet 94

Sonnet 94 was interesting to me as it seemed very different from the previous sonnets. It contains a large shift and also a new theme. The shift takes place between the second and third quatrains. The sonnet shifts from symbols of human power and stone to the fragility of living things and nature. Throughout the sonnet, Shakespeare is trying to tell the young man to control himself, to control his actions as bad deeds may lead to self-destruction. He does so in the first two quatrains with his admiration toward men that can control themselves and are not victim to temptation. After the shift, he describes nature and how now matter how beautiful a flower may be, it can easily fall victim to disease and in that case, has less dignity than an ugly weed. This identifies Shakespeare’s theme of this sonnet and is clearly depicted in the couplet which states:

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

This couplet clearly shows how little respect Shakespeare has for men who cannot control their actions and his belief that inner strength is far more impressive than external beauty.

Sonnet 73

Sonnet 73 again revolves around the ideas of dying youth and love. My favorite line of this sonnet is in the second quatrain and states, “Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.” I thought that this was very powerful because it uses a lot of powerful symbols and imagery to convey a powerful message. Death’s second self is sleep which is also known as the living death, implying to the reader (the young man) that each night, his beauty fades and he is one step closer to his true death. Also in that line, the phrase “seals up all in rest” represents a coffin, sealing up all of his beauty and youth. The last quatrain also uses some powerful symbols to portray this same idea. It describes a candle, using up its own energy to deplete by itself. The couplet claims that if the young man can understand this idea, then their love will be stronger but that when Shakespeare depletes like the candle, that love will be gone.

Sonnet 55

Sonnet 55 revolves around the images of human-built monuments and statues. Like many of the previous sonnets, Shakespeare again preaches immortality to the young man, but this time, he does so with much more self-pride. He seems to have a much higher amount of self-confidence in this sonnet as he claims that “you live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.” Shakespeare claims that his poem will live on forever, unlike the marble statues of princes that will someday be destroyed by wars and monuments that will continue to fall apart. While there was much self-confidence in this poem, it again shows Shakespeare’s love for the young man because instead of stating that Shakespeare himself will live on forever in his poem, he says that the young man will. I also found Shakespeare’s use of the word time in this sonnet very interesting. In previous sonnets, he shows respect for the word by personifying it or using powerful words to describe it. In this sonnet however, he describes time as being “sluttish” or dirty which I thought was quite odd.

Sonnet 30

I thought that Sonnet 30 was quite depressing with the exception of the last couplet. The first twelve lines of this sonnet almost remind me of a suicide note as seen in many movies. The whole theme seems to be awfully sad due to Shakespeare’s sad tone and imagery usage. Small phrases such as, “death’s dateless night” elicit feelings of such loneliness as they represent depressing feelings of death and solitude. He also recalls all of the miseries of his past such as the things he has failed to achieve and how he wasted the best years of his life. However, after these many lines of sadness and memories of the hard times in Shakespeare’s life, he ends the sonnet with a lovely couplet which again shows his love for the young man. He basically says that when he is filled with the horrible sorrow as described earlier, the simple thought of the young man makes him okay. I also think that the preceding lines serve to encourage the young boy not to waste his years like Shakespeare did.

Sonnet 18

When I think of sonnets, Sonnet 18 is the first to come to mind. It is probably Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet and justly so, as it uses an immeasurable amount of symbolization to put across many strong feelings. This sonnet seems to reveal Shakespeare’s true admiration and perhaps even love for the attractive young man. Shakespeare first attempts to compare the young man to a summer day but then comes to the conclusion that he is “more lovely and more temperate,” giving him the beautiful qualities of summer without being uncomfortably hot. He also makes him better than summer by saying that he outlasts it. This I found to be somewhat surprising as in the past sonnets, Shakespeare encourages the boy that the only way to make his good looks last forever is by having children, but here Shakespeare says that through this poem, the boy is now immortal and will live on forever. This sonnet definitely says a lot about how much Shakespeare really cared for the young man.

Sonnet 12

I thought that Sonnet 12 was very exciting with its wide use of imagery and symbolism. Throughout the entire sonnet, Shakespeare uses the change in seasons to represent the progression of time and the death of youth. He does this by using two opposing ideas such as the “brave day and hideous night,” that not only use personification and imagery but symbolization with the brave day symbolizing beautiful youth in the boy and hideous night as aging and death. He also represents the death of youth through the changing seasons. The line, “And sable curls all silvered o’er with white” not only represents beautiful hair turned gray but also the snow in winter which is significant as winter represents aging and death. I found that the last quatrain was the most important part of this sonnet because it proved its true meaning. Shakespeare again urges the boy to take advantage of his youth and beauty because it will die and be stolen away by time.

Sonnet II

In Sonnet II, Shakespeare tries to convince the beautiful boy of how quickly time goes by and how he needs to take advantage of it. The first quatrain uses a large metaphor to describe times toll. First, describing a war and how this war will "besiege his brow" and "dig deep trenches," meaning that the forty winters or years will cause him to have wrinkles and not look attractive like he does now. The winters are also a symbol for aging because it is a time when everything becomes white (gray hair). Many metaphors continue to go on throughout this poem. It also brings up him having children again as that will help his beauity live on forever. "Proving his beauty by succession thine" could be Shakespeare's way of telling him that a son could succeed his looks, not just his role as a wealthy man. The overall theme of this sonnet is for the young boy to take advantage of his beauty, by enjoying it now and by reproducing to allow that beauty to live on forever.

Sonnet I

When looked through a historical lens, Sonnet I is interpreted to be encouraging the young boy to reproduce. Through this lens, the first line means that we want offspring from all beautiful creatures. The second line then goes on to say that then, the beautiful rose will never die, meaning that his beauty will be immortal and live on forever. Lines three and four follow the same meaning, but with different symbols. "The riper should by time decease," means that over time, his ripeness or beauty will die. However, the mention of his tender heir in line four offers him a solution through reproducing. In the following quatrain, the speaker criticizes the boy for being too self-absorbed to consider settling down and having children. My favorite lines of this sonnet were:
"Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies," because these lines prove Shakespeare's genius and how he made his arguement in such a unique way. He even is able to use two opposing ideas to bring together one strong theme. The poem continues on to use many symbols to attempt to convince the boy to reproduce.