Book Reports / Marriage in "The Story of an Hour" and "A Sorrowful Woman" [2]

Hi. I am writing- well,barely started writing- a paper on how marriage inhibits/destroys intimacy in both the Gail Godwin and Kate Chopin stories. I have some sources, that are intellectual but not all that helpful. Perhaps anyone with knowledge of these stories could give me a starting point for this 3-5 page paper? I have an opening paragraph, but it's pretty shoddy and needs work.

"A naïve assumption is that once a couple is married, love will overcome all problems. But the marital bonds of intimacy, respect, and trust must be developed, nurtured and enforced. When this fails, most couples are given a chance to make important changes. Unfortunately, many times couples gloss over these core issues with nonchalance, inhibiting them. Both "A Sorrowful Woman" by Gail Godwin and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" can be seen as parables of the negative ideologies of marriage that show how stultifying marriage can be if it is not nurtured properly."

Thank you so much for your help.

Writing Feedback / Character Analysis of "Lust": how the author creates a helpless character. [3]

I don't have a conclusion. We are also required to have three critical sources other than the text. I have yet to fill in some of the Parenthetical Documentation. It was done in quite a rush and is due tonight, so any help would be appreciated, including help with focus, organization, develpment, style (sophisticated sentence structure?), mechanics, and relationship to sources.

In the short story "Lust" by Susan Minot, the author creates and develops the main character differently than many authors do. The protagonist is not developed by depicting a physical appearance, but is developed partially through her relationship with other characters, and is predominately created by her own feelings and actions. The narrator (also the main character) is not identified, but is nameless and faceless, and the author uses this, as well as simile, to build the character. Using all of these, the author creates a heavily conflicted character that is both incredibly helpless and emotionally removed.

We do not know what the main character looks like, but we do know how she thinks and feels. And while "Lust" is more of an interior monologue, the narrator does share with the reader her relationships with others (who are predominately male), as well as brief encounters with her house-mother and headmaster. According to Robert M. Luscher, in Minot's collection Lust and Other Stories "her female protagonists' instincts lead them in directions contrary to fulfillment, toward self-centered and distracted men threatened by commitment" (1688).

In the beginning, she does not talk about how she feels, and her sexual encounters have almost no meaning to us; it looks like an itemized list of conquests given with a seemingly indifferent shrug of the shoulders. As the reader, we are proven otherwise as she recounts her tale. We learn exactly why she is driven to these men: for gratification. Each experience with a boy has been given its own small, irregular paragraph. These descriptions prove to be very choppy as well, and it is suggested that "Minot uses fragmentation and white space to mirror how fragmented and empty the narrator feels" (Joseph).

"During these encounters," Janet Ellerby agrees, "the narrator is usually emotionally removed from the experience. For example, when Tim returns to her after closing the door, he finds merely a body waiting on the rug" (2477). This shows how helpless she is to the men in her life, and how emotionally fragmented she has become. She also admits her helplessness, albeit indirectly, in a few ways "For a long time I had Phillip on the brain," she admits. "The less they notice you, the more you got them on the brain" (Minot 350). She even admits that she was good at certain things, including Whiffle Ball as a child, but even back then the boys would tie up her legs until she showed them her underpants. Even as she grew older, sex was still in the way. It would interfere with her skills in math, painting, and still, sports, because it dampened her ambition to the point that sex would be all she could think about. .

The descriptions of the authority figures in the narrators life also create the feeling of an emotional distance. Not only is her family uninvolved, she makes herself seem to be disinterested in them as well. "Parents never really know what's going on," she tells us. "especially when you're away at school most of the time"(Minot 350 ). No one at the prestigious boarding school seems care. The school doctor "gave out the pill like aspirin". The headmaster tells her he doesn't care what she does as long as she didn't do it in public. The house-mother treats them to her perfect ideologies about finding true love. But no one seems to care about her (the narrator), and in fact, they enable her helplessness. "She is alienated from her parents and teachers, holding them in contempt for their naïveté about who she is and what she does" (2477). At one point she realizes how detached she is and asks the boy she is with who he is. And she even tells him that enough is enough. But the pattern doesn't change. She only begins to feel a sinking disparity.

Later in the novel, she begins to realize how the constant feeling of sex and being used makes her feel: "There'd be times when you overdid it. You'd get carried away. All the next day, you'd be in a total fog, delirious, absent minded, crossing the street and nearly getting run over." She furthers this feeling by her use of simile. Many times she compares herself to a harmless creature: "you'd put your nose to his neck and feel like a squirrel" (PD). "Through these comparisons the narrator is revealing that she feels small and inconsequential. Sex does not empower her; in fact, it has the opposite effect" (Joseph).If she feels off-kilter it is described as "piece of pounded veal" The narrator uses other figurative language to explain how helpless and detached she feels. After the act, she becomes "a cave, filled so absolutely with air, or with a sadness that wouldn't stop" (PD). Robert Luscher explains that "she melts easily into sensual abandon, although the results of her encounters gradually shift ... to the feeling that she is 'sinking in muck'" (1688).

Minot characterizes her anguish and detachment with immediacy only at the very end of the story. She continues to use metaphor, but her writing style becomes less fragmented, signaling the ultimate realization of truth for the narrator. "After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an elusive gaping worry. You don't try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it's nothing after all, everything filling up finally and absolutely with death" (355). The main character has realized all of this, but by then it is too late and she remains helpless still. The fact that the narrator has realized this doesn't change much. She learned that it s easier to open your legs than your heart. The narrator has proven to herself that she is just as fragmented as ever. She still does everything they want, knowing its wrong. It's no surprise to her that after the "briskness of loving" his mild surprise is something she's known all along. She "seems to have disappeared" (Minot 355).

Thank you.

Writing Feedback / 'The eggs' - My Narrative Essay [4]

The assignment is a two page double spaced narrative essay on any topic of our choosing. I was wondering if anyone could look at what I have done so far. I'm not sure what to add next but I like the topic. Also, do you think it drags to much? Please let me know. And, of course, it's due tomorrow, so any help is greatly appreciated.

She had traveled longer than this before, but for some reason, the journey was getting to her this time. Perhaps it was the bitter cold she had endured during this last leg of the journey, or maybe it was the large sack she carried on her back. The purple and gold woven bag was the reason for her journey through the east woods, which would eventually lead her to Glasscastle: a more illustrious, but less accessible forest. The woman drew her long cloak tightly around her, hoping the thick material would warm her. She walked slowly but purposefully as her legs crunched over hardened snow and glided over ice, but she never faltered as she knew the importance of this journey.

Moments later, she came to a deep stream that had frozen over. She knew she had cross this stream, but must be, as always, gentle with the contents of her bag. She removed the sack from her back, and stretched her arm to gently place it down on the other side of the stream in the snow. She climbed down onto frozen water, pausing quickly to marvel at the water slowly rushing beneath the ice before steadily making her way across. She hoisted up her sack and held it carefully to her chest before peeking inside with her wide green eyes.

The eggs looked the same as they always did, if not a bit larger, which was good. Hopefully they would be ready to hatch by the time she reached Glasscastle. The eggs were heavy and usually varied in size and color, but just by looking she could tell you what was inside each of the three she carried. The circular red one with the gold flecks was a Phoenix, and even now she could feel the warmth of fire inside its shell. The pointed egg with an icy blue color was a Frost Dragon, and inside the small marble sized egg with silver swirls was a faerie.

The eggs belonged not to her, but to her father, who used to travel far and wide searching for suitable owners for these magical creatures. Her father, however, was too old to travel by foot the way she had been, and so she had taken over.

"You are the keeper of the eggs now," he told her as she left, and she remembered that every day of her journey. It was now her job to travel across the country with the eggs, finding owners, and making connections. She was the Hatcher now, and she continued her journey into Glasscastle Forest. She wasn't far, and she could see lush green trees ahead, which were markedly different from the bare trees she left behind her with icicles drifting off. Coming into Glasscastle was like walking into a different season; she went from barren winter to a lush spring where everything was in bloom.

She came to a lush clearing surrounded by trees around sunset, and she set the bag down gently. The pink hues of dusk filtered through the trees creating the perfect amount of dim light as she began to kindle a fire. Its orange flames flickered and warmed her up while she took the eggs out of her sack. Inside the sack was also a small amount of straw stuffing that served as cushioning for the eggs, and she set three lumps of it around the fire before setting each egg on top. They would be coming soon, and she wanted to be ready.

They were people who wanted the eggs, who would take them home and care for them the way she could not. Each time she wished she could keep the eggs for herself, but she spent too much time traveling that she would never be able to properly care for any creature her father came across. That didn't stop her from dreaming though.