Essay from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: A, , course: American Literature, language: English, abstract: “The Lady with the Pet Dog “, written by Joyce Carol Oates, presents the theme of a passionate love affair between two adulterers. The action of the story is set in Nantucket in the 1970s. The short story bears a striking resemblance to Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog”, created in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite undoubted dissimilarities in the settings of the two stories, they both present a colourful account of the secret relationship between a womanizer and an attractive woman who are trapped in loveless marriages. Although each couple deals with infidelity and forbidden love, the same theme is shown from a different perspective – Anton Chekhov portrays the love affair from the male point of view while Joyce Carol Oates’ story is seen with the eyes of a female protagonist. The third person limited narrator in “The Lady with the Dog” acquaints the reader with major events of the story through the male protagonist’s inner thoughts and emotions. Chekhov’s main character, Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov, an affluent, middle-aged banker, is initially described as nonchalant and arrogant. His attitude towards women had been shaped by his reluctance to his wife whom he “secretly considered as unintelligent, narrow and inelegant”. Moreover, his unsatisfactory previous love affairs made him perceive women as “the lower race”.
Essay from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: A, , course: American Literature, language: English, abstract: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in the Forerunner, in 1913, and it aroused a lot of controversy among the readers. Those who read the story were totally confused and unable to understand the author’s intentions. As Gilman writes in her essay Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” : “[A] Boston physician made protest in the Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.” [Gilman 1913:1] Why was the doctor so affected by Gilman’s story? What was so extraordinary about it? First of all, the story was written at the time when women’s roles were solely defined by men. At the beginning of the twentieth century, women were mainly supposed to be devoted to the needs of their families. As stated in The Changing Role of Womanhood: From True Woman to New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Deborah Thomas, men created: (...) an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. [Thomas 1998 :1] Women attempted to reject the traditional model of behaviour their fathers and husbands imposed on them. However, most of their endeavours were doomed to failure. Thomas quotes Welter who states that: “If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex virtues which made up True Womanhood, he was dammed immediately as the enemy of God, of civilization, and of the Republic.” [Ibid]
Essay from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: A, , course: American Literature, language: English, abstract: The readers who are familiar with Flannery O’Connor’s fictional world might probably admit that it resembles a gallery of freaks deformed both in body and spirit. Her short stories contain numerous portrayals of aberrant behaviour as well as frequent descriptions of pathological states. Moreover, the author acquaints the reader with her characters’ predicament and its consequences. It seems that an inherent element of these protagonists’ abnormal behaviour is their total lack of control over their lives. Although they believe, they are capable of holding their fate in their own hands, their impotence invariably becomes apparent. O’Connor’s characters suffer defeat attempting to wield influence on their actions and end up entangled in the destructive vortex they cannot defy. These struggles often lead to death. Alternatively, the protagonists experience the state of death-in-life. The American writer’s stories portray the figure whose existence is submitted to the supremacy of a mysterious force. This inexplicable energy contributes to the alleviation of the character’s desperate state, induced by his abnormal conduct. How does the aberrant behaviour manifest itself and how does the afflicted hero eliminate chaos from his life? First of all, the significance of death in the protagonist’s metamorphosis is worth mentioning. Patrick Galloway portrays O’Connor’s characters’ death as a positive process. Her short stories abound with violent and shocking scenes of death. For instance, the Polish immigrant, Guizac, is crushed by a tractor in “The Displaced Person”; Mrs May, the main heroine of “Greenleaf”, meets her end being impaled on the bull’s horn; the grandmother gets shot by the serial killer in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and two main heroes of “A View of the Woods” – Mr Fortune and his granddaughter beat each other to death. Appalling and useless as the brutality of these scenes appears, it fulfils an essential function.
Essay from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: A, , course: American Literature, language: English, abstract: John Updike’s short story “A&P”, written in the early 1960’s, is considered to be a reflection of the structure of American society at that time. The action of the story takes place in a grocery shop. The choice of such a setting was not made at random. The regulations applied in this supermarket symbolize the norms of society in which the main character, Sammy, lives. The protagonist’s encounter with the three young girls dressed in bathing suits reveals his attitude towards the social order he is unwilling to conform to. At the same time, despite Sammy’s scepticism, it cannot escape the reader’s attention that the character’s view of reality was undoubtedly shaped by the community he exists in. First of all, the role of the grocery shop is worth mentioning. The place is situated “right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors, you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices (...)” As Timothy Sexton points out, the supermarket is close to the financial, spiritual, informational and property centres of the town.
Essay from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: A, , course: American Literature, language: English, abstract: Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” was first published in the New Yorker, in 1948 and it aroused a lot of controversy among the newspaper’s readers. Those who read Jackson’s story were totally confused and unable to understand the author’s intentions. In 1948 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle Jackson accounted for her reasons behind writing the story: Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives. (Jackson in Kosenko 1985: 27) Although the author succeeded in startling the readers, the motives for portraying the American society in such a way were still unclear. Is there any correspondence between the writer’s personal experiences and the image of society she depicts in “The Lottery”? First of all, the village described in the story seems to be similar to a rural area in which Jackson lived when she wrote it. Secondly, the short story villagers’ violence may have its origin in an incident from Shirley Jackson’s life. She created the story after she had been pelted with stones by some school children while she had been going home. What is more, Lynette Carpenter makes the interesting remark that Jackson had a tendency to bestow her own features of character on her heroines.
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