Daily Archives: February 13, 2014

The Story of an Hour

Posted on by
Reply

The Story of an Hour has many turning points. From the beginning we were told that Mrs. Mallard has heart trouble. From that point on I knew that this would be a major part to when the rising action comes along in the story. The story has a repeating climax and falling action. At first the climax is where Mrs. Mallard is told that her husband had died in a railroad accident. To reassure Mr. Mallard had passed away, she was told he was the first one on the list. I was in when Mrs. Mallard’s heart problems didn’t give her a problem. Instead she went in her room crying and weeping. The setting was spring. That is where slowly she came to realize that she is now free. She has no one and she is able to do anything without any ones permission. As a reader I thought this was the end of the story. I came to realize that when the story was being told and the part that where someone was trying to open the door I came to realize this is another turning point. When the door had opened it was Mr. Mallard. He happened to not even know about the accident. This is where the falling action takes place. Mrs. Mallard saw Mr. Mallard alive and went through a shock & had died. Her heart problems took its part. They said joy that kills, but was it really joy that Mrs. Mallard died from?  new_doc

Introduction

Posted on by
Reply

My name is Tayyaba. This is my second year in City Tech. I was in the Dental Technician field but then I changed my major to liberal arts in science. Music helps me relieve my stress. I’m also a huge fan of makeup. I absolutely love collecting the limited edition sets. I love doing makeup on others too. Although becoming a cosmetologist isn’t what I want as a career. I have always wanted to become a dentist. They say smiling is contagious to I wanted to help others get the smile they always wanted. Hopefully in another 2 years I will get my bachelors. With that I plan on going to dental school.  I am also very competitive especially when it’s male vs female. This is one reason why I chose women writers. I wanted to explore the world of women writers. How the first female got her name out with her written piece. I would love to have discussions on how female portrays her feelings into her writings. Another thing I like to do is travel. I’m Pakistani so I always go to Pakistan, along with that I have been to Saudi Arabia, England, & Canada.  Overall I’m a jolly person.

The Yellow Wall-Paper: Horror Story

Posted on by
1
  • According to one examination of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and its publication history, the story did remain in print in between its reprint in 1920 and its feminist re-discovery in the 1970s–in horror story collections. In what ways do you see “The Yellow Wall-Paper” as a horror story? Include specific references to the text to support your claims.

I believe the most terrifying type of horror movie isn’t the one with monsters, aliens or a lot of blood; it’s the one with a character who loses his/her mind. That is perhaps because I do have the fear of losing control over my conscious one day. The main character in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” goes through some hallucinogenic situations– which later in the piece become more evident–  that I have no doubt could be featured in a horror story. Examples are “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why–privately–I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows!”; “I don’t like to look out of the windows even– there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.”; ” I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!”. She narrates her experience dealing with women who come out of the wall-paper in her room.

Also, the setting is terrifying: windows with bars, decadent state of walls, bed nailed down to the floor. Interesting is how the main character doesn’t seem to mind it that much, and focuses on the wall-paper as a form of escapism.

Utopia and Dystopia

Posted on by
1


Which story is utopian and which is dystopian ?

The words utopia and dystopia are two words that can greatly describe the two short stories by Charlotte Perkins titled ” The Yellow Wallpaper and “The Cottagette”. Utopia means an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect and dystopia means the complete opposite. Dystopia means an imaginary place where people are unhappy and usually afraid because they are treated unfairly. The story “The Cottegette” is in a utopian world while ” The Yellow Wallpaper” is in a dystopia world.

Although both stories are from the view point of two different women, but each have different situations.
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be consider a dystopian world because the women is suffering from depression after the birth of her baby. Her husband orders her to stay in bad all day and do nothing as a cure for her condition. This form of treatment drives her to a state of misery. She descends into madness in which she is confined in a room with ugly yellow wallpaper.

She then turns her imagination onto the wallpaper to ignore her present state of mind. In effort to do so the narrator realize that the predicament of the women in the wallpaper is a symbolic version of her own situation.She identifies herself with the women trapped for so long in the wallpaper.The wallpaper can be a symbolic place where the narrator was trapped with no voice of her own, only the horrible patterns that she was so fixed to. This place was full with misery and unhappiness just like a dystopian world.

The short story “The Cottegette” can be considered a utopian world because the in the story it showed a women that truly loved a man and only wanted to have him to herself. They lived in a beautiful house away from everyone else. She cooked, cleaned and did everything possible to get through the man she wanted to marry. Just like the perfect utopian world, at the end of the story the guy proposed to her.

A Depressed Woman’s Marriage

Posted on by
Reply

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator and her husband, John, have a difficult relationship. She suffers from depression and her husband is a physician. However, he doesn’t consider that his wife is suffering from something that she can’t control. Instead, he treats her condition as if its self-inflicted, and she could stop making herself sick at any time. He brings her to a abandoned mansion for them to live in for a few months. In this time, the narrator writes about her thoughts and her feelings, as well as the events that are taking place around her and what she thinks she sees. Her writing allows us as readers to get an idea of her relationship with her husband. Some quotes give clues of their relationship. One quote is “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do?” This expresses how John sees his wife’s condition. He doesn’t take it as a serious problem, but as his wife being hysterical. Also, the narrator asking what can she do suggests that she feels stuck in her situation with no one to rescue her. Anyone who would take special concern for her is strayed away be her husband’s words. The couple don’t see eye to eye about what is really going on. Another quote is “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction”. The narrator takes John’s guidance as loving gestures. Throughout the story, the narrator isn’t allowed to write( even though she does when John’s not around), think too much and must rest a lot. She also has to take medication to help her ‘get over’ her sickness. The last quote is “‘What is it, little girl?’ he said. ‘Don’t go walking about like that, you’ll get cold…Bless her little heart! said he with a bug hug, ‘she’ll be as sick as she pleases!…” I was in shock when her referred to his wife as a little. this statement made me question the relationship between the two, if they were really married couple or if it was just in the narrator’s head. It is not common and very questionable for a man to call his wife a little girl in a serious manner. The fact that he called her a little girl confirmed my thoughts of John being controlling over his wife because he sees her as someone that he isn’t equal to, as a married couple should be, but as a child that doesn’t know any better.

 

Conscientiously

Posted on by
Reply

Conscientiously-(adjective)- Controlled by or done according to ones inner sense of what is right.

Page 9, line13 of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper” : “I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.

In this line, Gilman is trying to say that she consciously tried to keep count, but she cant keep count.

The Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour

Posted on by
1

In “The Story of an hour” by Kate Chopin I think that there is a reliable narrator. I believe this because in this story, the narrator is not a character. The narrator is talking in the third person’s point of view. This is the kind of narrator that knows everything about every character and gives you many details as to who the characters are, what they are feeling, what they are going through, etc. The narrator began the story by telling us a bit about Mrs. Mallard. The narrator told us “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible her husbands death. ” In that one sentence, the narrator told us a lot about the story. The ending of the story was also given away a bit because of something that the narrator had said. The narrator said “It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence o0f the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallards name leading the list of “killed”.” I thought that it was weird that the narrator put killed in quotation marks. Overall I thought that the narrator was a reliable narrator because they told the audience all the details and everything they said led up to something else.

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is different from “The Story of an Hour” because I didn’t feel like the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a reliable narrator. I feel like she wasn’t a reliable narrator because I believe that she was mentally ill. Her husband John is a physician who told her several times that she was not ill, but she still believes that she is. In the story the narrator says, “You see he does not believe I am sick!” I also think that she is a little bit sarcastic. She says, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do?” I found that a bit sarcastic because she is telling us that her husband says that she is not sick, but she has all of these things wrong with her anyway. Overall, I do not believe that she is a reliable narrator because she only agrees with her own point of view.

Class today is ON! (unless otherwise noted)

Posted on by
2

As much as I don’t want anyone to risk their safety to come to City Tech today, I will hold class unless the College announces otherwise. Since we don’t meet face-to-face next week (Thursday is a Monday schedule), I don’t think it would be appropriate to cancel class. It’s pretty awful out, but if you can make it in safely, please do. You have three absences to use at your discretion, so this may be one of them if you think you can’t travel to City Tech today. I just want you to know that if the college is open, I’ll be here to talk about Gilman!

I’ll also hand out the next batch of readings, though they’re all available online if you want to print them for yourself. I’ll be advising about which sections to focus on, so you might miss that if you don’t confer with your classmates or come get copies from me.

I also wanted to point out that our very own Andie Lessa is featured on the OpenLab homepage in the feature called In the Spotlight! This honor was bestowed on her because of her great blog work last semester–check it out! Keep in mind that we could be featured In the Spotlight if our work is exemplary, so let’s aim for the stars!

Which is utopian and which is dystopian?

Posted on by
1

We might use the words utopia and dystopia to describe the two short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that we read. What do those words mean? Which story is utopian and which is dystopian? Why?

I can clearly see how we can described both of these stories as utopia and dystopia. Let start of by saying that utopia means an ideal place or state. Dystopia means is an imaginary society in which social trends have culminated in a greatly diminished quality of life or degradation of values. I will consider “The Cottagette” as the utopia and “The Yellow Wallpaper” as the dystopia.

In “The Cottagette” we see that Malda has moved into a community which everyone has the same goal. The protagonist always seems to be positive about life. They all wanted to grow seeking for a better future. This will be considered to be an ideal place for Malda because she is associating herself with other people that have the same goals as her. We could also see the ideal state in her relationship with her partner who supports her no matter what. Mala was in a place where everyone shared their love for music.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” I see it being dystopia. In this story we see a woman that is clearly not able to make decisions for herself due to a “condition” her and her family think she has. The protagonist in this story gives the reader a sense of feeling trapped in her own home without the support of her husband.  She is not able to do things that she enjoys such as writing because her husband doesn’t like it. I also believe that she feels so disconnected with the outside world which causes to start imagine things that she sees in that yellow wallpaper.

Glossary

Posted on by
Reply

 INHARMONIOUS

Definition – 1: not harmonious :  discordant

2:  not fitting or congenial :  conflicting <inharmonious personalities>

Line – ” The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs”

Throughout the story we can clearly have a sense of how much she dislike this room that she is in. Having a understanding of what this word means helps me understand that in that line she is saying that simple the furniture doesn’t belong there it changes the whole vibe of the room. It gives a discomfort feeling to her.