This glossary assignment was a very good idea because not only it improved our vocabulary but it helped us understand the reading more clearly. The assignment also put me in a habit to define every word that I don’t know the meaning to. Defining all these words didn’t help me understand all the passages, becasue some passages had easy words, but it definitly helped me with the harder passages.
– Noun
– a piece of cloth that is used especially by women as a covering for the head or shoulders
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shawl
– ” …It was too much for the girl, who curled up each night exhausted in her red and brown plaid shawl…”
– A shawl is a common motif in this passage as well as the title.
– Noun
– A feeling of great happiness and excitement
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/euphoria
– ” I came to find out that a food that I had loved, a food that had produced so many euphorias in my family, was a food of the poor.”
– The author, Jenny Boully, is from Thailand and with great pride she expresses her love for pad thai.
– Noun
– a bell shaped usually glass vessel designed to cover objects or to contain gases
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bell%20jar
– ” To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”
– Esther Greenwood is the person in the bell jar. She is trapped within her own mind which leads to her depression.
– Noun
– The attitude or actions of a person that protects people and gives them what they need but does not give them any responsibility or freedom.
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paternalistic
– “Then you can scratch the condenscending paternalistic terminology. It’s a woman, pal. Woman.”
– The second speaker is refering to women when he makes that comment.
–
– Noun
– An offensive word or name that is used as a way of abusing or insutling someone.
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epithet
– “Don’t you think you should transcend those puritancial judgemental moralistic epithets?”
– The second speaker is getting the first speaker angry by keep questioning and re-telling the original story.
– Verb
– To stop something from happening or to cause something to happen at a later time.
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forestall
– ” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.”
– In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the use of “forestall” is relevent becasue of the heart attack at the end could of been avoided.
– verb
– to grow or raise under conditions that you can control.
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cultivating
– “She met Georgine Skeene there who was cultivating her voice.”
– Both main characters in this passage, Georgine Skeene and Helen Furr, both cultivated their voices and both became gay.
– Verb
– To confuse very much
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perplex
– “In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.”
– In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she becomes very confused when looking at the wallpaper trying to distingusih all of the different patterns.
– Adjective
– upset and worried
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fretful
– “I don’t feel as if is was worth while to turn my hand over for anthing, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.”
– The main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is upset and worried becasue she is alone most of her time.
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