Author Archives: Naiomir

Midterm :quotation 2

Posted on by
Reply

1. Quicksand

2. Nella Larsen

“sitting there in her room ,longhours after, helga  again felt a surge of hot anger  and seething resentment. And again it subsided in amazement at the memory of the consider-able applause which had greeted the speaker just before he had asked Gods blessing upon them. The South. Naxos Negros education. Suddenly she hated them all”

3. In this passage we come across the beginning of Helga’s journey to her own happiness. After realizing that the school that she has taught in was only a racial and hypocritical environment she felt the need to leave. She didn’t want to be part of something were students we’re being taught to be something other then themselves . This was the moment the she decides to quit her job and move to another place. A place where she will feel comfortable with her race. A place that she wouldn’t be judge for being black.s

4. This relates to the  larger issues of the story because helga is a biracial women who is trying to find a place where she feels comfortable with herself and the people surrounding her. After moving multiple times she always ended up being unhappy and trying to find something knew. She was looking for a sense of freedoma which at the end she never achieved because she hated what her life turned out to be. In reality she didn’t have to moved as much tO feel as if she belonged somewhere she just had to look into her inner self and become proud of who she was.

Midterm : Quotation

Posted on by
Reply

1. The Story of an Hour

2. Kate Chopin

“she knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.But she saw beyond thatbetter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms welcome them in welcome”

3. In this passage we see that  Ms. Mullard is sadden by the death of her husband and feels sad to see him dead butall though  she is feeling sorrow she is also seeing a new beginning to her new life. Ms. Mullard felt free at last with the joy that she will live for herself . She felt like she has gain her own identity back to truly be herself.

4. It connects to the larger issue of the text because KAte Chopin  created this story to show the lack of freedom married women encounter during this period of time. It shows the urge of freedom that these women needed but couldn’t  have because  they belonged to their husband well at least that’s what theythought. They weren’t independent to live their own life and to live for themselves like Ms. Mullarexplains  after finding out of the death of her husband.this also shows that many of the married women were unhappy and deep down inside felt the need to actually be free.

 

Manifesto ; Sexual Objectification of Women

Posted on by
Reply

 If I was to write a manifesto about the women in our society as Loy did I will most likely write about sexual objectification of women. One main example I will use to back up my manifesto will be in today’s music videos. I took a hip-hop world view class in my previous semester where we learned about misogyny in today’s media. Misogyny is the hatred against females. It could also be define as degrading the female image, sexual objectification of women and discrimination. In the hip-hop culture we see many of the music videos where women have a little to nothing clothing. We see women dancing in a very sexual way and exposing their body parts. Misogyny has become a trend where women are considered to be accessories or sexualized as props in the hip-hop culture. Not only do we see this behavior happening in the videos, but we also hear them in the lyrics in many of these songs. This is something that women have to stop. I will try to answer questions such as why these music videos tend to use women body to get the attention of the audience. Are people buying this type of music also being a part of this sexual objectification of women? I believe that women that are part of this environment are only giving into the stereotype that the society place them in. They shouldn’t feel the need to expose their body to get a job or to any anyone’s attention. Women should be noticed because of their intelligence e and ambition in life.  In today’s society in many situation women are hired or not hired based on their looks. What the looks have to do with how good they are going to get the job done. I agree with Loy Manifesto telling women that they should take charge of their lives and be the individual that they were born to be. To find their true identity as I said in my previous post response on “Feminist Manifesto”, the author is trying to say is that the purpose is not to have the same right men do and be equal to them, but to look deeper within themselves to gain their individual worth not caring the status men are in. A women should take full responsibly in their lives make it their
business to be educated and be respected. I will include these ideas as well in my manifesto.

Quicksand: Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

In Quicksand we are introduced to our protagonist Helga Crane, 23 years old biracial teacher that works in a Negro school in Naxos, Georgia.  Helga is having a hard time in accepting her own background. Having a white mother and a black father has brought lots of frustration in her life because being a mulatto; she doesn’t feel like she can identify herself as either white or black.  At some point Helga was pleased to be part of Naxos educational environment until she realized that it was an unpleasant racial place.  After hearing a speech made by one of the professors in her school talking down to the black race disappointed her. “This great community, she thought, was no longer a school. It had grown into a machine. It was now a show place in the black belt, exemplification of the white man’s magnanimity, refutation of the lack man’s inefficiency. Life had died out of it. It was, Helga, decided, now only a big knife with cruelly sharp edges ruthlessly cutting all to a pattern, the white man’s pattern”(page 9). At this point she knows that students won’t be able to be their own individual but what the school is making them to be.  After thinking about it for hours in her room she decided that it was time to leave Naxos. “And again it subsided in amazement at the memory of the consider-able applause which had greeted the speaker just before he had asked his God’s blessing upon them. The South. Naxos.Negro education. Suddenly she hated them all”(page 6-7) Helga didn’t want to be a part of this type of environment where the culture of these students was trying to be changed. Helga was already having a hard time in accepting who she was and staying in this place only will make it worst.  This is the moment where I believe the Helga character started to develop because it was the beginning of her journey. The journey where she will be in search of finding self- happiness, her own identity and to feel comfortable in her own skin.

 

Intimate Apparel : Play

Posted on by
Reply

In “Intimate Apparel”, by Lynn Nottage took place in 1905 where we come across an African American woman named Esther. Esther is something now in days we call as a hopeless romantic, she is 35 years old and one of her most important dreams is to have a good man by her side which she will marry and have a life with. Throughout the play we noticed that her self-esteem as a woman is not very high. Esther suffers from self-confidence were she find herself to be unattractive and old. She believes that this is one of the reasons why she still hasn’t found a good man based on what she thought she looked. We can relate this in today’s world where appearance seem to be more important that the human-being itself. Many women now in days are never satisfied by the way they look based on what society has made them believe what characteristic a “beautiful women” should have , for example; beautiful hair, nice body, perfect skin and so on.

Women are always being in competition with other women in who is looking better, who is wearing the latest fashion and who have a better life etc. When in reality these things shouldn’t really matter everyone is unique in their own way no one should never feel less of a person than anyone else because at the end they are both people. I think many women in today’s world live their life based on what others think of them, just like Esther. Esther believed that because she was in her thirties the chance of her having her own family were very limited and that’s why she only focused so much on her job as a seamstress. Another question I ask myself is why Esther felt as she the urgency to have a man by her side? Did women back them were looked down if they weren’t married by a certain age? I can relate this in today’s world because of course everyone in one point of their life will like to find someone to share their life with, a person that will be there for them when no one is, a person that they call a soul mate but what’s the rush? Now in days many people will decide to be in a relationship with each other for all the wrong reasons without really spending time and effort in to knowing who the person really is. Even worst many enter a relationship without evening knowing who they are THEMSELVES.

One of the major reason why I believe there is a lot of broken homes now in days. In this play we see that Esther meets George through letters. Can we really get to know a person throughout ink and paper? How can we know if they are being sincere or not? When Esther marries George he turns out to be the total opposite of who she “thought” he was. He ended up being a manipulative that took advantage of her wanted to find true love to take her saving and use her hard work in useless things.

Mina Loy, Feminist Manifesto ; Response

Posted on by
1

Last paragraph in “ Feminist Manifesto”
by Mina Loy “The desire for comfortable protection instead of an intelligent
curiosity & courage in meeting & resisting the pressure of life sex or
so called love must be reduced to its initial element, honour, grief,
sentimentality, pride and & consequently jealousy must be detached from it.Woman
for her happiness must retain her deceptive fragility of appearance, combined
with indomitable will, irreducible courage, & abundant health the outcome
of sound nerves—Another great illusion is that woman must use all her introspective andclear-sightedness & unbiased bravery to destroy—for the sake of her self
respect is the impurity of sex the realization in defiance of superstition that
there is nothing impure in sex—except in the mental attitude to it—will constitute
an incalculable & wider social regeneration than it is possible for our
generation to imagine.”

Throughout this story my ultimate idea of what she is trying to say is that men
and women are not equal. If both sexes start to be what each other “really”
wants to be and not what society expect them to perform then maybe the equality
between them will come closer.  It states “Leave off looking to
men to find out what you are not —–seek within yourselves to find out what you
are”, in my opinion I think that she is trying to say that many women become
the person their husband or “the men of the household” want them to be. They
never really figure out they real identity within. If we start to live without stereotype
such as : women are for being at home and taking care of the kids and men are supposed to work and support his family , make all the rules people will start to realize
that both sex can actually be able to do either if that’s the person they
really are. One of the lines that really caught my attention while reading has
to be “To obtain results you must make sacrifices & the first and greatest
sacrifice you have to make is of your”virtue”, clearly this line is trying to
say that any women have a hard time in realizing that they are actually more
then what society expect them to be which for example is, a for sex, a house wife,
emotional and a person that dwell a lot in love. The author is trying to say is
that the purpose is not to have the same right men do and be equal to them, but
to look deeper within themselves to gain their individual worth not caring the status
men are in. A women should take full responsibly in their lives make it their
business to be educated and be respected.

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.

Yellow Wallpaper & The Cottagette

Posted on by
Reply

As I read the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman I can clearly consider the narrator to be unreliable.  An unreliable narrator is when their credibility has been seriously compromised and we can see that happening
in this story. The following are some quotes that support the narrator unreliability are:

1) “ I use to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of
blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store” –
This clearly shows that the problems that the narrator is going through has
been going on since she was a child. Her obsession about the wallpaper and
objects comes from a young age which probably has gotten worse as she got
older. This shows she is unreliable because she is putting importance and
meaning into insignificant things.

2) “And what can I do?”- The narrator asked this question multiple times
throughout the story. I believe she is just so used of people telling that what
she is feeling is due to her condition and other people telling her what to do
that she is not her own person anymore. The narrator has becomes what others
want her to be and this prove that she is unreliable. She is not capable of
making her own decisions and having her own thoughts.

3) “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I sure I never used to be so
sensitive. I think it’s due to this nervous condition”- So, this quote shows
that the narrator is unreliable for two reasons. One reason it being that she
is not able to control that way that she feels, she lets her mind take control
of her. Second reason is that throughout the story her husband tends to tell
her over and over again that whatever she does feels it’s due to her nervous condition,
so she is truly starting to believe it.

4) “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it
would relieve the press of ideas and rest me….. But I find I get pretty tired
when I try”- In this quote we see that the narrator is contradicting herself
she says that she knows it will make her feels better if she was able to write more,
but when she tries it gets her tired. Shows her unreliably because she is not
even sure of what she feels is better for her or not.

Some quote that represent the married couple’s relationship are:

1)“ There comes John, and I must put this away- he hates to have me write a
word”- This clearly shows that she does everything  her husband tells her to do. The narrator is no longer her own person, but the person that her husband want her to be. The narrator is not free in her own marriage to do something that she enjoys. This
also shows that he doesn’t support her in things she likes to do. That’s why
she compares herself the wallpaper because she feels trapped just like the
women she talks about.

“John laughs at me, of course , but one expects that in marriage” – I  think that this quote has a slightly a sense of sarcasm telling the reader that he really doesn’t understand his wife.

3)“ John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to
suffer, and that satisfies him” – This quote clearly shows the lack of communication this married couple encounter. It seems like she hides the way she truly feel to John because even though if she was to explain to him he won’t believe her. I feel that John
feels so secure and positive that their I nothing wrong with his wife that he doesn’t
allow a slight chance to actually look into what his wife is feeling and trying to understand her.