Monthly Archives: March 2015

Glossary

Ravages

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Ravage (verb) – cause severe and extensive damage to

This was written in the “The Yellow Wall-Paper”. P61

“The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they has to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.”

The narrator is describing how the furniture in the room does not look pleasant, to be in used. She assumes that the children who were her before is the reason why the furniture may look this way. Due to the major damage, she thought it may be a playroom which can mean there was a lot ramping and action going on in the room.

(3)Source: www.google.com – Search engine “Ravage definition”

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Glossary

Jarred

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Jarred (verb) –  to have a harshly unpleasant or perturbing effect on one’s nerves,feelings, thoughts, etc.

This was written in “The Cottagette” towards the end of the story. P.50

“When you took to cooking it jarred me. I have been a cook, I tell you, and I know what it is. I hated it–to see my wood-flower in a kitchen.”

In this statement, Ford Mathews means that he did not like see his soon to be fiancée working in the kitchen. He knew how it feel to work in the kitchen so hurts to put Malda through that predicament.

Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jarred

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Homework, Week 5

Homework #5, “The Cottagette” and “The Yellow Wallaper”

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In “The Cottagette,” the second and third paragraphs identify the setting of the story, “”Cottagette, by all means,” said Lois, seating herself on a porch chair. “But it is larger than it looks, Mr. Mathews. How do you like it, Malda?” I was delighted with it. More than delighted. Here this tiny shell of fresh unpainted wood peeped out from under the trees, the only house in sight except the distant white specks on far off farms, and the little wandering village in the river-threaded valley. It sat right on the turf, –no road, no path even, and the dark woods shadowed the back windows.”

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the second and third paragraphs identify the setting. “A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house and reach the height of romantic felicity – but that would be asking too much of fate. Still I will proudly declare there is something queer about it.”

In both stores, we have a house as the settings, but two very different houses. In “The Cottagette,” the narrator clearly is fond of the cottage. I feel that she admires its isolation, while in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator senses that there is something wrong about the house. The narrators set the tone for the setting in these passages which help shape the stories differently. The cottage is described as a delightful place, and so was the story, ending with the narrator getting a marriage proposal from the man that she loved. The colonial mansion was described, by the narrator, as a haunted house. This story was not as delightful as “The Cottagette.” In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator drivers herself insane from the obsession she had with the wallpaper, where she thought she saw a woman who was trapped behind bars and tries to escape.

 

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Week 5

Blogging on “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and “The Cottagette”

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Apologies for the lateness of these instructions. Here are a few options for your posts for this week. Choose one:

  • Choose two passages that epitomize the narrator of either of these stories. Explain what you understand about the passage and how it instructs you to read the narrator and her narration.
  • Consider the setting of these stories. Find a passage from each that identifies the setting, and compare how the settings help shape each into the drastically different stories that they are.
  • Using specific quotations from the story to support your claims, compare either or both of these stories in their depiction of marriage with any of the other marriages depicted in our readings this semester. Do you attribute the differences only to characterization and plot, or are there other ways these distinct situations are expressed?
  • Is there something else you’re eager to write about regarding “The Yellow Wall-Paper” or “The Cottagette”? Write it–but be sure to use quotations from the story or stories in your post.

Remember to follow our blogging guidelines, and categorize your post  Week 5 under Homework. Use any tags you find appropriate.

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Uncategorized, Week 4

“Young Goodman Brown” and “Metamorphosis”

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In “Young Goodman Brown,” the young Goodman Brown finally follows the devil after hesitating for a while on the way in the forest. He thinks about his wife Faith resisting him from leaving her alone that night, and his Christianity as well. However as he arrives at the place in the middle of forest, he sees all these people whom he thought they are good Christians, including his wife. After that night, he lives sad, confusing and dark life. In the last paragraph of the story, “Be it so, if you will. But, alas! It was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night of that fearful dream.” He couldn’t trust his or all other people’s Christianity on the Sabbath-day after he saw people in the town followed the devil that night. He feels guilty but at the same time mistrusts Christians including his wife and himself until he dies. Therefore when he dies, “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.”(Last sentence)

In “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, the main character Gregor Samsa “found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.” (Paragraph 1) He worked hard to support his family but after he transformed into an insect, his family trapped him in his room and started avoiding him. His sister Grete was the only one who took care of him even after he became terrible looking insect, but even Grete started to ignore him and feel depressed about her brother’s appearance. Gregor used to be a head and a supporter of the family but now he became an insect that causes problems and hurt the family’s feeling. In the very last part of the story, it says “And, as if in confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions, as soon as they reached their destination Grete was the first to get up and stretch out her young body.” Throughout the story, the author’s voice was very gloomy and negative, but after the family confronted with Gregor’s death, the tone and mood of the story changes to positive sound.

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Week 4

The Cottagette

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The story “The Cottagette”, the narrator Malda shows to be reliable. In the beginning of the story, she talks about the love she has for Ford Mathews. She shows her love for Mr. Mathews by doing things she does not normally do. She likes music and art. However, she starts to do housework such as cleaning and cooking to please Mr. Mathews. Lois, Malda friend give her advice on things she need to do to attract Ford Mathews attention.

“Don’t be foolish, child,”said Lois, this is serious. What they care for most after all is domesticity. Of course they’ll fall in love with anything; but what they want to marry is a homemaker. Now we are living here in an idyllic sort of way, quite conductive to falling in love, but no temptation to marriage. If I were you–if i really loved this man and wished to marry him, I would make a home of this place.”

Malda seems to think that Lois has experiences due to the fact that she has been married before, however also has been divorced. She feels that she knows what to look for in a man and what a man wants. So Malda starts to do this things to impress Mathews to please him. Towards the end of the story when Ford Mathews takes her out to Hugh’s Peak and brought lunch that he prepared for them, he proposed. However, Mathews had one condition which was Malda to stop cooking. He knew that her being a homemaker was not her cup of tea. He fell in love with the women who was an artist soul. He wanted to married the women he knew from the beginning who sees beauty and giving it to others. After she started to cook and clean, she stop paying attention to her true gift which is being an artist.

Utopia is an imagined place where everything is perfect, there’s happiness and joy. In “The Cottagette” the narrator Malda found love. Even though she thought she would have to do certain “roles” to keep her relationship from being at stake. The man she loved, loved her for exactly the person she is and did not want to change anything about her. He proposed, as long as she does what she love as an artist, while he’ll take over the cooking. Malda did not have to follow the stereotypical way of what roles women she play in a relationship. Mathews was able to explain that to her as stated,

“It is not true, always, my dear,” said he, “that the way to man’s heart is through his stomach; at least it’s not the only way…”

This settings shows utopia because Malda fell in love and was proposed to without changing anything about herself. In addition, she was able to follow her dreams in what she want to do in life. “It is not true, always, my dear,” said he, “that the way to man’s heart is through his stomach; at least it’s not the only way…”

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Homework, Week 4

Young Goodman Brown

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“The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard, to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint, as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. “What God doth the wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a pint of morning’s milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him, that she skipt along the street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.”

In this passage when Goodman Brown comes back into Salem village in the morning, he does not trust anyone in the village anymore. It can first be seen when Deacon Gookin gives Goodman a blessing and prays for him, but Goodman refuses the blessing and then calls Gookin a wizard. Then as he keeps walking he takes a girl away from Goody Cloyse who was quizzing her on bible verses. The dead giveaway would be when he see his wife Faith, who he loved and did not even greet her. This passage shows how much Goodman has changed during his time in the forest by the action he does when he walks into the village the next day and just loses all trust he has in people. Goodman even lost the feeling he had for his wife who he loved a lot before the time he spent in the forest.

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Glossary

pious

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pious – having or showing a dutiful spirit of reverence for God or an earnest wish to fulfill religious obligations

found in Young Goodman Brown By Nathaniel Hawthorne paragraph 47

“While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch of the firmament, and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once, the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of town’s-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion-table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine, at Salem village, but never, until now, from a cloud of night. There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain. And all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.”

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Glossary, Week 4

Demurred

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Demur  is a verb

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary demur means:  To politely refuse to accept a request or suggestion.  To delay or hesitate.

The word demurred is used by the author of the class handout entitled,  “The Cottagette on page 53, second paragraph.

The narrator stated, “I demurred a little…”  This occurred when Mr. Mathew asked Malda to go on a mountain climb with him.    Malda hesitated a moment stating that it was Monday and this was her day to do washing.

 

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Week 4

The Yellow Wall-Paper

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In the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, I felt that the narrator was unreliable, especially when it came to her husband. In the beginning of the story, the narrator states “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.” However, her husband John actually does follow these traits, there were times that he did the opposite. For example, when the narrator is not making any progress by showing sign that she is getting better, John threatens her by saying he would send her Weir Mitchell. Later on in the story, John has a different perspective. The narrator states John actually having faith by giving her hope. “John says I musn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics…” These types of actions play through back and forth throughout the story. One minute John is angry and upset, then secondly he shows a different character. The narrator says she becomes a burden to him, instead of doing what the typical wife roles such as helping him and taking care of their baby. However, in this case he is taking care of her as if she was the child and helping her through her depression. “And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.” In this quote, John shows another side of him by being caring and attentive towards his wife.

Dystopia is an imagined placed where things are unhappy, unpleasant or case in bad setting.  The narrator in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” was very interested with wallpaper in the room than any other disturbing things that surrounded her. Towards the mid-end of the story she realized a particular pattern with this mysterious yellow wallpaper. She put all her attention towards this yellow wallpaper to figure out the pattern before anyone else does. She became motivated every day and night of coming closer to figure out this image. When she finally did, it was an image of a creeping women, “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! Then she realized the creeping women was her all along inside those yellow wall paper of the person who she come to be.

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