The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Jane is sick so her husband John takes her to a house in the country. He makes her sleep in the upstairs bedroom which used to be a nursery. Jane stares at the wallpaper in the room all day and follows the patterns in it. She is constantly trying to figure out the pattern. At night she sees a lady behind the paper trying to get out, and during the day the lady gets out and creeps around. On the last day Jane manages to pull off the wallpaper and "release the old lady." She then believe that she is one of the creeping ladies and starts to creep around the wall. Her husband comes homes, sees her, and passes out while she still creeps.


I think that the author who wrote this was writing about her own mental problems, and the upstairs room would represent her head. I think she felt trapped in her own head and couldn't find a way it. She would just lay around day after day and try to unwind her thoughts, which is represented by the wallpaper. At night, when she slept her thoughts would just not let go. On some days she would be able to release her thoughts and other days she just felt trapped. I think her husband played a huge part in her mental problem. Whenever he came by, she would feel even more trapped. The night she locked her self in her room would be the night she tried to commit suicide. She finally thought she found a release for her mind, so she tried it. When she failed at committing suicide, she felt as if she was walking circles in her own head still. The most interesting part is watching her slowly go crazy through the changes in her writing. It went from carefully formatted to jumpy.

She may have been suffering from postpartum depression, because it mentions her child briefly in the story.

The Story of an Hour - Kate Chopin

An elderly woman with a heart problem is informed that her husband was killed in a train crash. Instead of being heart broken she is excited that she can finally live her life how she wants. When she exits her room her husband walks in the door and she dies.


I would write the Marxist perspective on this. Her husband always had power over the woman and judging on the time period he also had power over the money. When she got the news that her husband was gone she felt empowered. There was a power transfer over to her. She had been living with a hidden secret that she thought she no longer had to live with. When her husband walked in the door she immediately lost her sense of power, which she didn't want to live with.

The Necklace - Guy De Maupassant

Mme. Loisel is a very pretty girl living in a poor life. She is not happy with her lack of nice things and lack a jewels. She gets a new dress to go to the ball and borrows a diamond necklace from her friend Mme. Forestier. After the ball Loisel realizes that she has lost the necklace since she left the dance. Her husband searches for it but can't find it. They borrow 40,000 from friends and loans and buy a look alike necklace for Forestier. They pay off that money for 10yrs during which Loisel accepts their situation. In the end Loisel finds out the original necklace was fake and that it was worth at most 500.


This story starts by describing a female that most people imagine. The story describes how she is unhappy with her average life and average husband. It talks about how she wants to own beautiful clothes and jewelry. This story depicts women as very vain. If Loisel had not wanted nice things, she would never have lost the necklace. Also, you could blame her wanting to go to a fancy ball on her losing her necklace.The gender stereotypes are not completely predictable in this story though. The wife is able to bend her husband to her will, which does not show the typical male stereotype of strong and in charge. The stereotypes change by the end though. The vain main character learns to appreciate what she has and accepts her position in society. She even becomes more confident with who she is.

Bartleby, The Scrivener (A Story of Wall Street)-Herman Melville

The owner of a business hires a man names Bartleby as a scrivener; a man who copies important documents by hand. When he is first hired he does tremendous work when copying, but when asked to run errands he responds "I would prefer not to." The owner of the business gets tired of Bartleby's lack of work when he starts refusing to do anything and just stares out the window. By this point the owner has noticed that Bartleby is living in the office building without paying rent or doing any work. He tries to fire him multiple times, but Bartleby refuses to leave. At this point the owner of the business moves his office across town. The new owner of the property forces Bartleby out and eventually has him sent to prison. In prison Bartleby refuses to eat, and mostly lies around. The owner goes and visits Bartleby twice. On the first visit, Bartleby accuses him of getting him thrown into jail and on the second visit Bartleby has died.


     I would write this in the form of Marxist criticism, not because Bartleby wanted money, but because there was a constant power struggle between Bartleby and the owner of the business. When Bartleby is first hired, he is a huge asset because he is able to copy tremendous amounts of work in a day, but not long after he becomes a nuisance and the power struggle begins. When asked to do a simple task Bartleby replies that he would "Prefer not to." This response immediately challenges the owner. Will he push Bartleby, or no? Throughout the whole story, Bartleby continuously wins the power struggle. He lives in the office building and even refuses to do any work.He ends up with the third key to the office and even locks the owner out at one point. In the end, the owner of the business is forced to move. When Bartleby is put against a new owner, a new struggle for power ensues. This time, Bartleby is not so fortunate. First, he is cast out of the office room, next he is taken off of the premises completely and put into jail. In jail, Bartleby had no power struggles besides the ones inside himself. He eventually put those struggles to rest when he layed down in the grass and never arose.

Thinking back on the story, I wonder if the brick wall outside of Bartleby's window symbolizes a wall in his life. Maybe he hit a brick wall in where he was going and ended up in the law office working as a scrivener.  

The Cask of Amontillado - Edgar Allen Poe

The main character has vowed to avenge Fortunato for reasons unknown. He lures a drunk Fortunato into his "cellar" which resembles a crypt. He gets him down there by telling him that he has a bottle of Amontillado and wants to know if it's real. He makes comments saying "oh well the other man can do just as good of a job..." Fortunato has to prove a point and goes down into the cellar with the main character. Once in the basement, the main character chains up Fortunato and walls him into the a nook in the wall. 


     In my opinion this story follows the lines of Marxist Criticism. The main character has vowed revenge upon Fortunato from the very first paragraph, but we are never told exactly why. That has brought me to believe that our main character is in a power struggle with Fortunato. Fortunato insulted him and now he wants his revenge. In getting his revenge he will step up into Fortunatos spot and become the most respected of the two. When the two men are going down into the cellar, the main character constantly makes comments about Fortunato's cough. I believe that he wanted Fortunato to suffer as much pain with the cough as our main character did with the insults he took. Our main wants revenge, and power over Fortunato. Power and property are two key Marxist functions, and our main character wants both.

Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

 Goodman Brown goes into the forest with the Devil's advocate. Goodman refuses to go any farther into the forest once he realizes many church goers had become associated with the Devil. He hurries to the clearing when he realizes his wife, Faith, is there. They both are taken into communion and go back to their normal life the next day. Goodman never recovers from the experience and lives the rest of his life in misery and regret.


     I believe that Goodman Brown did not make a conscious choice to continue into the woods after he told his companion that he would go no further. The Devil is known for using trickery to get people to bend to his will, so he carried Faith's voice to Goodman and showed Goodman how many people from his community were at the ceremony. When he hears his Faith's voice, his id took over and he raced to her rescue. From then on in the story, he was not making his decision based on what is right and wrong, but what his unconscious mind decides. At one point he sees an apparition of his dead father, and maybe his dead mother, which could be used as another example of how the Devil would trick him into making unconscious decisions.

When you look at this story in the historical context, you can easily see why Goodman Brown would not want to be seen in the forest with his companion. This story was written in the 1800's when religion was how you lived your life. You went to church every weekend and you feared the Devil and his trickery. Also, women were not eligible to hold power and yet you see a women in charge of the gathering in the forest. Martha Carrier had been promised to be Queen of Hell by the Devil. After the ceremony, Goodman knows that he has gone against his way of living, as has his wife. He knows that he is now hellbound and that fear was instilled in people in the 1800's from a very young age. Everything that happened in this story was completely against the way of life of the time. It shows that everyone has a dark side to them, even the most innocent people (ex Faith.)

p. 1263-1302, 1303-1317, 1318-1324 Notes

Chapter 1-writing about literature

• Writing about literature forces us to organize our thoughts.

Good reading:

• slow down
• pay attention
• reread
• "active reading"

Active Reading:

• Take notes
• mark passages that seem important
• Say why they're important
• ask questions when you read (ex why would she do that?)
• Talk back to the text...have a conversation with yourself about it
• Use your own shorthand 

Critical Questions:

• Ask probing questions, dig into the text
• Answers may not be found directly in the text
• 4 categeries--text (genre, structure, language. Why did these words work? What images appear when you read?), author (What was the writers history? How would the time period they lived during change what they wrote?), reader (Think about the intended audience, How would they have related to this reading?), and cultural context (What was society like during this time? What big events happened? How does our life now change our view of what they wrote?)

Chapter 2-The Writing Process

• Write about something you care about
• Don't try to look into the topic too much
• Write a paper to convince.

Developing a Thesis

• Make sure your thesis is strong enough to write a paper on.
• Thesis should be a complete sentence, debatable, clear, relevant, and original.
• Your thesis can evolve as you write.

Support for your Thesis

• Support comes from three sources; the text itself, other people's ideas, your own thoughts are the most important source of support.
• Use your annotated text to help support your writing.
• If an idea doesn't fit your thesis, let it drop.
• Organize evidence according to your thesis.
• Each paragraph may be about a diff character, or image, or cause and effect
• "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them."
• Thesis provides an overview of upcoming topics
• 5 paragraph essay
• You can change up the organization to see what works. Use an outline to help.

Drafting, Revising, and Editing

• Stick with a method of drafting that works for you
• You're first draft isn't expected to be percect.
• Prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading
• Write your first draft quickly
• If you get stuck, move on
• Revision is where your writing comes together. Look at your paper multiple times.
• Try not to finish your draft and revise on the same day. Get a fresh look at your paper the next day.
• (Page 1288)

Peer Editing

• Look at the work from a new point of view. 
• Be specific
• Not all of your comments have to be good.

Trouble Spots

• Opening and closing
• Opening sets tone
• Closing should give the reader something new to think about.

Tips for writing about lit

• Don't assume your readers will remember-use quotes
• Support your quotes
• (page 1295)

Chapter 3

Summary

• Brief recapof important pieces of info

Explication and Close Reading

• takes a vague piece of lit and makes it clear
• pays attention to language and structure
• Don't summarize
• analyze the piece

Analysis

• examine how parts relate together
• traces speach and actions of a character

Compare and Contrast

• between to characters
• make sure you do both when asked
• go item-by-item or point-by-point

Literary Criticism and Literary Theory

First post

First post of the new blog! fun fun!