The Yellow Wallpaper; Charlotte Perkins; 1899.
The aim of the publication:
Dealing with Charlotte Perkins’ own voice about her writing:
“… It is a description of a case of nervous breakdown beginning something as mine did, and treated as Dr. S. Weir Mitchell treated me with what I considered the inevitable result, progressive insanity…”[1]
On further reading, we may notice that this story speaks about illness, but also about some kind of “banishment” of a woman: the narrator becomes apparently mad, and it is not because of a feeble mind of her own that keeps on thinking about haunted houses, but because of the imposition of her husband (an important doctor) who insists on forbidding her all sorts of activities.
In her autobiography, Perkins describes the hard way her story has until it became published: editors told her that it was excessively “miserable and serious” to be used in a magazine, but they were excuses:
“…This was funny. The story was meant to be dreadful, and succeeded. I suppose he [the publisher] would have sent back one on the sane ground…”.
Although she finally got it published, she never received a cent for it until later publishers brought it out in book form, and very little then. Nevertheless, the story made a tremendous impression.
Perkins was frequently asked if the story was founded on fact and she always said all she decently could of her case as “foundation for the tale”. The real purpose for the story was to reach Dr S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways. She sent him a copy but got no response. However, many years later she knew by a friend that the Doctor had changed his treatment of nervous postration since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
Analysing the story:
By looking at the formal structure of the text, it could be divided into several pieces, according to its content: by using the first person narrator, the first paragraphs describe the situation of the woman, forced to stay at a bedroom on a big colonial mansion. This part takes until page 32, when includes the sentence:
“So I will let it alone and talk about the house”
By this attitude, the protagonist reveals certain disobedience against her husband, who doesn’t allow her to write a word in her notebook. The reader may perceive as well a touch of discomfort in the words of the narrator: she tries to demonstrate herself that the house is perfect and also that her husband is not wrong in his decision and treatment:
“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression […] what is one to do?”.
The first moment in which is said that something wrong could be happening with the house takes place on page 32 as well:
“I don’t like our room a bit”.
The protagonist clearly shows her disappointment with the place in which she has been forced to remain, like a “punished bad girl” who needs to learn in order to become better.
Later on, a reference to suicide is also given, but in a subtle and hidden way; she is looking at the paper:
“… when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide –plunged off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions”.
Last paragraphs on page 33 deal with a detailed description of the wallpaper and its negative effect on the narrator: it is relevant to notice that she compares it, at first sight, with children’s world, actually a world that is close to the one of her own:
“The paint and paper looks as if boy’s school had used it […] I never saw a worse paper in my life […] No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long”.
Two weeks seem to have passed and the protagonist now is considering her husband’s attitude towards her and her illness; there is a subtle ironic message in her discourse at this moment (page 34):
“John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I’m glad my case is not serious! […] John does not know how much I really suffer […] I meant to be such a help to john, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! […] I suppose John never was nervous in his life…”
She: the depressive woman who is telling the story, is supposed to have nothing to do with her own recovery but follow directions her intelligent husband is giving to her. She is not capable to know what she is really feeling. She is like a child and needs adult vigilance.
Nevertheless, the reader can easily perceive that she does not really believe all that ideas and also that, by watching constantly the drawings on the yellow wallpaper, she will progressively project her own feelings and fears on it.
Page 35 includes some sentences related to this before mentioned parallelism between narrator’s thoughts and the figures she appreciates on the wall; just after she had mentioned the opposition of her husband to her desire of receiving some visit from their relatives, the paper seems to communicate to her:
“I wish I could get well faster […] This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness…”
Maybe she perceives her own husband’s enclosement towards her illness: she fears for what could happen if she refused his recommendations and consequently, became a rebel woman against men’s impositions.
The following perceptions on the wall will be related to darkness and ambiguity: as if she really does not want to believe her own theories of disagreement. On page 36:
“This wallpaper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded […] I can see a strange […] sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. There’s sister on the stairs!”
That paragraph deals with another interesting idea: the fact that John’s sister always appears unexpectedly, forcing the narrator to stop abruptly her writings in order not to make her known about, like a shadow in the pattern, or a hidden figure in the yellow paper…
Next lines are centered on a sort of resignation the narrator assumes, by keeping watching the wall and studying their drawings, although she hates that. But suddenly, there is an image used to compare the pattern with her life that may upset the reader. On page 39 and 41:
“It is always the sane shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. […] I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman”
The protagonist finds herself reflected on the woman figure of the pattern, behaving like that figure is supposed to behave, hiding in the darkness and being “a good girl” during the day, but showing a “dark side” at night. Page 41:
“By daylight she is subdued, quiet. […] he [John] started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don’t sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake –O no! […] It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, -that perhaps it is the paper!”.
Since this moment and until the end of the story, the protagonist will progressively coming to reach the conclusion that she has been absorbed by the wallpaper, and will not let anybody to take part of it, such as if it was hers. On page 41:
“I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once […] I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!”.
The obsession with the paper increases until the end of the story, when the protagonist definitely transfers her sufferings to it and, consequently, puts her efforts on fighting against it: it will not only be the color or the design, but also the smell[2] which traps her inside that imagined world of confusion. Page 42:
“But there is something else about that paper –the smell! […] whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here”.
Once the figure of the woman has been clearly identified in the wall, the narrator also discovers it as a moving one, or even a group of not quiet women:
“The front pattern does move –and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. […] They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!...”.
The last part of the story becomes more violent until it reaches the end: a real fight against woman and paper, that finally wins the woman but completely insane, believing she is the haunted creature of the pattern and doing what is in her hands to get out of there, and become free. Page 47:
“’I’ve got you at last,’ said I, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’ Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”.
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[1] The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. An Autobiography by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Introduction by Ann J. Lane); USA, Wisconsin; The University of Wisconsin Press; 1990. [119].
[2] Gilman also authenticates period beliefs that chemicals in wallpapers cause dementia. While some period critics suggest dyes affect the narrator’s mental state, the narrator believes John and Jennie may be affected by the wallpaper. Interested readers might profitably examine 1899 reviews and Tom Lutz’s reading of the effects of poisonous dyes in late 19th century American wallpapers. [Charlotte Perkins Gilman ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’. A Sourcebook and Critical Edition; Ed. Catherine J. Golden; New York; Routledge; 2004; pp. 152-153.
The aim of the publication:
Dealing with Charlotte Perkins’ own voice about her writing:
“… It is a description of a case of nervous breakdown beginning something as mine did, and treated as Dr. S. Weir Mitchell treated me with what I considered the inevitable result, progressive insanity…”[1]
On further reading, we may notice that this story speaks about illness, but also about some kind of “banishment” of a woman: the narrator becomes apparently mad, and it is not because of a feeble mind of her own that keeps on thinking about haunted houses, but because of the imposition of her husband (an important doctor) who insists on forbidding her all sorts of activities.
In her autobiography, Perkins describes the hard way her story has until it became published: editors told her that it was excessively “miserable and serious” to be used in a magazine, but they were excuses:
“…This was funny. The story was meant to be dreadful, and succeeded. I suppose he [the publisher] would have sent back one on the sane ground…”.
Although she finally got it published, she never received a cent for it until later publishers brought it out in book form, and very little then. Nevertheless, the story made a tremendous impression.
Perkins was frequently asked if the story was founded on fact and she always said all she decently could of her case as “foundation for the tale”. The real purpose for the story was to reach Dr S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways. She sent him a copy but got no response. However, many years later she knew by a friend that the Doctor had changed his treatment of nervous postration since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
Analysing the story:
By looking at the formal structure of the text, it could be divided into several pieces, according to its content: by using the first person narrator, the first paragraphs describe the situation of the woman, forced to stay at a bedroom on a big colonial mansion. This part takes until page 32, when includes the sentence:
“So I will let it alone and talk about the house”
By this attitude, the protagonist reveals certain disobedience against her husband, who doesn’t allow her to write a word in her notebook. The reader may perceive as well a touch of discomfort in the words of the narrator: she tries to demonstrate herself that the house is perfect and also that her husband is not wrong in his decision and treatment:
“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression […] what is one to do?”.
The first moment in which is said that something wrong could be happening with the house takes place on page 32 as well:
“I don’t like our room a bit”.
The protagonist clearly shows her disappointment with the place in which she has been forced to remain, like a “punished bad girl” who needs to learn in order to become better.
Later on, a reference to suicide is also given, but in a subtle and hidden way; she is looking at the paper:
“… when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide –plunged off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions”.
Last paragraphs on page 33 deal with a detailed description of the wallpaper and its negative effect on the narrator: it is relevant to notice that she compares it, at first sight, with children’s world, actually a world that is close to the one of her own:
“The paint and paper looks as if boy’s school had used it […] I never saw a worse paper in my life […] No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long”.
Two weeks seem to have passed and the protagonist now is considering her husband’s attitude towards her and her illness; there is a subtle ironic message in her discourse at this moment (page 34):
“John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I’m glad my case is not serious! […] John does not know how much I really suffer […] I meant to be such a help to john, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! […] I suppose John never was nervous in his life…”
She: the depressive woman who is telling the story, is supposed to have nothing to do with her own recovery but follow directions her intelligent husband is giving to her. She is not capable to know what she is really feeling. She is like a child and needs adult vigilance.
Nevertheless, the reader can easily perceive that she does not really believe all that ideas and also that, by watching constantly the drawings on the yellow wallpaper, she will progressively project her own feelings and fears on it.
Page 35 includes some sentences related to this before mentioned parallelism between narrator’s thoughts and the figures she appreciates on the wall; just after she had mentioned the opposition of her husband to her desire of receiving some visit from their relatives, the paper seems to communicate to her:
“I wish I could get well faster […] This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness…”
Maybe she perceives her own husband’s enclosement towards her illness: she fears for what could happen if she refused his recommendations and consequently, became a rebel woman against men’s impositions.
The following perceptions on the wall will be related to darkness and ambiguity: as if she really does not want to believe her own theories of disagreement. On page 36:
“This wallpaper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded […] I can see a strange […] sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. There’s sister on the stairs!”
That paragraph deals with another interesting idea: the fact that John’s sister always appears unexpectedly, forcing the narrator to stop abruptly her writings in order not to make her known about, like a shadow in the pattern, or a hidden figure in the yellow paper…
Next lines are centered on a sort of resignation the narrator assumes, by keeping watching the wall and studying their drawings, although she hates that. But suddenly, there is an image used to compare the pattern with her life that may upset the reader. On page 39 and 41:
“It is always the sane shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. […] I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman”
The protagonist finds herself reflected on the woman figure of the pattern, behaving like that figure is supposed to behave, hiding in the darkness and being “a good girl” during the day, but showing a “dark side” at night. Page 41:
“By daylight she is subdued, quiet. […] he [John] started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don’t sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake –O no! […] It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, -that perhaps it is the paper!”.
Since this moment and until the end of the story, the protagonist will progressively coming to reach the conclusion that she has been absorbed by the wallpaper, and will not let anybody to take part of it, such as if it was hers. On page 41:
“I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once […] I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!”.
The obsession with the paper increases until the end of the story, when the protagonist definitely transfers her sufferings to it and, consequently, puts her efforts on fighting against it: it will not only be the color or the design, but also the smell[2] which traps her inside that imagined world of confusion. Page 42:
“But there is something else about that paper –the smell! […] whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here”.
Once the figure of the woman has been clearly identified in the wall, the narrator also discovers it as a moving one, or even a group of not quiet women:
“The front pattern does move –and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. […] They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!...”.
The last part of the story becomes more violent until it reaches the end: a real fight against woman and paper, that finally wins the woman but completely insane, believing she is the haunted creature of the pattern and doing what is in her hands to get out of there, and become free. Page 47:
“’I’ve got you at last,’ said I, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’ Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. An Autobiography by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Introduction by Ann J. Lane); USA, Wisconsin; The University of Wisconsin Press; 1990. [119].
[2] Gilman also authenticates period beliefs that chemicals in wallpapers cause dementia. While some period critics suggest dyes affect the narrator’s mental state, the narrator believes John and Jennie may be affected by the wallpaper. Interested readers might profitably examine 1899 reviews and Tom Lutz’s reading of the effects of poisonous dyes in late 19th century American wallpapers. [Charlotte Perkins Gilman ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’. A Sourcebook and Critical Edition; Ed. Catherine J. Golden; New York; Routledge; 2004; pp. 152-153.
"A Daughter of the Lodge"; The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories (1906) George Gissing; Aegypan; USA; 2006.
Looking for a sort of "new woman"
Amongst all the different subjects presented throughout this text, I think it’s important to notice that there is a new kind of real life picture drown by George Gissing.
A Daughter of the Lodge deals with the problem of a young woman whose intellectual aspirations do not fit in the context where she has had the lack of being born. As the text says:
"…the life of the lodge would afford no adequate scope for her ambitions”.
If we compare this work with the Katherine Mansfield’s The Daughters of the Late Colonel, the first thing that captures our attention is that, although both are speaking about similar problems related to “the new woman” of the late 19th century, in her text, she is using a more innovator perspective of narration; a type of description composed by pieces or “word depictions” which puts the reader straight into the crisis of the story, without having given him/her any kind of introduction of the characters and relationships amongst them.
Unexpectedly, Gissing provides a description of the protagonist with accurate style and precise delicacy: May Rockett is actually a heroine, damned because of the poor economic position of her parents, but who behaves like a lady; according to her father and sister in the story:
“… they privately agreed that May was more of a real lady than either the baronet’s hard-tongued wife or the disdainful Hilda Shale”.
The tale of Gissing deals with a particular content, maybe closer to the problem of social differences than to the feminist theories developed during that time.
I think the real drama of the plot relies on the shock suffered by May Rockett, daughter of the Lodge, when she realizes that, by the ending of the 19th century, no matter how higher your ambitions may be, the only important thing in order to grow was the money you may have. May Rockett becomes humiliated by Hilda Shale, her supposed feudal superior, in front of her admired leader, the progressive Mrs. Lindley[1], and therefore, she gives Miss Shale a revenge, by deliberately ignoring her when entering the house.
Last but not least, the ending of the story also gives the reader a moral lesson, hidden in the thoughts of a more mature protagonist: May Rockett reaches the end of the tale with the same elevated intellect as in the beginning, but with a new relief in her soul: the sense that something good has happened to her family, thanks to her brave attitude towards the unfair people they insist on being subordinated to.
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[1] The presence of this character in the story has a particular function, related to the Feminist Context: since Miss Rockett is a lady with sharpened intellect, she is as well interested in “a movement” that also Mrs. Lindley (“a good-humoured, chatty woman, who had a lively interest in everything progressive…”) was interested on.
Looking for a sort of "new woman"
Amongst all the different subjects presented throughout this text, I think it’s important to notice that there is a new kind of real life picture drown by George Gissing.
A Daughter of the Lodge deals with the problem of a young woman whose intellectual aspirations do not fit in the context where she has had the lack of being born. As the text says:
"…the life of the lodge would afford no adequate scope for her ambitions”.
If we compare this work with the Katherine Mansfield’s The Daughters of the Late Colonel, the first thing that captures our attention is that, although both are speaking about similar problems related to “the new woman” of the late 19th century, in her text, she is using a more innovator perspective of narration; a type of description composed by pieces or “word depictions” which puts the reader straight into the crisis of the story, without having given him/her any kind of introduction of the characters and relationships amongst them.
Unexpectedly, Gissing provides a description of the protagonist with accurate style and precise delicacy: May Rockett is actually a heroine, damned because of the poor economic position of her parents, but who behaves like a lady; according to her father and sister in the story:
“… they privately agreed that May was more of a real lady than either the baronet’s hard-tongued wife or the disdainful Hilda Shale”.
The tale of Gissing deals with a particular content, maybe closer to the problem of social differences than to the feminist theories developed during that time.
I think the real drama of the plot relies on the shock suffered by May Rockett, daughter of the Lodge, when she realizes that, by the ending of the 19th century, no matter how higher your ambitions may be, the only important thing in order to grow was the money you may have. May Rockett becomes humiliated by Hilda Shale, her supposed feudal superior, in front of her admired leader, the progressive Mrs. Lindley[1], and therefore, she gives Miss Shale a revenge, by deliberately ignoring her when entering the house.
Last but not least, the ending of the story also gives the reader a moral lesson, hidden in the thoughts of a more mature protagonist: May Rockett reaches the end of the tale with the same elevated intellect as in the beginning, but with a new relief in her soul: the sense that something good has happened to her family, thanks to her brave attitude towards the unfair people they insist on being subordinated to.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] The presence of this character in the story has a particular function, related to the Feminist Context: since Miss Rockett is a lady with sharpened intellect, she is as well interested in “a movement” that also Mrs. Lindley (“a good-humoured, chatty woman, who had a lively interest in everything progressive…”) was interested on.
"The Happy Prince" in The Happy Prince and Other Tales; Oscar Wilde; (1888)
Real happiness:
The first time someone reads The happy Prince, the natural tendency is to feel some kind of emotion deep inside, but only after having read it three times at least, the reader will be able to discover to what extent Oscar Wilde moves senses from happiness to sadness and so on.
The text deals with the subject of love from an ambiguous point of view. Once upon a time, there is a Swallow in love with a Reed:
"One night there flew over the city a little Swallow (...) he was in love with the most beautiful Reed".
Here the vision of love is given from a selfish point of view: although the Swallow loves the Reed, he is not determined to make any sacrifice for her:
"'But I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also' (...) the Reed shook her head, she was so attached to her home".
From the moment in which the Swallow meets the statue of the Happy Prince and till the end of the story, a change in his personality can be noticed. The relationship between them progressively increases and they are finally described more as lovers than mere friends:
"'Goodbye dear Prince! (...) will you let me kiss your hand?'
'You have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you'".
In addition a crystal clear image of "true love" is also included when the leaden heart of the statue is broken just before the Swallow has died:
"And he kissed the happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
At a moment, a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two".
The theme of sacrifice is maybe the most important of the whole text; because by sacrifying themselves, the protagonists realise that they both are "twin souls". The Swallow is determined to do what the statue is asking him for (helping poor people) and he does not mind if the weather is too cold or if the other swallows are waiting for him in Egypt. he will help the Happy Prince until his death:
"The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well".
The same happens with the statue: the vision of the poorest side of the city makes him feel sad and, with the help of the bird, he will give all he gold that covers his body and the ruby from his sword as well as his two saphire eyes to the poor. He sacrifices his beauty and becomes blind and shabby:
"Leaf after leaf of the fine gold, the Swallow picked off, till the happy Prince looked quite dull and grey".
The sense of happiness is possibly linked with the title of the story: The happy Prince, but it may be a paradox.
The text is continuously making comparisons between the appearance and what people are like inside. When the Happy Prince lived he was "happy" indeed, because he did not kow the real world. Once he is a statue, he becomes unhappy because he is put outside that "bubble" which isolated him before; moreover: he is forced to see the cruelest side of life:
"'When I was alive and had a human heart (...) I lived in the palace (...) where sorrow is not allowed to enter (...) And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city'".
At the end of the story the reader realises that the happy Prince only becomes "happy" when his appearance is not an apparenly happy one; in other words: whe he is beautiful and admired he is sad, but when he looses his beauty and gives it to the poor people he becomes happy inside, though shabby in appearance.
Likewise, the theme of beauty is decisive in understanding the tale. If this text has a moral it possibly consists of "behaving generously with the others trying not to be egotistical".
Each character focuses his own sense of duty on a different way: while the Swallow feels the necessity to help the Prince (indirectly helping the poor people), the statue is determined to give what is his to the people that need it more:
"But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Sallow was sorry. 'it is very cold here', he said 'but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger".
"'I am covered with fine gold' said the Prince, 'you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy'".
Finally it may be noticed the ability of Oscar Wilde to drive the reader through his own feelings and transmit them easily: love, sacrifice, happiness and duty are put together to create the most beautiful and tender fairy tale ever written.
Real happiness:
The first time someone reads The happy Prince, the natural tendency is to feel some kind of emotion deep inside, but only after having read it three times at least, the reader will be able to discover to what extent Oscar Wilde moves senses from happiness to sadness and so on.
The text deals with the subject of love from an ambiguous point of view. Once upon a time, there is a Swallow in love with a Reed:
"One night there flew over the city a little Swallow (...) he was in love with the most beautiful Reed".
Here the vision of love is given from a selfish point of view: although the Swallow loves the Reed, he is not determined to make any sacrifice for her:
"'But I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also' (...) the Reed shook her head, she was so attached to her home".
From the moment in which the Swallow meets the statue of the Happy Prince and till the end of the story, a change in his personality can be noticed. The relationship between them progressively increases and they are finally described more as lovers than mere friends:
"'Goodbye dear Prince! (...) will you let me kiss your hand?'
'You have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you'".
In addition a crystal clear image of "true love" is also included when the leaden heart of the statue is broken just before the Swallow has died:
"And he kissed the happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
At a moment, a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two".
The theme of sacrifice is maybe the most important of the whole text; because by sacrifying themselves, the protagonists realise that they both are "twin souls". The Swallow is determined to do what the statue is asking him for (helping poor people) and he does not mind if the weather is too cold or if the other swallows are waiting for him in Egypt. he will help the Happy Prince until his death:
"The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well".
The same happens with the statue: the vision of the poorest side of the city makes him feel sad and, with the help of the bird, he will give all he gold that covers his body and the ruby from his sword as well as his two saphire eyes to the poor. He sacrifices his beauty and becomes blind and shabby:
"Leaf after leaf of the fine gold, the Swallow picked off, till the happy Prince looked quite dull and grey".
The sense of happiness is possibly linked with the title of the story: The happy Prince, but it may be a paradox.
The text is continuously making comparisons between the appearance and what people are like inside. When the Happy Prince lived he was "happy" indeed, because he did not kow the real world. Once he is a statue, he becomes unhappy because he is put outside that "bubble" which isolated him before; moreover: he is forced to see the cruelest side of life:
"'When I was alive and had a human heart (...) I lived in the palace (...) where sorrow is not allowed to enter (...) And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city'".
At the end of the story the reader realises that the happy Prince only becomes "happy" when his appearance is not an apparenly happy one; in other words: whe he is beautiful and admired he is sad, but when he looses his beauty and gives it to the poor people he becomes happy inside, though shabby in appearance.
Likewise, the theme of beauty is decisive in understanding the tale. If this text has a moral it possibly consists of "behaving generously with the others trying not to be egotistical".
Each character focuses his own sense of duty on a different way: while the Swallow feels the necessity to help the Prince (indirectly helping the poor people), the statue is determined to give what is his to the people that need it more:
"But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Sallow was sorry. 'it is very cold here', he said 'but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger".
"'I am covered with fine gold' said the Prince, 'you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy'".
Finally it may be noticed the ability of Oscar Wilde to drive the reader through his own feelings and transmit them easily: love, sacrifice, happiness and duty are put together to create the most beautiful and tender fairy tale ever written.
“Bliss”; Katherine Mansfield (1918)
For a moment:
Although being thirty is probably the least important thing all over Mansfield’s short story Bliss, it seems to be some kind of clue for the reader, a sort of enigma to be solved by the moment he or she reaches the end.
Bertha Young, the adorable protagonist of the text is a thirty year old lady at her home, waiting for some guests and enjoying her magical concept of life: she is alive and therefore, she must be happy.
Dealing with the typical Bloomsbury´s way of living and writing, so connected that they lived as they wrote and viceversa, Katherine Mansfield brings the reader an apparently simple depict of a situation in the daily routine of a lady, but it is more than that: it is not a slice of life, it is the clue for understanding living itself.
By reading Bliss it is possible not to feel anything special; maybe the story hasn’t got that sense we need for considering it as a particular, different or extraordinary text. We could have a look at its paragraphs and only see a childish woman running upstairs and downstairs her house, making the arrangements for her guests, playing with her baby as if she was a doll and having foolish fantasies with that "mistery woman in silver dress" Miss Pearl Fulton is.
Yes, it could be possible, but it could be boring as well.
Let us read the story as a symbol: the symbol of futility of life. Bertha Young is preparing the house in order to cause an impression on her friends. That was a time to pretend, a period for being apparently perfect although anybody could be suffering inside.
Bertha Young is suffering for love. Her life is like a still life painting, like the fruits in the bowl over the table in the dining-room; plenty of colour but in the middle of darkness:
“Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped in milk.
‘Shall I turn on the light, M’m?’
‘No, thank you. I can see quite well.’
There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone with the new dining –room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: ‘I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table.’ And it had seemed quite sense at the time".
What is happening next? the question narrows down to this: the protagonist is in the middle of a conflict with herself however she doesn’t know. On the one hand she’s obsessed with appeareances, trying to show a beautiful picture of her life to the others, on the other hand it is obvious that she is in love with Miss Fulton, probably only because of her external beauty, so perfect, so delicate, as the beautiful pear tree in the garden:
“And still, in the back of her mind, there was the pear tree. It would be silver now, in the light of poor dear Eddie’s moon, silver as Miss Fulton, who sat there turning a tangerine in her slender fingers that were so pale a light seemed to come from them”.
Unexpectedly, here comes the tragedy of life: the moment in which Bertha understands her fantasies are only that, mere fiction, the pure results of her imagination. When their guests are leaving the house, she catches a glimpse of her husband kissing the silver lady and the epiphany moment reveals itself on a second:
“While he looked it up she turned her head towards the hall. And she saw... Harry with Miss Fulton’s coat in his arms and Miss Fulton with her back turned to him and her head bent. He tossed the coat away, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her violently to him. His lips said ‘I adore you,’ and Miss Fulton laid her moonbeam fingers on his cheaks and smiled her sleepy smile...”
After this consideration, we reach the conclusion that being thirty is not a problem, but not knowing how to live a life of one’s own could probably be. The bliss in the title may be linked with those strange moments of happyness near to crazyness which anybody is able to experience at any time during the day. The epiphany moment, like a beautiful picture taken by instagram app. on the iphone. Like the pear tree:
“Bertha simply ran over to the long windows.
‘Oh, what is going to happen now?’ she cried.
But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still”.
For a moment:
Although being thirty is probably the least important thing all over Mansfield’s short story Bliss, it seems to be some kind of clue for the reader, a sort of enigma to be solved by the moment he or she reaches the end.
Bertha Young, the adorable protagonist of the text is a thirty year old lady at her home, waiting for some guests and enjoying her magical concept of life: she is alive and therefore, she must be happy.
Dealing with the typical Bloomsbury´s way of living and writing, so connected that they lived as they wrote and viceversa, Katherine Mansfield brings the reader an apparently simple depict of a situation in the daily routine of a lady, but it is more than that: it is not a slice of life, it is the clue for understanding living itself.
By reading Bliss it is possible not to feel anything special; maybe the story hasn’t got that sense we need for considering it as a particular, different or extraordinary text. We could have a look at its paragraphs and only see a childish woman running upstairs and downstairs her house, making the arrangements for her guests, playing with her baby as if she was a doll and having foolish fantasies with that "mistery woman in silver dress" Miss Pearl Fulton is.
Yes, it could be possible, but it could be boring as well.
Let us read the story as a symbol: the symbol of futility of life. Bertha Young is preparing the house in order to cause an impression on her friends. That was a time to pretend, a period for being apparently perfect although anybody could be suffering inside.
Bertha Young is suffering for love. Her life is like a still life painting, like the fruits in the bowl over the table in the dining-room; plenty of colour but in the middle of darkness:
“Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped in milk.
‘Shall I turn on the light, M’m?’
‘No, thank you. I can see quite well.’
There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone with the new dining –room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: ‘I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table.’ And it had seemed quite sense at the time".
What is happening next? the question narrows down to this: the protagonist is in the middle of a conflict with herself however she doesn’t know. On the one hand she’s obsessed with appeareances, trying to show a beautiful picture of her life to the others, on the other hand it is obvious that she is in love with Miss Fulton, probably only because of her external beauty, so perfect, so delicate, as the beautiful pear tree in the garden:
“And still, in the back of her mind, there was the pear tree. It would be silver now, in the light of poor dear Eddie’s moon, silver as Miss Fulton, who sat there turning a tangerine in her slender fingers that were so pale a light seemed to come from them”.
Unexpectedly, here comes the tragedy of life: the moment in which Bertha understands her fantasies are only that, mere fiction, the pure results of her imagination. When their guests are leaving the house, she catches a glimpse of her husband kissing the silver lady and the epiphany moment reveals itself on a second:
“While he looked it up she turned her head towards the hall. And she saw... Harry with Miss Fulton’s coat in his arms and Miss Fulton with her back turned to him and her head bent. He tossed the coat away, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her violently to him. His lips said ‘I adore you,’ and Miss Fulton laid her moonbeam fingers on his cheaks and smiled her sleepy smile...”
After this consideration, we reach the conclusion that being thirty is not a problem, but not knowing how to live a life of one’s own could probably be. The bliss in the title may be linked with those strange moments of happyness near to crazyness which anybody is able to experience at any time during the day. The epiphany moment, like a beautiful picture taken by instagram app. on the iphone. Like the pear tree:
“Bertha simply ran over to the long windows.
‘Oh, what is going to happen now?’ she cried.
But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still”.
XVIII (William Shakespeare’s Sonnets; 1609) vs. Anne Bradstreet's "In memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Whodeceased August, 1665, Bein Sonnet XVIIIg a Year and Half Old"
Love, Nature and Death:
Puritanism in England might have been a consequence of distinct social changes, such as the increase of the population; the dramatic demographic shift created tension in an already troubled economy. Religion was a daily presence in the lives of the Puritans. Followers of Calvin, they believed that God predestined their souls for Heaven or for Hell that even devout believers in Christ could do nothing to alter their predetermined fate. With mere belief not assurance of salvation, constant vigilance and self-examination on the individual and the communal level, formed a necessary part of the Puritans primary duties as Christians.
They believed that only those who felt sure that God was with them should enter into church membership. The interior examination of one’s soul thus entered the external arena of social action. Self-questioning was, to some extent, a kind of pre-condition to social place. But even the most pious continually doubted their place with God, and many kept diaries in which they carefully detailed and examined everyday occurrences for signs of God’s hand in their endeavors.
The Community relied upon the necessary interdependence of its individuals, with the Old Testament model of the patriarch (in New England, the governor) at the head of the state and the church. Modeling their environment upon the one they had left, the Puritans established a patriarchal community. It was a structure founded upon “Christian Charity”, modified by the conception of mutual consent. The covenantal nature of their fate (the belief that God had made an agreement with the by choosing them, of all other people, to come to America) coalesced with the covenantal relationships they established on the familiar and church level. Theirs was a community based upon mutual consent.
Puritans believed all people were equal before God, but that women were inferior to men because tainted by Eve’s guilt[1].
"In memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Whodeceased August, 1665, Bein Sonnet XVIIIg a Year and Half Old"
Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye
Farewell fair flower that for space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto eternity.
Blest babe, why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh the days so soon wer terminate;
Sith thou are settle in an everlasting state.
By nature trees do rot when they are grown
And plums and apples throughly ripe do fall
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
But plants new set to be eradicate
And buds new blown, to have so short a date,
Is by His hand alone that guides
Almost seventy years before Anne Bradstreet had written this poem, there was another clear example of the power of Nature imagery dealing with Death, William Shakespeare's XVIII Sonnet:
- XVIII-
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
[William Shakespeare’s Sonnets; 1609]
Pay attention to the similitude between these two works, in order to perceive the value both of them give to the fact of Death, within a Nature context. Whereas in Bradstreet’s poem the speaker refers to the death of a grandchild, Shakespeare appeals to his typical ambiguous deliverer that can possibly be a man or a woman, but undoubtedly a lover. They actually are different, but at the same time remain closer.
Bradstreet as a Puritan woman, accepts the death although it is a tragedy, almost reluctantly. The poem is divided into two stanzas, each of them dealing with different purposes: the first one remains on an elegiac style, by praying repeatedly for the little baby dead.
This repetition Farewell […] / Farewell […] / Farewell apparently has to do with happiness, but it is possibly a way to explain the suffering repressed of a Puritan soul, forced to accept this kind of "unfairness" that life represents, not only as a matter of God, but as an imposed reason to be “happy” about.
According to the comparison established between the two poems, I think it is in the second stanza of Bradstreet’s one where this parallelism can be appreciated most clearly; the second stanza describes a natural landscape where death behaves as unavoidable fate with those “natural elements” such as trees, plums, corn, plants and buds that sometimes die before time; the death of a year and a half old grandchild might be as inevitably natural as crops. But if we go on further: Does this make it more acceptable? Does the comparison itself convey the speaker's feelings about this?
Finally, it could be said that Shakespeare mentions in his Sonnet the futility of beauty in comparison with Nature: both are condemned to disappear as time goes on, but his love is eternal and remains after death.
It may sound strange but, let us think about futility: Doesn't the Sonnet suggest that that beauty is immortalized in the poem itself? Would a Puritan ever think in these terms?
Maybe the most remarkable difference amongst the two works quoted here, is the religious aim of Bradstreet's elegy: its final line "Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate" speaks directly about God and His inscrutable behavior, while the Sonnet only exposes strong feelings about love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Taken from Hart, James D. The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Love, Nature and Death:
Puritanism in England might have been a consequence of distinct social changes, such as the increase of the population; the dramatic demographic shift created tension in an already troubled economy. Religion was a daily presence in the lives of the Puritans. Followers of Calvin, they believed that God predestined their souls for Heaven or for Hell that even devout believers in Christ could do nothing to alter their predetermined fate. With mere belief not assurance of salvation, constant vigilance and self-examination on the individual and the communal level, formed a necessary part of the Puritans primary duties as Christians.
They believed that only those who felt sure that God was with them should enter into church membership. The interior examination of one’s soul thus entered the external arena of social action. Self-questioning was, to some extent, a kind of pre-condition to social place. But even the most pious continually doubted their place with God, and many kept diaries in which they carefully detailed and examined everyday occurrences for signs of God’s hand in their endeavors.
The Community relied upon the necessary interdependence of its individuals, with the Old Testament model of the patriarch (in New England, the governor) at the head of the state and the church. Modeling their environment upon the one they had left, the Puritans established a patriarchal community. It was a structure founded upon “Christian Charity”, modified by the conception of mutual consent. The covenantal nature of their fate (the belief that God had made an agreement with the by choosing them, of all other people, to come to America) coalesced with the covenantal relationships they established on the familiar and church level. Theirs was a community based upon mutual consent.
Puritans believed all people were equal before God, but that women were inferior to men because tainted by Eve’s guilt[1].
"In memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Whodeceased August, 1665, Bein Sonnet XVIIIg a Year and Half Old"
Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye
Farewell fair flower that for space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto eternity.
Blest babe, why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh the days so soon wer terminate;
Sith thou are settle in an everlasting state.
By nature trees do rot when they are grown
And plums and apples throughly ripe do fall
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
But plants new set to be eradicate
And buds new blown, to have so short a date,
Is by His hand alone that guides
Almost seventy years before Anne Bradstreet had written this poem, there was another clear example of the power of Nature imagery dealing with Death, William Shakespeare's XVIII Sonnet:
- XVIII-
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
[William Shakespeare’s Sonnets; 1609]
Pay attention to the similitude between these two works, in order to perceive the value both of them give to the fact of Death, within a Nature context. Whereas in Bradstreet’s poem the speaker refers to the death of a grandchild, Shakespeare appeals to his typical ambiguous deliverer that can possibly be a man or a woman, but undoubtedly a lover. They actually are different, but at the same time remain closer.
Bradstreet as a Puritan woman, accepts the death although it is a tragedy, almost reluctantly. The poem is divided into two stanzas, each of them dealing with different purposes: the first one remains on an elegiac style, by praying repeatedly for the little baby dead.
This repetition Farewell […] / Farewell […] / Farewell apparently has to do with happiness, but it is possibly a way to explain the suffering repressed of a Puritan soul, forced to accept this kind of "unfairness" that life represents, not only as a matter of God, but as an imposed reason to be “happy” about.
According to the comparison established between the two poems, I think it is in the second stanza of Bradstreet’s one where this parallelism can be appreciated most clearly; the second stanza describes a natural landscape where death behaves as unavoidable fate with those “natural elements” such as trees, plums, corn, plants and buds that sometimes die before time; the death of a year and a half old grandchild might be as inevitably natural as crops. But if we go on further: Does this make it more acceptable? Does the comparison itself convey the speaker's feelings about this?
Finally, it could be said that Shakespeare mentions in his Sonnet the futility of beauty in comparison with Nature: both are condemned to disappear as time goes on, but his love is eternal and remains after death.
It may sound strange but, let us think about futility: Doesn't the Sonnet suggest that that beauty is immortalized in the poem itself? Would a Puritan ever think in these terms?
Maybe the most remarkable difference amongst the two works quoted here, is the religious aim of Bradstreet's elegy: its final line "Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate" speaks directly about God and His inscrutable behavior, while the Sonnet only exposes strong feelings about love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Taken from Hart, James D. The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.