Response to The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was a very strange story. I won’t lie. It kind of creeped me out. It was in its creepiness, though, that I actually became somewhat fascinated.  Seeing the way that this woman was repressed naturally made me sympathize with her. I figured that things would start to get to her being alone in a room for so long, but I had no idea to what extent her problems would grow. The room’s yellow wallpaper is an interesting sort of metaphor. The wallpaper shows what it going on in the woman’s life. She is caged up, unable to escape from her room, her mind’s prison, and express who she is. She watches as the woman in the wallpaper becomes progressively more restless and itches more and more to try and get out. I wonder if she didn’t see her own shadow doing some of the creeping she described. Things got rather creepy when it appeared that the woman in the wallpaper had escaped and started leaving evidence around the house. I was kind of disturbed, unsure what to think of it. After all, if there was a real wallpaper woman then the story would take a whole new twist. I resolved to think that the wallpaper woman was the main character, which is what she resolves herself to be in the end as well. I find it interesting to see how oblivious her husband is to her problems the entire time. I would think that a physician would have some observation skills and see her problem worsening. Besides, the man barely spent any time with the woman and thought he knew her entire life. I don’t understand how one gets under the impression that they can learn everything about a person from only a few encounters. I find it just fascinating in the end, when the main character truly takes on the persona of the woman in the wallpaper and almost loses her human functions. It scares me to think that things like this can really happen. 

Essay Summary: "Edith Wharton's Dream of Incest: Ethan Frome" by Ferda Asya

Since Edith Wharton wrote the novella, Ethan Frome, there have been thousands of people reading it with thousands of different opinions on the characters, their development (or lack thereof), and how they got down on the page. In her essay, "Edith Wharton's Dream of Incest: Ethan Frome," Ferda Asya analyzes the work as a glimpse into the author's own personal life.

The author believes that Edith's Wharton had an incestuous love for her father which came out in her novella. Asya points to Wharton's childhood as evidence of her attraction to her father. Based on autobiographical information from the Wharton, it can be concluded that Wharton loved her father, while she feared her mother. In her upbringing, she was only taught to speak and feel what the family deemed appropriate and therefore never spoke her true feelings. Asya believes that these conditions resulted in her feeling an incestuous love for her father that resulted in unconscious feelings of guilt.

Asya goes on to say that her guilty feelings about how she felt for her father come out in the story of Ethan Frome in the incestuous relationships between the characters, particularly Ethan and Mattie. During her life, Wharton was married for a short time. She also was having an extramarital affair with another man who she was attracted to. In this way, Asya points out, Ethan Frome became Edith Wharton. In her first draft of the novella, Asaya says Wharton had included less physical attraction between Ethan and Mattie. However, when Wharton was alone while her husband was away, and even more so afterwords, she had an even greater longing for her father. It was after this that she added further physical/sexual attraction between the characters. Wharton, though, still had a guilty conscious over her longings. This is what drove her to add in the tragic accident and ending of the story. Asya says that she felt that y punishing the characters of Ethan and Mattie, she was punishing herself subconsciously. Overall, the Asya points out that her incestuous longing for her father is what provided the most influence on the novella. 

This seems to be a very valid argument that Asya writes about. It makes total sense to me that Wharton would have had guilty feelings over her longings for her father due to the way she grew up. I wouldn’t be surprised if those longings were a result of her childhood as well. Asya does an excellent job of organizing her points and I agree with her interpretation. It is very interesting how the novella progressed between drafts 1 and 2. What I would have liked to know is how much contact, if any, that Wharton had with her father after her childhood. Whatever the case, Ferda Asya’s “Edith Wharton's Dream of Incest: Ethan Frome” was a fantastic, well thought out article that shed new light on my understanding of the article.

Turtles

I like turtles....

Sonnet 146 Reflection

This sonnet is very strange because it doesn’t seem to be addressed to anyone, but in fact is more of a self-examination by Shakespeare. It’s really him looking at himself as two separate identities, a body and a soul. He questions what I believe to be his moralities in regards to the world. He asks himself whether or not is really worth going to try to get fancy things to wear and great food to eat when it in fact does not feed the soul. He then almost contradicts himself by saying that, for him, it may actually be just what does feed his soul and make him happy. He is a rather confusing man. I was particularly intrigued by the couplet at the end. He is pretty much saying that it is possible to end death through death’s destruction by starving your body. By this I think he means that ou can live forever eternally by tending to your soul.

Sonnet 130 Reflection

This is a rather amusing sonnet to me. It takes the form of an Italian sonnet in many ways, but is quite opposite in many ways. The sonnet does compare the subject to many different objects, but in a negative way. Shakespeare basically says that all of the objects are more beautiful and/or attractive than the woman. He makes quite a stab for the time by saying how dark her complexion is which is looked down upon at this time. Yet at the end Shakespeare manages to bring it all back and say that despite all of this, Shakespeare loves her anyways. I have to wonder how the dark lady would have responded to such a unique way of complimenting and insulting her at the same time. Shakespeare is blatantly honest with all of his comparisons and has a very funny way of showing his love for the dark lady. If I were the dark lady reading this then I certainly would have enjoyed it.

Sonnet 129 Reflection

This is the first of the dark lady sonnets I examined. It is the third of them all. I researched a little bit of the sonnets before and discovered that Shakespeare seemed to have weird mood swings about his feelings for the dark lady. The first I took as having a negative connotation towards her, the next he seemed in love with her, and now he seems to hate her again. This one is all about the idea of how lust affects men. He seems to have an extremely personal connection to the sonnet as if he and the dark lady had some sort of thing between the two of them, which caused him to go crazy. He says that the idea of lust makes you go crazy before you fulfill your want, you have a brief moment of joy as you fulfill it, and then you regret it afterwards. The first 12 lines are essentially one big rant about it, which furthers my suspicion that he was personally connected.

Sonnet 99 reflection

I did a little looking into the sonnets surrounding this particular sonnet and noticed something interesting about its relationship with sonnet 98. It seems as though 99 is a continuation of 98. Sonnet 98 talks about spring and its effect on everything and focuses greatly on the flowers. The focus on flowers continues into 99 and takes an even more negative turn going into 99 as Shakespeare says how the flowers are thieves. It was a really cool way for Shakespeare to compliment the young man. Unlike when he compared the boy to summer, this time it seems almost like he is comparing the beautiful flowers to the boy. He says how the flowers are only so beautiful because they stole the color from the boy. Before I had really thought about it I was confused as to why Shakespeare would include the flowers stealing the white from his complexion because I had forgotten that a white complexion was actually considered a good thing in this time period. Shakespeare did an excellent job in this particular sonnet.

Sonnet 73 Reflection

This is a very interesting sonnet. To my knowledge it is the first time that Shakespeare really talks about himself. He admits to the young man that he himself is old, effectively using the imagery of autumn where things begin to change color and die. He talks about himself in what is quite a negative tone about his beauty and then in the ends essentially tells the young boy that he should take it as a lesson that beauty doesn’t last forever. He basically is trying to tell the young man that he should appreciate his youth and good looks while he has them, a good life lesson for anyone. It is interesting to see Shakespeare deliver his message in this way. It seems almost as though their relationship has grown into almost a father-son sort of thing where Shakespeare is trying to guard and protect the young man. His sonnets seem to have a much more personal connection at this point which is really cool to explore.

Sonnet 55 Reflection

Again in this sonnet, Shakespeare focuses on how he can preserve the young man’s beauty forever in his poems. The idea of preserving it through a family is long gone and you now see the relationship between Shakespeare and the young man develop throughout time. I feel as though Shakespeare was rather bold in this, maybe even pompous. There are few people in this world that truly irritate me, but those that do are pompous in that they know they are good at something and go around bragging about it to the world. Shakespeare makes the claim that the young man will outlive princes and leaders who are glorified in statues because statues break down, but his poetry will live forever. It is strange to me that Shakespeare is so certain his poetry will last so long (although it is evident today that he was completely correct). I have to wonder if the young man actually gave thought to what Shakespeare said, or if he just dismissed the idea.

Sonnet 18 Reflection

This sonnet provides a rather interesting shift from the idea of preserving beauty by living forever through a family line to living forever through Shakespeare’s poetry. Shakespeare spends a ton of time in this sonnet by complimenting the young man and comparing him to a summer’s day. This is peculiar, as he does not once mention that the young man should start a family. It seems like this would be the shift away from this idea of family and into Shakespeare’s adoration and love for Mr. WH. It is also interesting to see how this almost relates to an Italian sonnet in that Shakespeare focuses on love (in what I’d consider a rather cheesy way). When I was younger and read this, I had actually thought that this was a sonnet to a woman Shakespeare must have loved. This is why it really stands out to me amongst the others.

Sonnet 12 Reflection

This sonnet once again seems to be about how the young man needs to reproduce to create a bloodline and carry on his amazing beauty through time. His beginning once again seems to be one of the more powerful visuals that stand out in my mind. He almost gives the young man a time limit on how long he has before his beauty will fade. It provides a sense of urgency to having children and grabs the reader/listener’s attention to make them more susceptible to the message of the entire thing. It seemed strange, though, that Shakespeare chooses to use summer as a visual. It is seen often throughout the sonnets that Shakespeare uses seasons to add to the effect of aging. Yet here he uses summer, a season of activity and beauty, when talking about how the young man is going to grow old and die. I would have liked to see the use of a colder season. It was a nice way to end the sonnet, though, by providing an opportunity to escape death through a bloodline.

Sonnet 2 Reflection

I feel that the first quatrain would have been very powerful to the boy. The imagery created in the idea of time carving wrinkles like trenches into the young man’s forehead would have had quite the impact. Shakespeare then almost taunts the young man, saying that he would not be able to prove that he had ever been beautiful. After all, he would have no line that carries his beauty on for him as a reference. Again, Shakespeare is trying to convince Mr. WH to begin a family. I have to wonder whether or not the young man listened to Shakespeare’s incessant prods to marry and have children. I imagine that as time goes on the warning would get old and more irritating than anything. Perhaps he thought this from the start and the sonnets are actually counter-productive. I imagine that we wouldn’t ever be given a hint of whether or not they seem to be working until later in the sonnets.

Sonnet 1 Reflection

This was an excellent way for Shakespeare to open up his sonnets. The first line tells a truth about human beings that most anyone would agree with as a general statement. Human beings naturally want more beauty. Assuming that Mr. WH agreed, as most people would, it would have set him up for the sonnet to have a greater meaning for him. Shakespeare talks a lot about how Mr. WH needs to procreate and uses the idea of everlasting beauty through family lineage as encouragement. After all, if what the first line states is true and human beings naturally want more beauty then this idea of passing beauty through the family would have been extremely appealing for Mr. WH. Shakespeare tells Mr. WH that he is essentially his own worst enemy. This is the first of the many sonnets that are supposed to get Mr. WH to start a family and I think would have made him much more receptive to the following sonnets.