One day you may be getting an award for having the "best smile” at school and all of a sudden the next, your best friend is drafted into the military. The world isn’t as “perfect” as the media, TV or many people put it to be. Susanna Kaysen, Charlotte Gilman and Frida Kahlo are great examples of what it’s like to drift apart society’s standards. As they talk about and show their feelings and thoughts about how society really is like, they present how their “abnormality” is treated in the eyes of others. Kaysen, Gilman and Kahlo all see the world in reality. Life isn’t easy and not everything is a certain “perfect” way. As these women drift from the “normality” of society they start to realize how women stereotypes, isolation and ignorance all
…show more content…
This trapped feeling and confusion is presented in Kahlo’s self portrait “The Broken Column”. The painting represents all the pain Kahlo feels emotionally and physically. Physically because she had been in a car accident which lead to constant pains and surgeries throughout the rest of her life. Kahlo places nails around her body symbolizing the points where she feels pain. The largest nail in the photo is placed in the area where her heart would be. This could be a representation of the painful emotions and heartbreak she has had with her husband Diego Rivera or the fact that no one really knows what she is feeling inside. Kahlo also reveals her breasts in the painting signifying that she has no insecurities of the fact that she is a woman who is different from society. As viewers first saw Kahlo’s self-portrait, they were shocked at how different it was and did not fully understand the meaning behind it, quickly assuming she was “crazy”. Kahlo shows all the emotions and feelings she has in her paintings in which she couldn’t express anywhere else. In addition, Kaysen explains how “Alice exploded like a volcano… Her face was puffy from crying and bashing around. She didn’t look at us. She was occupied by her own complicated thoughts— you could tell from the way she was squinting and moving her mouth” (Kaysen, 112). Alice had first appeared as a bright and bubbly character in the beginning of Kaysen’s memoir and shockingly, as it was to the other patients, she showed her first sign of “madness” through an outburst. After building up so many different emotions Alice had finally “exploded like a volcano” releasing not one but all the feelings she has built up over time. Without anyone to express these feelings to, she has had to keep them to herself. In relation, the narrator in “The Yellow
This trapped feeling and confusion is presented in Kahlo’s self portrait “The Broken Column”. The painting represents all the pain Kahlo feels emotionally and physically. Physically because she had been in a car accident which lead to constant pains and surgeries throughout the rest of her life. Kahlo places nails around her body symbolizing the points where she feels pain. The largest nail in the photo is placed in the area where her heart would be. This could be a representation of the painful emotions and heartbreak she has had with her husband Diego Rivera or the fact that no one really knows what she is feeling inside. Kahlo also reveals her breasts in the painting signifying that she has no insecurities of the fact that she is a woman who is different from society. As viewers first saw Kahlo’s self-portrait, they were shocked at how different it was and did not fully understand the meaning behind it, quickly assuming she was “crazy”. Kahlo shows all the emotions and feelings she has in her paintings in which she couldn’t express anywhere else. In addition, Kaysen explains how “Alice exploded like a volcano… Her face was puffy from crying and bashing around. She didn’t look at us. She was occupied by her own complicated thoughts— you could tell from the way she was squinting and moving her mouth” (Kaysen, 112). Alice had first appeared as a bright and bubbly character in the beginning of Kaysen’s memoir and shockingly, as it was to the other patients, she showed her first sign of “madness” through an outburst. After building up so many different emotions Alice had finally “exploded like a volcano” releasing not one but all the feelings she has built up over time. Without anyone to express these feelings to, she has had to keep them to herself. In relation, the narrator in “The Yellow