John N. Mitchell

everyday activities. They rent an estate for the summer, John her husband, decides that she should stay in the room upstairs which is desolated with neglected furniture and the yellow paper. The narrator is not attached to the room, but she obeys her husband. She isolated in the room with nothing to do, expect stare endlessly at the wallpaper, she finds it repulsive, but notices a pattern to appear within the paper itself. Weeks go by she explains to John that she wants to see relatives, but…

“In an Artist’s Studio” is a short Petrarchan sonnet written by Christina Rossetti in England during the year 1856. The sonnet encompasses the persona of the author who is watching an artist paint a portrait of a young woman. As the work progresses, the painter fails to capture the realistic beauty of his model, and begins fantasizing of the perfection she could be. Rossetti, being aware of gender inequality in this era, uses the subtle message of this sonnet to propose that the value of a woman…

Throughout Chapter 11 of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”, readers were introduced to Mrs. Dubose, a traditional Maycomb lady with a two-sided personality. Near the start of the chapter, Mrs. Dubose was introduced as a rather harsh and vicious lady, an example of this is demonstrated through Mrs. Dubose comments towards Jem and Scouts attitude in the beginning of the chapter. However, as the chapter gradually develops, her weak inner nature is shown, an example of this is depicted when she…

is put in a nursery with barred windows, suggesting that she is incapable of controlling herself around windows and in a room. Her husband, John refers to her as “a blessed little goose” and a “little girl,” and also spoke in the third person in response to a question she asked, as though he felt she was not even worth speaking to (134, 139). Furthermore, John is portrayed as controlling her, even when she is merely in the room, with the lines, “He is very careful and loving and never lets me…

overarching claims because of the dependence the narrator has for her husband John. Although women were more progressive by the turn of the twentieth century, women were still regarded as inferior to men in marriage. Gilman uses a secluded room to illustrate how John’s…

presents John as the embodiment of the socially accepted patriarchal authority permitted to dictate a woman’s life through the abuse of male authority in conjunction with his occupational authority, in…

Gender roles have historically been depicted as the man being the stronger sex while females are subservient and in charge of all of taking care of men and all of their needs. Odysseus’s wife Penelope in Homer’s The Odyssey and Hisham Matar’s mother, Fawzia Tarwah in his memoir The Return are pampered wives who have to step into larger roles when their husbands are suddenly no longer present in the household. The empowering strength that each of these women has to find within themselves is…

In the poem, “I cannot live with you”, by Emily Dickinson, the narrator expresses her love and despair for lover whom she cannot be with. The narrator suffers immensely because of her lover, hence why she cannot be with them in present time or in the afterlife. She is in great agony as living with her lover would be a disgrace to the world and to God. Forcing her to believe that the only way to actually live in this world is to live apart− loving each other from afar. Throughout the poem, Emily…

Everyone makes poor decisions in their life that later has an effect on them. In three short stories by Kate Chopin, she explains how many people often make irresponsible decisions which eventually leads to dissatisfaction. With this in mind, the story Regret discusses how a woman rejected a proposal to live a life she later regretted. Including, Desiree’s Baby, which depicts how a young man decided to send his wife and child elsewhere because of their race. In addition to, The Story of An Hour…

Flannery O'Connor often used common stereotypes in her short stories, only to subvert them later in order to change, or at least make her audience aware of their perception or judgments of people. Flannery O'Connor’s writing style and critique of culture can be a slap in the face to many of her readers. Upsetting her audiences’ expectations and judgments of people seems to be her specialty, and is something that she continuously does throughout her writing. A couple of her characters that…