Silas Marner

The “The Yellow Paper” wall paper is a short story written in 1899 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The short story is about a middle-aged woman that suffers from depression has a mental breakdown during her stay at a rental house. During her stay at the rental house there is a yellow wallpaper in her bedroom that initially disgusts her but becomes her obsession before she breaks down. The yellow wallpaper plays an important role in this story because it causes the narrator to break down and…

John Steinbeck’s novella “The chrysanthemums” (1938) is a short story which encompasses the literary technique of realism (described by Harmon and Holman as focusing “on the immediate, the here and now”) and metaphors in order to “convey” Steinbeck’s criticism on economic and social conditions caused by “The wall street crash” (1929) – an economic crash which led to a period referred to as “The great depression”. Steinbeck uses metaphors “in order to express [his] particular idea[s]” about the…

The portrayal of the female characters in William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” depicts women in a subordinate light. The title of the story itself suggests a relative connection between a female and the traditional act of giving a rose as a statement of respect or courtship. Indeed, the story revolves around Emily Grierson who appears to have aged badly over the course of her disappointing life. Right from the beginning of the story, Faulkner establishes an assertion of women in…

Hannah Kent's novel, Burial Rites follows the events leading up to the central character, Agnes Magnusdottir's inevitable death in northern Iceland in 1829. Kent, has used the characters, setting and circumstances of the novel to explore the inequality grounded in gender and the hypocrisy of religion. She has used a range of techniques to highlight female oppression and to explore how a strict patriarchy affects women. Kent also wants the reader to consider how religion can frame the ethical…

In Know the Mother by Desiree Cooper, one of the stories that I found so intriguing was “Night Coming.” This is because the main characters Jason and Nikki have so much to them,I find they aren’t your regular married couple. In the beginning of the story, we see that Nikki might struggle with her anxiety and self-confidence. The opening scene is when Nikki is trying to unlock the door of her house, she is pretty frustrated and scared. She obviously doesn’t like the idea of being outside by…

Is John a good husband? While the relationship between John and the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be interpreted different ways, Rula Quawas the author of “A New Woman’s Journey into Insanity; Descent and Return in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” describes John as the narrator’s “jailer, policing every move and forbidding her to affirm her creative self. He denies her an autonomous existence as he tries to reshape her in accordance with all that being a wife/patient entails, including being…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and crusader for the handicapped. Born physically normal in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller lost her sight and hearing at the age of nineteen months to an illness now believed to have been scarlet fever. Through her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan’s extraordinary instruction, the little girl learned to understand and communicate with the world around her. She went on to acquire an excellent education and to become an important influence on the…

In the film, Shutter Island, flashbacks are used to explain what happened in Andrews life that lead him to being in a mental hospital. A specific scene where Andrew flashbacks about his wife, Dolores, standing in a room, that could be their old apartment, dry in the yellow dress telling him that he cannot leave yet. Andrew falls asleep in the bunk beds of his room alongside the workers of shutter island dreaming about his wife. This is a scene in the film where we get an understanding of Andrews…

In the novel Speak, it is written, “It is easier not to say anything…nobody really wants to hear what you have to say” (Anderson 9). Staying silent can be very dangerous because voice is power and it should have the ability to be heard and spoken. The ability of staying silent comes with all sorts of consequences; Melinda’s silence causes her to suffer mentally, physically, and emotionally. Silence is not a good source of great strength due to the fact that someone can ache internally;…

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about a mentally ill woman and her husband’s time at a vacation home. The story details his attempts to nurse the woman back to health. The story is set in Victorian times and the themes of the story reflect that. While staying in the home, the narrator is often cooped up in one bedroom. This isolation, coupled with society’s expectations of women at that time, cause her to dissolve into a complete nervous breakdown. “The Yellow…