In A New England Nun, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman writes vividly about the feelings of her character Louisa Ellis after her breakup with her new ex fiance Joe Dagget. But, the difference between this breakup and the average is the fact that Louisa is now old and seasoned as she has awaited for the averal of her fiance for fourteen years while he was off in Australia, only to have it broken off upon his return.…
The theme of “The Ballad of Lucy Whipple” is immigration and migration. The main focus of the book is the Whipple family moving to California during the gold rush in 1849. The Whipples along with many other people migrated during the book.…
Beginning with Stage One, the stage where the girls were first introduced to St. Lucy’s home. An exciting new establishment that the girls destroyed by lubricating on the beds, smashing light bulbs, and pawing at neat underwear piles (Russell, pg. 237). Afterwards the nuns took the girls outside, where they explored more and dug around and by the end of the stage paragraph they received their very first human name. During the first stage the girls began to adjust into their new environment by making it like their own, a dark and dirty.…
It’s said that when feeling alone, one should turn to a group of people for support. However, the sad reality is that often, when surrounded by people we don’t share the same views with, we feel even more secluded. This theme is present in both “The Cherry Orchard” by Antonin Chekov and “St. Lucy’s School for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell. In the works, main characters Madame Ranevsky and wolf-girl Mirabella are forced to adapt to a change they don’t want to undergo. Madame Ranevsky, who lived her life on a cherry orchard, is being asked to sell her home and to move on to a new life, one more urban and less extravagant. Mirabella, the youngest of the wolf girls, is sent to a reformatory girl’s…
The 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s directed by Blake Edwards and based on the novel of the same name, is about Holly Golightly a young woman who is living independently as a socialite in New York during the 60’s. The movie is regarded as a large reflection of American culture and the different values and opinions that were held by many people during the time. The movie is also a great example of filmmaking in the mid-20th century and how it compares to today’s style of filmmaking.…
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is a magical realism story about a group of girls, whose parents are wolves, being rehabilitated to live like human girls. They are taken to a Catholic school and are taught how to speak and act by nuns. It is about the action in the story but it can be interpreted to be about outcasts. One of the girls, Mirabella, is left out of things and doesn’t fit in, eventually she gets abandoned. This story shows us how an outcast might feel. Karen Russell’s style creates a memorable lesson.…
The Lords and the Mill Girls is a chapter in the Portrait of America book that details how democratic ideals do not mix well with the profit motive. One such example of this was the Lowell Mill in Massachusetts; originally it was a famous international attraction, a model of enlightened industrial management. Unfortunately, Lowell mill changed. It gradually became like the everyday grim and crowded mill town, another "squalid slum."…
The House On Mango Street, this is a book with drama, action, sorrow, and some happiness. The book by Sandra Cisnero,. has a lot to do with being a Mexican American. Now I do not know what it's like to be a Mexican American and how back in this time period they were treated, but how the explains not the best.…
James H. White’s, Seminary Girls (1897), was a mise-en-scène, social actuality -scenic (documentary) comedy, filmed with a stationary camera in a single shot, long shot According to Cinema in Context “In general, pre-1904 films used the long shot. The long shot (showing the entire length of the human body, also called a “tableau shot” or a “proscenium-arch shot”) arguably emerged from a theatrical perspective, as it replicated the point of view of the front row of a theatre.” There did not appear to be any editing, as it seemed to be 20 seconds of one roll of film.…
Any reader would thoroughly enjoy The Girl with Seven Names, as the storyline is truly eye-opening. As an American, we have never been forced to look at the freedoms we take for granted in such a light. One would be flabbergasted at the violent execution described, as well as the brainwashing that begins at such an early age. As Hyeonseo describes the horrors and joys of living in “the greatest country on Earth” it is impossible to process. The patriotism that comes from living in a country that does not actively teach such things is overwhelming, so to imagine the blind trust that North Koreans place in their government and in no one or anything else is astonishing. As the storyline progressed and Hyeonseo’s names evolved with her, and one…
According to writer Thomas LeClair, “The elegant, measured prose of Housekeeping transforms a year in the life of two small-town teenage girls into a profound meditation on loss, transiency, and the shelters we use for protection” (389). The three main characters Ruth, Lucille, and Sylvie all discover their sense of self and a place to call home. Artist Rosemary Booth writes:…
A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, portrays a young married woman, Nora, who plays a dramatic role of deception and self-indulgence. The author creates a good understanding of a woman’s role by assuming Nora is an average housewife who does not work; her only job is to maintain the house and raise the children like a stereotypical woman that cannot work or help society. In reality, she is not an average housewife in that she has a hired maid who deals with the house and children. Although Ibsen focuses on these “housewife” attributes, Nora’s character is ambitious, naive, and somewhat cunning. She hides a dark secret from her husband that not only includes borrowing money, but also forgery. Nora’s choices were irrational; she handled the situations very poorly in this play by keeping everything a secret. The way that women were viewed in this time period created a barrier that she could not overcome. The decisions that had the potential to be good were otherwise molded into appalling ones. Women should have just as many rights as men and should not be discriminated by gender; but they should also accept consequences in the same way without a lesser or harsher punishment.…
Betty Friedan launches her nonfiction account of the twentieth-century crisis among American women by describing their trouble as so deeply ingrained that few people can see it. She calls the trouble with women’s identity “the problem that has no name” and says it has no name because women are told to believe—and often do believe—that “the problem” doesn’t exist. The problem, as Friedan describes it, is that women are increasingly taught to believe that their existence and happiness is limited to the roles of spouse, mother, and housewife. Because so few women are able to recognize that these roles are limited or that they might be unhappy with them, the problem has “no name.”…
In “Florence Nightingale” Lytton Strachey uses diction, tone, and symbols to define his views on Florence Nightingale. He does this in order to show how heroes are more complex than just their accomplishments.…
In the Philosophy of Nonsense: The Institutions of Victorian Nonsense Literature, Jean-Jacques Lecercle explicates literary nonsense: “[it] both supports the myth of an informative and communicative language and deeply subverts it by first whetting then frustrating the readers deep-seated need for meaning.” Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, fabricates a humorous, yet visceral reflection of the world we live in by juxtaposing Alice’s need to implement the rules of the world above and Wonderland’s creatures’ explicit refusal of doing so. The conversations between the Mad Hatter and Alice at the tea party about Time as an abstract concept versus a lawless man, who demands appeasement, showcase the inconsistency of Wonderland by parodying…