Book Review Of The Book 'Written On The Body'

A Story About The Body is about a man who think he has fallen in love with an almost sixty-year-old woman. Both the younger man and the woman work at an artist’s colony during the summer. The woman was a Japanese painter, and the man was a composer. The woman’s art captivated the man, the way she moved her body and her hands. It states, “He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions.” Then one night, after a concert, the woman abruptly says that she knows that the young man wants to “have her”, but she has to be honest with him and tell him that she has had a mastectomy on both breasts. Shocked, the man states that he cannot handle this and he walks away to his home. The very next morning, the man wakes up to find a blue bowl on the porch that looks like it is filled with rose petals, but when he looks deeper he find that is filled with dead bees which eggs on the audience to do a in depth analysis into what is truly meant by this.

In the short allegory “The Birthmark”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a newly-wed couple becomes consumed by the existence of a small birthmark on the wife’s face. When the wife, Georgiana, allows her husband Aylmer, a scientist, to remove the birthmark, both realize that Georgiana will inevitably sacrifice her life for the sake of its removal. As the story progresses, so does the confliction of the newlyweds as they realize exactly what the birthmark symbolized to and for each other. Hawthorne’s hallmark use of symbolism also provides a ‘perfect’ glimpse into the mindset of two themes of psychological conflictions: perfectionism and codependency. Hawthorne seems to share this story as a possible moral of the hidden pathos we place upon the ones we love, and the invisible marks or standards we place upon ourselves for the ones we love.

In these paragraphs, the story's omniscient narrator takes us into Louise's mind. However, while the attitudes expressed are definitely Louise's there is no textual justification for also ascribing them to the narrator. Further, it would be a mistake to project them onto Chopin, for that would confuse narrator with author, a move that denies Chopin the full range of literary technique, and that would reduce this brilliant and subtle work of fiction to behind-the-scenes sermonizing.

The narrator is never directly introduced or ever called by a name. It is obvious that this narrator is a woman, married to a named John. His name is presented, and not hers, for a reason. It is to present the fact that within herself, within her marriage to John, and within society, she feels unimportant. Within her, she feels as though, she cannot be named like others can, as though she cannot be in the same human category. She doesn't see herself as

Authors across time have used various relationship models in their works of writing in order to communicate their beliefs about love. By examining the relationship between two unlike brothers in his short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin communicates his belief that the idea of love can save people. Jhumpa Lahiri, in her short story “Hell-Heaven” also shows that the idea of love can save people, but by the end the characters are only truly happy where there is acceptance. Both Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” and Lahiri short story “Hell- Heaven” while culturally different, use the trials and tribulations of their characters to prove that the idea of love is a saving force.

How his calloused fingers forever stained with the retentiveness of conflict brushed over his cheeks so lovingly it made Judal's quiver just slightly, his is eyes displayed kindness yet hid the true feeling of excruciating anguish, that of which Judal could not take away, and as his lips fitted his like an article of clothing, Judal could tell the unspoken story of many women whom had the pleasure of experiencing such a moment in the most intimate of ways, though Judal knew better that this moment was filled with nothing but admiration

When the readers meet the young, subordinated wife of a physician, who remains nameless throughout the entire story, perhaps hinting at the commonness of such situations where all those women are the same: faceless and nameless, this woman’s dilemma becomes obvious. She has been stripped off the only function a woman in those times had, the domestic one, due to the fact that she suffers from a mysterious illness which requires the infamous bed cure. Gradually, she is treated more and more as a child, unable and even forbidden to express herself in a creative way, namely to write, being persuaded that it cannot do any good to someone in her condition. This is why the protagonist (who is simultaneously the narrator), takes it upon herself to write a journal about her experiences and the mysterious woman that haunts her from the

In the beginning of the story the reader is introduced to the male dominant dynamics between the woman and her husband John. In fact, the woman is never given a name in the story, unlike John, signifying the denial of her importance. Furthermore, there is an immediate juxtaposition of characteristics, “John is practical…He has no patience…John laughs at me”

The beginning of the story sets the theme for the whole story. We are told about the heart condition that inflicts Louise. This is significant throughout the story. The heart condition is a symbolic way of describing her thoughts of oppression she felt about her marriage. She was trapped and isolated by the marriage. She felt the need to hide these feelings. Women of her era were supposed to be home and under their husbands command. The story has her going through this journey privately. That is significant in the fact that now in her husband’s passing, she will be alone. She will need to work through things by herself. She will be able to go through the whole process on her own, without being judged and persuaded to feel differently.

By the repetition of the words as a reader we come to understand the meaning behind the story and how Louise actually felt towards her husband. The theme of the story is mainly the forbidden joy of independence. Due to that the story was written years ago where women were very dependent to their husbands Louise actual feelings of joy and happiness towards her husband death was forbidden by society during this

For her article in the 1976 publication of the Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Helen Cixous writes, “Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Women must put herself into text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement” (Cixous 875). Kathy Acker does just this in her novel, Blood and Guts in High School. Unlike her male contemporaries, Acker took the risk of writing her own body into her text. As a woman who wrote from inside her skin and mind, she maintained an acute awareness that the metaphor of the body politic begins as a gendered experience.

The time frames presented by the two authors reveal the scene of women being considered as the weaker sex. The two stories, however, exemplify an inner longing of the feminine sex of independence and freedom from their husbands. It suggests an inherent ?soul? of the women to overcome the male domination by means of showing independence and the idea that they can live by themselves without the presence of husbands. In the life of Louise, it is her statement

The first poem in the collection is called ‘Body of a Woman’ and being the opening poem, it holds the responsibility of giving the reader an overall appearance of the collection as a whole. This is because this is the first impression the reader sees when opening the book and that imprints itself into the reader’s mind. The persona of the poem is presented as possessive and dominant. This is

The theme of female struggle against male dominancy is presented throughout the novel and the narrator,

The narrator is unknown to the readers but describes Catherine’s, and other characters inner thoughts, that would otherwise be reserved to them. Although it is Catherine that is made the main focus, “Catherine’s feelings, as she got into the carriage, were in a very unsettled state; divided between regret for the loss of one great pleasure, and the hope of soon enjoying another”, her narrative representation is sympathetic and pleasant but the third-person structure also allows for Catherine’s nature to be presented without confusing the