Katie Rommely Analysis

The Glass Castle's Themes Everybody has someone who has raised them, and the results of how someone was raised whether it be good or bad can result in how the child ends up as an adult. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls has to deal with a lot of things growing up such as Peculiar Parenting Styles, alcoholism, and living in poverty. Because of the things she had to go through growing up, it made her self-reliant and very independent. Sometimes though, many kids dealing with such harsh living conditions may have an opposite effect on people such as Jeanette's sister, Maureen.

It is clear that Francie loves Johnny more than anyone else in the world, nevertheless, she owes her motherly attributes to Sissy Rommely. Sissy, Francie’s aunt, is kind and caring toward all people regardless of the age, race or gender. Francie and all who know Sissy view Sissy as a mother figure, despite her promiscuous reputation. Francie believes that Sissy is loose with men because of her determination to give as much as she can to anyone. Francie adores Sissy, and Sissy’s maternal actions are the inspiration to Francie’s fantasies about starting a family of her own. Sissy makes frequent visits to the Nolan house and constantly checks on the children’s well-being, just as a mother would watch over her own children. If someone mistreats one of the children, such as Francie’s elementary school teacher, Sissy makes sure to give them a piece of her mind. Sissy’s protective nature of the Nolan children shows Francie the lifestyle of a caring mother.

Social competition is a very important central theme in the short story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”. F. Scott Fitzgerald does an excellent job portraying social competition when it comes to females and competition between popularity and acceptance. Girls can be quite viscous and its quite evident in this short story; one example, in particular, is the competition between Bernice and Marjorie. Bernice and Marjorie engage in competition with each other over many things including; Fitting into society, the values of a woman, boys, and each other’s reputation. F Scott Fitzgerald’s short story becomes a ruthless competition of a “new woman” between two main characters. Who will win? You’ll just have to keep on reading…

Flannery O’Connor introduces her reader’s too unique short stories. They are “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, having too similar characters in different setting, but with the same symbolic meaning. The comparison between Hugla from “Good Country People” to the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to find” is interesting, because they both suffer the same fate. In every short story O’Connor has created a intellectual individual who comes to a realization that their beliefs in there ability to control their lives and the lives of other are false. They enviably become the vulnerable, whereas they assumed it would be different. O’Connor has placed two misguide characters, that deem themselves to be manipulative and compulsive. At the end up of each short story they become vulnerable. Hugla from “Good Country People” and the grandmother from “A Good

Does deviating from one’s gender norms inevitably doom one down a spiral of moral corruption? Tim O'Brien, author of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Ernest Hemingway, author of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, certainly seem to hold this view, as evident by the fates of the major female characters in their respective works. The deviance of the major female characters in both works appears to corrupt not only themselves, but also pollute their partners, causing them to suffer injury or harm as a result. The degree of injury ranges from negligible, like Fossie’s demotion and broken heart, to fatal, like the bullet that rips through Macomber’s skull. It begs the question, are these stories meant to serve as cautionary tales for their female readers, or possibly for their husbands, so they may recognize gender deviance and stop it in its tracks before their wives transform into Margot Macomber or Mary Anne Bell? This essay will analyze what such characters say about pervading views of women, both in society and in literature.

Unlike her father and sister Jeanette shows us that it is capable to reach your full potential regardless of what you have gone through. Even through the hardships of her childhood Jeanette is set on moving to New York with Lori and becoming a reporter. By putting her past aside she is able to achieve this and finally reaches her full potential. “I still went into the office in the city once a week, but this was where John and I lived and worked, our home—the first house I’d ever owned. Mom and Lori admired the wide planked floorboards, the big fireplaces, and the ceiling beams made from locust posts, with gouge marks from the ax that had felled them.” Unlike any of the houses she lived in as a child, her current home goes above and beyond. If you compare Jeannette to her sister Maureen it’s clear that becoming all that you can be depends solely on yourself. Maureen went through the same experiences as Jeanette, yet Jeanette is the one who decides to do something with her life, while Maureen continues to let her life be the same as it always was.

Through choice of detail and diction, Edith Wharton justifies Frome’s adultery by juxtaposing the warm, charismatic nature of Mattie to the cold, barren one of Zeena. While his wife speaks in a “monotonous” (129) “flat whine” (32) her cousin’s “suffuse[s] him with joy” (44). Despite the fact that both women are frail and sickly, Zeena’s “puckered throat” and “protruding wrists” (47) disgusts Ethan, while Mattie is so “small and weak-looking that…it wr[i]ng[s] his heart” (106). Throughout the novel, Wharton’s choice of detail drastically contrasts the two women, one a vivacious, vigorous beauty, the other a walking, whining corpse. From their physical looks alone, Zeena is hard to love—sterile and dark—while Mattie—fertile and warm—is easy to. The author intentionally feeds this bias, allowing the readers to feel the same temptation that Frome has in the novel. However, he

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, men and women hold very different roles. Not only are women the weaker sex, but their worth is dependant on how powerful and high up their husband is. Because of this, women are forced to be silent and are not allowed an opinion. If a woman shows traits that are considered manly, such as intelligence, determination, or control, she is considered masculine, and therefore unattractive. From a very young age, the main character, Janie, is taught that in order to find a suitable husband, she needs to suppress her independent personality. As a result of this belief being engraved into her, Janie does not realize her worth, therefore she is involved three abusive relationships. For years, girls were taught to make themselves smaller so they do not threaten the male’s reputation. The reader sees that Janie is an example the mistreatment of females through Janie’s three marriages.

Blanche was a school teacher in Mississippi, but when she got fired for having intimate relationships with underaged boys, she moved in with her sister. Her sister, Stella is married to Stanley, who abuses her and yet she still does not leave him. Stella and Stanley have a toxic relationship, where they both have a mutual dislike for each other, but because of societal norms at the time, were unable to leave each other. Both female characters are victims to Stanley’s abuse and hurt ego. I personally do not like any of the characters, I do not get a good “feel” about them. They are all hurt in one way or another and do not know the correct way to express themselves. However, these character do remind me of how the society in third world countries expect families to be. In third world countries, men are the head of the households, and any women living under the roof is expected to follow their orders.

When the story begins, Mrs. Maloney is characterized as the epitome of the obedient and devoted wife that many people dream of. Though as the plot continues to develop, she undergoes events that change her into a woman whose internal devotions and actions are practically unrecognizable as she both kills her husband, and and realized that her true devotion is to herself and the safety of her and her unborn child, not to her husband. A pair of oppositional quotes that illustrate Mrs. Maloney’s difference of feelings related to her husband are, “For her, this was always a wonderful time of day. She knew he didn’t want to talk much until the first drink was finished, and she was satisfied to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone in the house,”

Lastly the dependence of men plays an extremely large role in this book. Williams uses Blanche’s and Stella’s dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South. Both Blanche and Stella see male companions as their only means to achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and their self-image. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without her physically abusive husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche

Thus, based on her wrong idea about identity, Connie contemns her older sister, June, for being too plain and considers that the true reason of her mother’s grumbles is that she is not pretty anymore, which reflects that Connie is childish in her judgments. Besides that, the fact that Connie herself is pretty makes her confident in her charm and full of vague desires and hopes for the future, including her dream about love. “Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this is were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs”(Oates 654). The description about how Connie thinks about love in her mind reflects Connie is a girl whose mind is filled with daydreams and popular music. All her knowledge about love is taken from the limited world she lives in, which is popular music and

James' manipulation of appearances in Daisy Miller as well as other character's notions of these appearances provides us with a novella of enigmatic and fascinating characters. Daisy, the most complicated of these ambiguities, is as mysterious as she is flirtatious. James gives her a carefully constructed enigmatic quality that leaves the reader wondering what her motivations were and who she truly was. He structures the novella in such a way as to stress the insights that the supporting characters provide into Daisy's character, weather accurate or erroneous. Despite their questionable reliability, they allow James to make commentary on both European and American cultures and social class.

Even though the girls are outside traditional moral and virtuous boundaries through their profession, they behave as though they were in polite society. Similarly, it seems although Fanny cannot fulfil the requirements expected of her in her chastity, she does in other aspects such as her fidelity, honesty and obedience. The paradoxical character of Fanny in these terms, presents a great threat to contemporary society, as Fanny has a place in society. Fanny ‘rewins’ her domestic life and lover in the end, travelling from a lower-class prostitute to a virtuous married lady.

All characters in the novel are living in a man’s world; nevertheless, the author has tried to change this world by the help of her characters. She shows a myriad of opportunities and different paths of life that woman can take, and more importantly she does not show a perfect world, where women get everything they want, she shows a world where woman do make mistakes, but at the same time they are the ones that pay for these mistakes and correct them.