Essay about Lives Of Girls And Women by Alice Munro

The character, Delia Jones, in Sweat and the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper are personalities that are significantly persuaded by what their societies considered to be acceptable roles and behaviors for married women. However, throughout both works, both personalities opposed these norms to overcome the obstacles in their respective lives. Delia in Sweat was a washwoman, which made her the sole financial provider of her household. Her husband, Sykes, did not work at all and also challenged the era’s social standards by carelessly spending Delia’s hard earned money. Delia wanted to wash her clothes when she came back from church on Sunday. Although it was

She writes characters that are realistic and also relatable to a younger audience. The audience views the story from Delphine’s first person perspective. In the beginning of the book Delphine describes herself as tall for her age, having a plain face, and someone who uses plain words (Williams-Garcia, 2010). From the beginning, the audience gets a sense of who Delphine is through descriptions and dialogue. Delphine is someone that many children between the ages of nine and twelve can relate to. Delphine is still a kid who wants to have fun, but she is almost becoming a teenager. She wants to have fun, but realizes she has to be the responsible one for her sisters. She is a realistic character because she has many other character traits besides being plain. Later the audience discovers that Delphine can be stubbornly independent and defiant, and these very traits lead her to consider the new ideas she confronts (Stevenson, 2010). Through the conflict, Delphine is exposed to new situations and environments. Her journey to discover the truth about The Black Panthers and her mother lead her to take risks and try new things. Delphine’s character development, and that of her sisters, alludes to theme of looking at things from a different

From the very beginning, the reader notices the psychological and verbal abuse that Sykes puts on Delia. It was a Sunday and Delia decided to get ahead on her work for the week by separating piles of clothes by color. Fear then came

     As she lies on her bed, Delia gains a moment of comfort, and a getaway from her great disdain. She is able to create a spiritual barrier from the mistreatments she receives from her unscrupulous husband. The bed is her Eden, her only resource for relaxation and a content being. Even the hamper in the bedroom is the only group of clothing that is considered neat and tidy, representing the cleanliness of the room. Everywhere else in the house, Sykes would step on and trample over the clothing Delia had to clean. He had no respect for his wife and her work. The bedroom used to be the only place that hadn’t been defiled by Sykes, until he slept with Bertha in it. Knowing of this travesty brings Delia over the edge.

Sykes personality is totally different than Delia’s. Sykes Jones is physically and emotionally cruel to Delia. He is immoral and unfaithful; furthermore he takes the money that is earned from Delia's tough labor and squanders it away on his mistress, Bertha. Whereas Sykes may be strong in body, he does not have any belief in God. Sykes in a sense can be compared to the devil because like the devil he drained Delia of her beauty, joy and happiness that she once possessed. This point is brought up in the story when Joe Clarke and the village men are talking about Delia and Sykes ” …But dey squeeze an’ grind an’ wring every drop uh pleasure dat’s in ‘em out” (443). According to Davis Masson, who wrote, Essays Biographical and Critical “All sadness and melancholy come from the devil” (86). Once their marriage starts to fall apart, Sykes uses Delia’s anxiety of snakes against her. Andre’ Ménez, who wrote The Subtle Beast, states, “Being sometimes poisonous, hidden in the shadows; slowly and mutely guiding, snakes have often been deemed powerful and shifty, evil creatures whose major aim was to frustrate the natural and proper development of life” (9).

Delia represents the good in the story. She remains calm, level-headed, and spiritually in tune despite her husband‘s determination to make her miserable. Once a "right pretty li'l trick," Delia is now worn and dried out like sugar cane that's been chewed to no end (“Sweat” 43). However her soul remains strong as she turns to her spirituality for comfort and hope. She has smarts although uneducated and the fact that she built her own house and now supports her and her husband by washing white

Delia is a hard working woman who uses her faith in God to guide and protect her from her husband’s physical and emotional abuse. She, as a protagonist, is physically weak but yet spiritually strong. Sykes, in the story, tormented Delia in many ways throughout the story. One incident was with the bull horn when he tried to scare Delia while she was sorting

Not only does he drain her financially, but he has also abused her mentally and emotionally for the most of their marriage. Delia reminds Sykes that all she does is "Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and Sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!" from the fifteen years she has been washing laundry and laments (Hurston 278). However, despite all the cruelty that is happening, the author still portrays her persona with great compassion. Delia has enormous love, but soon discovers that she has the capacity to hate as much as she loves which has developed from her long-suffering life with Sykes. The author creates Delia based off her own life of being a Christian woman, therefore, in the story "Sykes is clearly wrong throughout the story, and Delia is right in living out the principles of Christian love, tolerance, and humility" (Banks). The importance of this quote is that it puts Delia's character into perspective and reveals why the way she is. The author's beliefs and practices are demonstrated through Delia and explain her actions in the story.

In reading the story it is easy to see that Sykes becomes somewhat jealous of Delia. At first, he did all that he could to win Delia’s heart and keep it. As said by Walter Thomas, one of the minor characters in the story, “he useter be so skeered uh losin’ huh, she could make him do some parts of a husband’s duty” (Hurston 4). Yet somehow, Sykes falls out of love with Delia early in their marriage and that’s when his oppression over her began. He not only wears her down by beating her and ultimately changing her appearance, he also abuses her mentally. He resented not only the fact that Delia was the only one of the two that was financially stable within the household, but he mostly resented her job and the reality that she was comfortable with washing clothes for the “white folks”. Time and time again he tried everything in his power to make sure she didn’t finish her days work as a wash woman. For example he shows his disgust with her job when he comes home in the beginning of the story an sees his wife working, “he stepped roughly upon the whitest pile of things, kicking them helter-skelter as he crossed the room” (Hurston). He blatantly disrespects her and sends the message that no matter what he

Although this angers Delia to hear, she simply reminds Sykes that she spends all of her time supporting them, and has done nothing but work, sweat, and pray for the fifteen years that she had been married to him. Delia eventually tells Sykes “Dat’s de reason Ah got mah letter from de church an’ moved mah membership to tuh Woodbridge – so Ah don’t haftuh take no sacrament wid yuh” (Hurston 569). Before she falls asleep that night, she reflects on the events of the evening, and finds some peace through her faith that Sykes would eventually get what is coming to him when she says aloud “Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil’s back, is got to come under his belly” (Hurston 565). It is also important to note that rather than give Sykes exactly what he has coming to him, Delia’s beliefs, both moral and religious, prevent her from taking action because she trusts that eventually God will take care of Sykes for the wrong he has done. We can see a bit of foreshadowing as to the fate of Sykes in the story when he assures everyone he is a snake charmer and can charm the deadly diamondback and says “Ah’m a snake charmer an’ knows how to handle ‘em. Shux, dat ain’t nothin’” (Hurston 568).

First, Delia had to stand up to her husband by expressing her true feelings to him and to show that she was no longer afraid to stand up for herself, “she seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him greatly, coming from her. It cowed his and he did not strike her as he usually did.” (Hurston 350). I believe that the snake represented her fear and her feeling of helplessness. But rather than letting it consume her, she let it, literally, consume her husband. Despite a rather gruesome ending, the story ends in a place of empowerment and the character is now in control of her own

"If it were not Bertha it would be someone else," she told herself. Before finally falling asleep, she found herself talking aloud, concluding that Sykes was going to "reap his sowing." After organizing her thoughts, she was able to spiritually fortify herself against him, and she slept. She slept until his arrival when he rudely kicked her feet and snatched the cover away. In silent triumph she ignored his comments and allowed him his side of the bed.

In “Sweat” adoration and hatred continuously go back and forth and Delia even “attempted friendliness, but she was repulsed each time” (1092). The despair and isolation Delia felt in the end of the story, perhaps even more than the straightforward and steadily building anger, is what caused her to allow him to die in the end.

     At the same time, the readings of the women's masculinity and androgyny must be similarly reconsidered. While Irving reads Lena as one who "conforms more readily than Ántonia" and assimilates in a manner "too complete" in that "she, like Jim, is lethargic" (100), I would argue that Lena's refusal to marry and her achievement of the independent, successful life she sought belie any ready categorization of reinforced hegemony, undermining standard patriarchal demands; and her success can be contrasted with Jim's loveless marriage and the vague reference to the "disappointments" that have failed to quell his "naturally romantic and ardent disposition" (4). Similarly, as Gilbert and Gubar highlight, the happiness of the "masculine" hired girls stands in stark contrast with the emotional restriction to which town wives are subjected: "Energetic and jolly, Mrs. Harling must stop all the activities of her household so as to devote herself entirely to her husband" (197). While it may be true that "their disturbing androgynous qualities, and their unwillingness to accept traditional female roles" position the hired girls as "outsiders" (Wussow 52) and that these facts can be read as critical of the feminine, it seems more

“Boys and Girls” is a short story, by Alice Munro, which illustrates a tremendous growing period into womanhood, for a young girl living on a fox farm in Canada, post World War II. The young girl slowly comes to discover her ability to control her destiny and her influences on the world. The events that took place over the course of the story helped in many ways to shape her future. From these events one can map the Protagonist’s future. The events that were drawn within the story provided the Protagonist with a foundation to become an admirable woman.