Love in A.S. Byatt's Possession, Zadie Smith's White Teeth, and the Full Monty by Peter Cuttaneo

Paul Newman once said, “People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked” (74). There is no such thing as the perfect relationship, however, being involved in a healthy relationship is essential for a person to feel valued, safe, and happy. Unfortunately, in the situation of Kelly Sundberg’s personal essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” and Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of An Hour,” include extreme examples of unhealthy relationships. The essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” shares painful experiences of Sundberg’s physical and emotional abusive relationship with her husband Caleb, while “The Story of an Hour,” shares a rare reaction of a married woman, Louise Mallard, who explores her emotions cautiously when hearing about the death of her husband. Each woman faces their own prison created by their husbands. The two marriages represent the figurative meaning of doors being locked in a marriage. Both pieces of literature convey the theme of confinement by using the literary devices of foreshadowing, imagery, and conflict.

There is a fine distinction in the fabric of DNA that separates men and women- one has the opportunity to give life and one does not. Although beneath skin and flesh is the foundation of a body, the bones. What every human being also shares with each other is the ability to cast emotions. However throughout history, men have been brought up to be seen as if they have little to no feelings at all and women are to be too emotional. Everyone has the potential to feel pain at some point in their lives. Objectification is the central concept dear to feminist thinkers. Many think that objectification is something that remains in history, but it continues to be a problem in modern society. F. Scott Fitzgerald applies this to the characters in his book: The Great Gatsby. The underlying theme of the podcast: Relationship Radio dealt with the objectification of human beings. Aidan Buckner, Olivia Lujan, and Penelope Tucker’s three podcasts: You Can Buy Me Love, Daisy, Money and Usage, and Puppy Love tie the notion of objectification through the relationships: Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, George and Myrtle Wilson, and Tom and Myrtle Wilson through the book The Great Gatsby.

b. The novel uses sensory details to make this view of the destruction and suffering as vivid as possible, with Jake witnessing “sour wet” smells and assuming that there were dead bodies all over the place under the rubble (15).

It is human nature to have issues of balance within any relationship. For example, the knight, desperate in need, found an old woman who knew the answer to save his life. In order for him to receive vindication, he had to pledge his life to her. The old woman at last revealed the answer, that all women want sovereignty over their husbands and lovers (“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” 170-71). In contrast, Walter forces Griselda to be submissive at all times as he tests her loyalty and obedience by pretending to kill both of her children and asking for a phony divorce. One tale appears to suggest that the male should be inferior to his wife as the other tale promotes that the woman should be at least steadfast in adversity and obedient to her significant other. The issue of an unbalance relationship is still a part of modern society because the majority of people are familiar with the saying, “Who wears the pants in the relationship?” That joke derives from the struggle of dominance in a relationship. Yet the characters’ opinions of where they believe a woman belongs in a relationship are slightly polar; both stories are constructed around the theme of struggle in a relationship (“The Clerk’s Tale” 217-24).

Children often learn about their society’s ideals of love and relationships from fairy tales. Told from a female perspective, the poem Puce Fairy Book by Alice Major challenges and disproves the unfeasible and degrading expectations that women are held to, specifically by men in relationships. The motivation of the speaker, addressing a male counterpart, is to say that she does not care for other’s opinions of her faults and does not desire such unaccepting people in her life. Major’s use of fairy tale allusions and metaphors play an important role in establishing the central message that is the “perfect” ideological image that society has created for women to conform to are unrealistic and

The reek of death hangs in the air throughout the land. Filling the mouths of those who lived in this abandoned land was the taste of burnt garlic. The screams and cries of terror undistinguishable between beast and human fill the ears of the last ones living. The sky, which was lit by the glow of fires, is grey and empty. Decaying bodies and

Wow! Reading the point of view of a first-person narrative reveals so much about the author’s thoughts. While reading first-person narratives, it enables readers to understand more information throughout the story. Hearing the thoughts and ideas right from the character makes it easier to make connections. In the short story “George and the Jewels” by Jane Smiley, the main character Abby goes through a transition from disliking horses to understanding them. In “Black Beauty” by Anna Sewell, the story is narrated by a horse who is introduced into a new environment where he has to become used to being rode every day. By examining Black Beauty and The George and Jewels, it shows that both passages use first-person point of view to develop

Love between two genders is one of the most common themes in writing. In literature, love is often praised, appreciated and cherished. Another common theme in writing is the looming specter of inequality between men and women, which has been strongly depicted throughout history and is still worryingly present in the world today. It is extremely interesting to realize that though love is treasured and valued, in most cases, it takes both genders to create love, and those genders are often separated by inequality. Both these themes coincide well together; the clash of love and gender inequality is interestingly captivating. In John Updikes A&P and Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, both stories send a conclusive message to the reader that equality between both sexes in love and attraction is almost impossible; one gender will always be more powerful than the other.

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 Jane Austen’s Persuasion, unlike many of her previous works the protagonists involved are middle aged lovers; Anne and Wentworth, who struggled with love before. The narrator of the story has given up on Anne’s prospective of marriage, and so has Anne; however, knowing the conformist pattern of protagonists in her novels, the reader can expect the outcome of Anne’s relationship. Indeed, as it becomes known that the Crofts are to be chosen as the future residents of Kellynch Hall and the possibility of Wentworth again appearing in front of Anne exposes itself, there is a sense of recurrence in the events that initially led the falling apart of the two before. Persuasion is a suitable title for this novel, as must reconsider her previous

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.

This patriarchal ideology expresses female submissiveness towards male dominance and is supported through the clergyman, Mr. Collins, and his proposal to Elizabeth. During Mr. Collins's proposal, Elizabeth rejects Mr. Collins by replying, ‘"I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy and I am convinced that I am the last women in the world who would make you so"’ (Austin 74). Elizabeth insinuates clearly and strongly that Mr. Collins could not give her the life and happiness she desires in a marriage, yet he still continues on stating his reasons of his qualifications for marriage. Despite Elizabeth’s rejections, Mr. Collins assures that he is not “unworthy of [her] acceptance, or that the establishment that [he] could offer would be any other than highly desirable… and [his] proposals will not fail of being accepted”’ (Austin 74). The significance of the proposal centers on Mr. Collin’s reasons for marriage and the influence of patriarchal dynamics surrounding them. Even though Elizabeth rejects Mr. Collins multiple times, it does not invoke him to change his mind in his proposal, but rather he continues on explaining how his status in society and lifestyle is “highly desirable” and how it would bring him happiness but not necessarily to his spouse. This shows the male dominance that men hold over women as he assumes early on that Elizabeth will without out doubt agree to the marriage to bring him happiness, thus illustrating the expectation of female submissiveness towards male desires in the patriarchy. Ultimately, Elizabeth’s incapability of expressing her rejection to Mr. Collins's proposal the first time, it supports the oppression of women gender roles and their expected submissiveness towards the male gender through this marriage

In the story the author portrays the protagonist differently from the other characters because she talks about the physical appearance of other characters and when it comes to the narrator we have no idea what she looks like but she is developed partially through her relationship with other characters, although we the readers do come the find out that the narrator is around the age of 15-17 years old and we can assume that she has a bad relationship with her parents because first of all she talks about them maybe once or twice in the whole story and second of all we know that they sent her to boarding school so that alone proves that her relationship with them is lacking. As readers we also know that she has trouble opening up in the story she say “To open your heart. You open your legs but can’t, or don’t dare anyone, to open your heart” (237). This is a prime example of how author characterizes the protagonist as broken and emotionally damaged. And as the story progress the author becomes more honest with us the readers and herself, she starts the reveal the pain she is in and how lonely she feels. The narrator gives us an example of how she feels after sex by saying “After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickness at

“Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). In the novel Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, it tells a story of a futile love between Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver. Ethan Frome was born on a farm in Starkfield, Massachusetts and has spent nearly the totality of his life there. He went away to college at Worchester but begrudgingly, returned after his father’s death and stayed to take care of his mother whose health was rapidly declining. That’s when he met his wife, Zeena, a woman seven years his senior, who came to his home to help his ailing mother. Due to uncontrollable external and internal forces they married. As for Mattie Silver, she was a daughter of a cousin of Zeena’s from Connecticut. Mattie’s father led the family to believe that they had a thriving business, but after he passed the family found out he made poor investments and because of that all their money was gone. Then after Mattie’s mother died, she was left with fifty dollars and the sale of a piano to her name, jumping from relative to relative hoping to have somewhere to stay. (Wharton 31). Once she meets Ethan, while Zeena and her family are quite cold to Mattie, Ethan shows her sympathy and compassion. Within this novel there is a loving and passionate force that tears apart the household. Ethan had many dreams that are now scattered in the wind and lost due to the prospects of time. There is a multitude of aspects of

Both Mary and Madge experience a sorrow, both deep and artificial in their respectful outcome as both women are victim to Atwood’s suffrage. With her role playing in feminism, Atwood points out the men of the story and their vague exception to the suffrage or emotional rides. John, is the lead lover. He sets the pace with being the perfect man in scenario A and acting sexually orientated in scenarios B and C. Fred displays the other side to the spectrum, that “represented in the ideal view of Atwood’s father, as the secondary male in a feminist world” (Karlsen-Holmen 3). Fred also lives up to be the perfect man in his scenario A, but as life couldn’t be all great for those in society, he dies of love that kills.