Sex Through The Centuries By Emily Dickinson

The poem Her Kind by Anne Sexton is a story regarding the past. The narrator is explaining significant dark moments in her life. She briefly explains who she has been in her past life, which is structured into three stanzas. First, she depicts herself as a lonely witch, then a misunderstood cavewomen and lastly a victimized villager. However the most important characteristic of the speaker is that she is a woman and that is not something she is ashamed of, as she makes it clear in the last sentence of every stanza that she identifies herself as a woman. The tone of this poem is very calm and not at all angry. She is not upset about her life she is simply just telling the readers her story, which happens to be very disturbing and not at all normal. The tone is also quite haunting due to the author’s use of imagery to describe witchcraft. In the first stanza the author describes the narrator as a witch and how she is “dreaming of evil (3)” she starts to state true characteristics of what this witch looks like “twelve-fingered, out of mind (5)”. In the second stanza the author continues to use a twisted fairytale image when she states that the woman “fixed suppers for the worms and the elves (11)”. Since elves do not exist in the world which humans adhere to know this gives the reader an extended image of witchcraft and fairytales. In the third stanza the narrator implies that she is dead when she states, “where your flames still bite my thigh (18)”. This leads the reader to

A shrieking kid, a barking dog, the oven timer going off, a hungry husband that just got off work, and a tired fatigued broken-down wife. This is what full blown motherhood is like, and it all started with a “happy” marriage from a loving relationship. Marriages murder women and the poems “To the ladies” by Mary, Lady Chudleigh and “Marks” by Linda Pastan show that women should not have married men two centuries ago, and that women should not marry men now.

Theodore Dalrymple, in the essay “All Sex, All the Time” reflects on the change of view of the people about sex and how it has lead people into more confusion and conflict than before. Dalrymple’s real name being Anthony Daniels, he picked up the pseudonym of Theodore Dalrymple for the purpose of his essays. There were times when virginity was a pride to men and women. However, it still prevails in some countries, this custom and the people have been changing. He states that the world is now free to enjoy sexual pleasures without any fear of the myths and taboos that existed in history. Although people feel that they are satisfied and are free to choose this path of life, sex has lead people into “confusion, contradiction, and conflict” states Dalrymple (Dalrymple 1).

Throughout the history of American Literature there has been a common theme of male oppression. Especially towards the end of the 19th century, before the first wave of feminism, women were faced with an unshakeable social prison. Husband, home and children were the only life they knew, many encouraged not to work. That being said, many female writers at the time, including Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were determined to examine the mind behind the American woman, through the lens of mental illness and personal experience.

In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.

Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999.

At first, after discovering she had frequent migraines, Didion denied her predicament. She felt embarrassed, like it was a secret that would enforce to others her negative qualities. Eventually, she began to accept the fact that migraines were simply something she would have to get used to.

Men are not from Mars, and women are not from Venus. The way each sex thinks and acts are entirely different. Each sex has their own way of understanding things. They consider that the other sex thinks just like they do, but the problem is neither gender understands that they communicate in different ways. Men and women are completely different in intellectual ways people never thought of. Men and women have conflicting ways of their behavior patterns.

Death was very prevalent in the life of Emily Dickinson. It had all started with the death of her loved ones and family friends that led her into a state of solitary where she had become very reclusive and gave her time to write the large amount of poems she created. It has provided people who have had something tragic or just in that state of mind to provide an outing as well as provide incredible imagery to pass onto a reader. Emily Dickinson was a poet that has very impressive way of using multiple themes in her poems that create incredible imagery. Each composition that Dickinson has created has impressive utilization of themes like nature, love, and death to create a more picturesque poem. Each poem had it own theme that came from past

There are many ways to express the feminist point of view through literature. Emily Dickinson’s “She rose to his requirement” and Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” both express varying points of view. Dickinson’s point of view truly shows the mute plight of women in contrast to the freedom of men doing similar roles. Gillman’s point of view shows the struggle of women trying to seek freedom of thought.

In Dickinson’s poem, Eden, characterized as a place of holiness, warmth, and comfort, becomes “that old-fashioned house” (Dickinson 1). Her word choice gives the sense that Eden is a place of comfort and warmth similar to how old-fashioned house would be. She then goes on to say how the residents of the home “sauntered from the Door, Unconscious their returning, But discover it no more” (Dickinson 6-8). These three lines show a dramatic change of tone in writing, as it goes from a sense of being relaxed while walking out of “Eden”, to a sense of fear and anxiousness in order to return to “Eden”. To my understanding, the poem provides the allusion that “Dickinson’s Eden” is a place of comfort vaguely similar to our childhood, and that once we

Knowing how the opposite sex communicates enables one to solve relationship problems. Deborah Tannen, an author, earned a PhD in linguistics at the University of California in 1979. She is very well known by her research she has done on how people of different genders communicate with each other. Tannen wrote an essay “Sex, Lies and Conversation” to help solve communication and relationship problems. In this essay, Tannen provides three main points: linguistic battle of the sexes, listening to body language, and the sounds of silence.

Our personal choices, lifestyles and decisions mold our identity defining us. However because of the situations we face in life we have to make decisions which put our identity at risk because some situations make us question who and what we really are. At those times it is hard to hold onto our identity with the progression of technology, fashion evolving and our physical form holding more importance then what we really are. Billy Collins the poet of “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s clothes”, Langston Hughes the poet of “The negro speaks of rivers” and Jean Toomer the poet of “Reapers” seems to be lost along the world trying to piece together who they are and where they belong. These poems were written so the poets have a form of expressing their

I have chosen to compare and contrast three "love" poems with three "lust" poems from our text, An Introduction to Poetry (9th edition, Kennedy and Gioia, Longman Publishing). I feel that poems about true love often incorporate themes of duration, unity and longevity; all lasting sentiments. Conversely, poems of a lusty nature convey the sentiment that the feeling is transitory, and must be pounced on immediately (before we get a chance to think about it too much).

In the past, women were seen as a part of properties of men. They don’t have rights nor power. At most time, they can’t even help themselves. According to Anthony, who was a famous suffragette during the Progressive Era, which is a period of time people were suffering, ” In case of divorce on account of adultery in the husband, the innocent wife is held to possess no right to children or property, unless by special decree of the court”(“Declaration of Rights for Women”). The author illustrates how women were powerless in the past. The laws were unfair to women, so they can’t help themselves.