Shirley, By Charlotte Bronte

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

Throughout time, the moon has been seen as an important symbol in Western culture. Due to the moon’s constant presence every night, it has come to be associated with death and rest. Furthermore, it is seen as a symbol of beauty and perfection that cannot be attained by humans. Finally, the moon’s cyclical movement has caused it to be representative of emotions, time and change. In Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, the moon appears in many different circumstances. Early in the novel, the moon foreshadows the failure of a relationship between Heathcliff and the older Catherine. As the novel unfolds, the moon’s appearance begins to reveal the true inner nature or state of characters. Finally, the moon begins to symbolize the impact of change, or the lack of change, over time on the characters of Heathcliff and the younger Catherine. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Brontë uses the cosmological body of the moon to foreshadow the inability to attain perfection, to reveal the truth about certain characters, and finally to demonstrate effects of change on humans in order to emphasize the power of nature in the lives of humans.

In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where the persona refers to her forty years of life causing “maturation”. For the most part these changes are not narrated directly but are represented by using dynamic language

Miss Mary Bennet, “the only plain one in the family, [who] worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments,” (Austen 11) provides her readers with another perspective of the female sphere. Even at the Netherfield Ball, young Mary occupies herself at the piano, connecting rarely with others, and even more rarely dancing with a gentleman (Austen 48). Unlike her sisters, Mary Bennet has no preferences on males; “what are men compared to rocks and mountains” (Austen 73). Her devotions in her youth are centered in accomplishments, such as piano playing, and going to town with her mother and younger sisters to gather gossip on their neighbors and the regiment (Austen 27). In her own way, Mary conforms to her societal expectations of growing up

This starts from the ending of the end of the 3rd paragraph on page 214 “We settled into the family carriage”. I used the author’s questions, but shaped Charlotte's answers and personality to resemble a true teenager in that century.

The Victorian Era encompassed a time of great discrepancy between the sexes, especially for women. The polarization of gender roles reflected on a basis of gender sexuality where men and women were granted certain advantages and disadvantages. Women were expected to realize a specific position in society based on morals of submission, passivity, and a complete lack of selfishness and independence. Constrictive notions such as these prevent individual expression and expansion. Therefore, while struggling to fill the pre-conceived expectancies of society, one forces true desires and happiness to pass as a scant priority. Charlotte Brontë's Victorian novel, Jane Eyre, explores the significance of individual fulfillment in an oppressive

Literature has always been a window into life during a particular time frame. Fiction and nonfiction alike will give its readers a glimpse of the lives of those of varying social statuses, along with the culture and politics of the time. This remains true regardless of the period in which a work was written. From the Romantic era to the 20th Century, literature has been skilled at providing understanding of others and their lives. For example, from the Romantic period works like the two William Wordsworth poems I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and The World is Too Much with Us, along with A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns. The Victorian era has its own share of works that reflect the time when it was written, including Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus

In the course of life, most people experiences the same things, but in different ways and at different times. For Minnie Foster of Susan Glaspell’s, Trifles, and Hester of Gwen Pharis Ringwood’s play, Still Stands the House, they both experience extreme isolation, depression, and insanity.

The Woman Upstairs is a novel that holds deep deception at its heart. Deception triggers and promotes Nora 's anger ,it has shaped Nora 's angry character from the very beginning . Nora has been deceived by her own-self ,her society and when she has found a family she could trust , they brutally betrayed her too.Even the title of the novel The Woman Upstairs is deceiving , one would immediately think of the madwoman in the attic, the 19th century’s best-known "woman upstairs" In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Bertha Mason the protagonist is the first wife of the master of Thornfield Hall, who has shut her away and has opened the door to more than a hundred years of impassioned feminist criticism, “People don 't want to worry about the Woman Upstairs”.(Bertha 95) To the contrary , Nora describes The Woman Upstairs as an unmarried school teacher who is approaching forty without having accomplished anything she set out to do ,causing the sparkle of suppressed passive anger from the early beginning of Nora 's adult life .Like someone scratching an infected wound, Nora returns to the phrase “the woman upstairs” again and again:

My Antonia is a novel published in 1918 by Willa Cather. This novel tells the story of Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant in Nebraska in the late 1800s. Although My Antonia is fictional, it is based on Willa Cather’s youth in Nebraska. As Jim Burden did in the book, Willa Cather moved from Virginia to Nebraska as a child to live with her grandparents. The town of Black Hawk symbolized Red Cloud in Cather’s youth. Willa Cather also attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

“It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.” With these words, American author William Faulkner described the duty of an author in his Noble Prize acceptance speech. Under further examination of Faulkner’s works, one would expect to find that he followed his own job description. However, two of his most well-known short stories seem to be contradicting. Neither “A Rose for Emily” nor “Barn Burning” is uplifting because the protagonists struggle with their communities, loyalty to their fathers, and death.

The history of the South could arguably be split into two sections: The Old South and the New South. The Old South is associated to the life Scarlett O’Hara at the beginning of the Gone with Wind, complete with the antebellum dresses and plantation houses. The New South is commonly associated with the era of Reconstruction and continues on into modern history. What many people fail to contemplate is the transition from one southern era to another, the change wasn 't a smooth one. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a metaphor for the conflict between the changing times in the South, also called the development of the “New South” and the traditional “Old South” southern traditions.

Throughout one 's life there there are many events in which people desire to live over and over again. Many young adults wish to go back to college or highschool just to live it all again. Similar to this Miss Emily, in William Faulkner 's short story “A Rose for Emily”, also does not desire to accept the fact she cannot relive everything. "A Rose for Emily" is a story which uses a non-chronological story timeline to convey how people resist change.

One’s inner metamorphosis begins with the general disillusionment with one’s surrounding environment. Such a disillusionment can come in quick succession, as with that of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar, or more gradually, as that of Antoine Roquentin in Nausea. The Bell Jar begins with the reader experiencing this subconscious disappointment along with Esther as she struggles along her dream internship at a fashion magazine in New York City. “I was supposed to be having the time of my life,” (Plath 2) she quips at one point. Her ideal cosmopolitan life began to reveal its rotten insides to her as she spends her summer in the fashion sphere of New York. Her disdain for this lifestyle begins as she witnesses her fellow interns’ gratuitous exploits, “When I woke up… I think I still expected to see Doreen’s body lying there in the pool of vomit like an ugly, concrete testimony to my own dirty nature,” (24) continues with her sexual experiences that fall far short of her expectations, “…he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at

An obscure orphan governess, perceived to be too young, too penniless, too insignificant to control her own life, defied societal conventions of her time, and remains relevant to this day. Why does this poor, plain governess with no financial prospects or social standing matter in a modern feminist perspective? If she could speak, a modern feminist’s beliefs would likely shock her, so to interpret this novel as feminist, one must see it through the lens of the time and place Brontë wrote it. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was a feminist work in that Bronte expressed disdain for oppressive gender structures through the voice of Jane Eyre, and the actions of Bertha Mason.