Spinster, by Sylvia Plath

1. “It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.” In this quote the author is referring to the rose bush by the prison as being a symbol of the sweet moral lesson offered by Anne Hutchinson, a woman who preached to the Puritans without the male-dominated permission of the Puritan church. Like Hester Prynne, Anne was punished. She was sent to the prison. No matter how small an action is, the culture of a society can respond in rage, loathing disgust, even fear. It is behavior that is learned and passed on through religion and community. In colonial Puritan society people were socialized to be very strict and religious and to punish anyone who behaved in a way that was considered improper. Any kind of sin had an exaggerated evil in the Puritan’s eyes, especially ones regarding marriage and sex. Hester Prynne and Anne Hutchinson are both character representations of women who stood up for the rights of women to live their own lives in a strict society.

For centuries, seasons have been understood to stand for the same set of meanings. Seasons are easily understood by the reader, and are easy for the writer to use; as Foster states, “Seasons can work magic on us, and writers can work magic with seasons” (Foster 192). The different seasons are a huge part of our lives; we live through each one every year, and we know how each of them impacts our lives. This closeness between people and nature allows us to be greatly impacted by the use of seasons in literature. In addition, Foster lays out the basic meanings of each season for us: autumn is harvest, decline, tiredness; winter is anger, hatred, cold, old age; summer is passion, love, happiness, beauty; and spring is childhood and youth. On the

In chapter 20 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster describes the significance of seasons in literature. Seasons can mean many different things besides the obvious change in weather. Shakespeare uses seasons as literary devices to make comparisons. Seasons often act as metaphors for age in his work. Fall, for example, can also be seen as middle age; the turning point between old and young, summer and winter. Seasons were also used by Shakespeare to convey moods and emotions. Winter is often associated with bitterness, dissatisfaction, or anger. This works because elements of winter include harsh winds and freezing temperatures that make people uncomfortable. Furthermore, authors connect season with the human experience. Each season

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri, is a writer,and she is known for many auto-biographical novels and she also writes poetry and essays. She also loved to study music, dance,and drama. From 1963 to 1966 Angelou was involved in the black civil rights movement. Maya Angelou wrote this specific poem called; “Phenomenal Women”. Angelou has a very creative way of saying things throughout her poem. Angelou talks about a woman in the poem that talks about herself a lot she repeats the phrase“ I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman that's me”( Angelou) therefore Angelou might be this person in her poem. Angelou is trying to show the reader that you need to have more confidence in your own person instead of worrying about others judgment.

The famous leader Martin Luther King once said, “Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.” This quote pretty much summed up the way in which African Americans felt during the 1960’s. They had basically no meaning to life. They were irrelevant. Whites wanted no part in them. This was especially the case in the state of Mississippi. Anne Moody, writer of the autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi explains the importance of the civil rights movement in the state of Mississippi and the influence it had on her life and her viewpoint.

Q. Discuss how many characters describe Sula’s birthmark which looks different to several people in The Bottom. Does the birthmark reflect their fears or dreams? How so?

Ursula K. Le Guin is an award winning author who has made great contributions to the science fiction genera. Le Guin’s stories often evoke readers to view society through a different lens. In the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Le Guin challenges societies conventions of imagination and believability within a narrative. I will argue, that the story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, intertwines two contradictory story worlds in an attempt to critique the limitations we impose on our imagination due to the understanding that we have never experienced a society that does not poses evil. I intend to analyze the rules of the two following story worlds that Le Guin presents; the first story world where happiness is the only thing that the inhabitants experience and the second story world where happiness is experienced when evil presents itself in the society. The two story worlds come together to push the readers to accept a world that simply functions on its own without evil.

In the article “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin offers several examples of women overpowering men. The inequality between men and women has become a critical issue in today’s society. According to Rosin, women are slowly surging ahead in the workforce and family life while men are left behind struggling to meet expectations. Rosin argues that this role reversal is taking place because women are simply better suited for postindustrial society.

The Solitude of Self is a speech that was given by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement. This speech mainly discussed gender equality in every situation, including education and suffrage. Stanton clearly was opposed to the idea of inequality and believed that every person, man or woman, deserved to have the same rights.

Even at a young age, Sylvia Plath was motivated and determined to be successful. She was only eight years old when her first poem “What I See and Hear on Hot Summer Nights” was published in The Boston Herold. After the death of her father, the family was forced to move from their home near the ocean as a result of financial problems. Caroline King Barnard Hall states that:

Summary: In the twentieth chapter Foster considers the importance of season in literature. The seasons are an exact representation of the human life cycle. Spring is a representation of childhood, summer symbolizes young adulthood, autumn connotes middle age, and finally winter exemplifies old age. Shakespeare provides many examples of the correlation between season and the human life cycle in his poem Sonnet 73.

The poem starts with a seemingly supportive husband, he is positive about helping her pursue her love and talent of writing so he builds her a table to write on. He shortly transforms into a very confused and lost man. He doesn’t understand what is happening to his wife and doesn’t know how to reach out to her as he can’t compete with her father. “I embraced / Lady Death, your rival” (Hughes, 36-37).

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is well known for its deeply personal and emotional subject matter. Much of Plath’s poetry is confessional and divulges the most intimate parts of her psyche whether through metaphor or openly, without creating a persona through which to project her feelings, and through the use of intense imagery. Plath’s attempt to purge herself of the oppressive male figures in her life is one such deeply personal and fundamental theme in her poetry. In her poem, “Daddy”, which declares her hatred for her father and husband, this attempt is expressed through language, structure, and tone. (Perkins, 591)

Sylvia Plath had the ability to get emotional responses through her word-pictures and poems. Plath was also able to create a picture from her trip to Spain, tied up ships, or even a beautiful beach setting (Magill 2225). Spring of 1959, Plath randomly wrote “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dream,” a first-person short story that is written in a voice that resembles terror (Hughes 1). Plath later work shows the strong dissatisfaction of her dreams. Plath dreamt of discovering cheerfulness through work, marriage, and family, which was a disappointment, caused by a miscarriage and appendectomy, her divorce, and mood swings. Plath felt defenseless to men and apocalyptic to natural forces, mainly death (Draper 2734). Plath’s post-obituary writings imitate the persisting importance in her work. Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices (1968), originally published on British Radio in 1962, discusses pregnancy of three women (Draper 2735). Plath was inspired to write “The Jailer” which was about her husband who drugged then raped her. Plath eventually became “The Lever of His Wet Dreams.” The exact prodigy occurs in most of her confessional poems, mainly in “Daddy” (Magill 2224). Plath’s tone changes throughout most of her poems (Magill 2228). In “Daddy,” Plath tells about herself being rebellious in her poems (Magill 2229). “No writer has meant more to the current feminist movement.”

However, when we search her works in order to find something which would refute this view, there are some poems in her oeuvre which do so. Her work proves that she came to terms with the role of the 50's woman. A desire to be a beloved and loving wife and even stronger desire to have children and become a mother are common themes of her poetry. In 1953, at the age of 20, Plath wrote in her journal: