Symbolism In Roman Fever

“Roman Fever” is successful in revealing a darker side of interpersonal interactions and the lust for the role of the superior in relationships. It conveys this message by showing the transfer of

And had she changed? Did she also look better to Edwin, almost slender now and the freckles not noticeable except at the height of summer? And with her new-found ability for light talk? They were passing beneath the eucalyptus trees and the silver drops, falling as the wind shook the leaves, stung her face, feeling at once both cool and burning, Meadow larks in the fields which edged the campus sang in the quiet way they have after the rain has stopped.

The married couple were casually conversing in their household as their two daughters, “were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps” (Bradbury 1). The laughter of their two daughters in their background embraced a home filled with life and love. With such an absurd question the husband asked, the two remained calm. Bradbury was able to describe a setting and a background at peace and relaxation to the characters despite the situation presented.

"Roman Fever" at first strikes the reader as the simple, rather dull story of two middle aged women sitting on a veranda. The inactiveness of the situation appears to be evident in Mrs. Slade's comment, "Well, I don't see why we shouldn't just stay here", reflecting

Moreover, the fluidity, represented by the thoughts of the characters, is enhanced by the form of the novel: Mrs Dalloway is not divided into chapters; thus, it does not leave behind a sense of completeness. It is largely intertwined with the narration of Clarissa and that of the other characters and the action largely takes place in the mind. This is presented in form of free indirect discourse: the narrative conveys the thoughts of the selected character. This leaves the readers with an impressionistic story. To demonstrate how different characters bring about unequal messages, here is an illustration from the work: when Clarissa is strolling the streets of London, she and Septimus both see the same car. The vehicle leads them to different thoughts: for Septimus it is seeing in it the power of the modern world, which “was about to burst into flames” (13) or rather the oppressive relationship of technology and war, which ultimately leads to his suicide. He is bound by the internal, his suffering thoughts cannot help but to be captured in the memories of the World War I he fought in. For Clarissa, hearing the noise of the car provokes her to think she has heard “a pistol shot in the street” (12) (which later turns out to be true). By using such a form of representation, Woolf points to the invisible connections of people in a dehumanised, yet technology-bound, world, which create between them a form of interaction that serves as compensation for what Septimus (and

Throughout ‘At Mornington’, Harwood uses descriptions, “night fell”, and similes, “the piece of this day will shine like light” when referring to the power of memory. During ‘The Violets’, Harwood uses imagery such as “ambiguous light” and metaphors such as “unreturning light” and “blurring darkness” to portray time’s ability to pass, and the way that you cannot regain time that is lost. During ‘The Violets’, Harwood also uses the metaphor of the “melting west” to represent a closing day, capturing the vivid colours of the natural phenomenon through the use of evocative imagery. Indeed, the second poem of the diptych of ‘Father and Child’ is ‘Nightfall’. These references to darkness, light and the closing of days can all be seen as symbolic of life, death and the transience of time, as when one day ends and night falls, the transience of that moment will be held in one’s memory regardless of the moment never being able to be relived.

Before the family gets too far in their awkward journey, O’Connor tips off her readers of the eventual future for the family. Foreshadowing is used when the family passes an old burial ground with six,

While Lizzie cheerily attends her chores, Laura longs for the night. Suspense ensues. When “at length slow evening came” (l. 215; italics mine), Laura is compared to a “leaping flame”(l.218) as she loiters in anticipation of

In “Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car” by Virginia Woolf, the narrator is riding in a car through the landscape of Sussex, as the day is approaching nightfall. In this 'journey', she appears to be depressed, due to the thought of aging. She then looks back into the past, contemplating her experiences, but develops a change in thought, changing from melancholy to delight, that changes her meaning of life.

The short story, “Roman Fever” illustrates the shocking relationship between two women, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, by a chance meeting in Rome. As the story opens the two women are sitting on the terrace of a Roman restaurant that has an astonishing view of the Colosseum and other Roman ruins. While the women sit in silence and enjoy the tranquil view from the terrace they notice their daughters down below running off to spend a romantic evening with two young men. This triggers Mrs. Slades memories of her and Mrs. Ansley’s quixotic adventures in Rome as young adults and their first encounter with “Roman fever”. Wharton uses the term Roman fever to illustrative the women’s past relationship that is embedded with destruction,

“Roman Fever” is a short story written by Edith Wharton in 1934. The story is about two old friends Alina Slade and Grace Ansley reconnecting. Alina and Grace run into each other while on a trip to Rome with their daughters. The two women grew up in Manhattan and were childhood friends. A romantic rivalry led Alina to get feelings of jealousy and hatred against Grace. In the first part of the story, the two women talk about their daughters and each other's lives. Eventually, Alina reveals a secret about a letter written to Grace on a visit to Rome long ago. The letter was addressed from Alina’s fiancé, Delphin, inviting Grace to meet at the Colosseum. Alina had written the letter, to get Grace out of the way of the engagement by disappointing her when Delphin didn’t show up. Grace is upset at this revelation, but reveals that she was not left alone at the Colosseum. She had responded to the letter, and Delphin went to meet her. Alina eventually states that Grace shouldn’t pity her because she won by marring Delphin while Grace had nothing but a letter Delphin didn't even write. Then, Grace reveals that she had Barbara, Grace’s daughter, with Delphin. “Roman Fever” uses a lot of dramatic irony and has many events that contribute to thematic conflict. Wharton uses the letter Alina writes to Grace to trigger all the deception between them, which shows readers that when people are being deceitful with one another nobody wins. Alina sends the letter to Grace to get her out of the picture, but it gives Grace the chance at Delphin that she wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and Grace takes advantage by writing back to Delphin without Alina’s knowledge. Both characters are keeping secrets about their relationships with Delphin and they both think that they won when neither of them did.

The antithesis of ‘weeping’ and ‘laughing’ highlight to the reader how Mrs Hayward is a character who evokes feelings of both happiness and shame in Stephen, due to her respective actions and emotions. She is a fragmented and incomplete character who is portrayed to the audience through an anaphoric series of present tense memories, which make her actions, and consequent responses of the narrator, seem immediate and continual. She is a character who evokes an emotional response in our narrator almost sixty years after unknown events have occurred, suggesting to the reader that she is going to be central to his journey down ‘memory lane’.

The setting of the story was in a Roman restaurant, where down you can see the “glories of the Palatine and the Forum” (Wharton 1). Wharton’s placement of the setting enhances the readers understanding that in the short story the two women are living in a “patriarchal civilization” where women are being forced to compete for their social statuses (Rankine 1). The two protagonists envy and jealousy begin over one man. Mrs. Slade feared that Mrs. Ansley would steal Delphin from her because “I was afraid; afraid of you, of your quiet ways, your sweetness…your…well, I wanted you out of the way” (Wharton 9). She then developed an idea to eliminate the competition, which shows how jealous of Mrs. Ansley she was. Mrs. Slade uses a similar method that Mrs. Ansley’s great aunt, Harriet, used on her sister to get her out of the way, because “they were in love with the same man---“. Harriet confessed before she

The plot of Edith Wharton’s novella “Roman Fever” is straightforward with a consciously casual setting. Words in Wharton’s work are careful and calculated, each paragraph requires an in-depth scrutiny of content from their original context. In ways “Roman Fever” encourages readers to dig through the advanced syntax in search of the conveyed messages. Hence, the story focuses mainly on Mrs. Ansley's knitting and its significance in the novella. When the author addresses Mrs. Ansley's "twist of crimson silk"(69), the descriptive imagery is intentional in the sense that knitting symbolizes Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade’s relationship and foreshadows the dramatic revelations later in the story. The use of frame story to structure the narrative of their ill-matched friendship illustrates the author’s intent to invoke thought and ideas in the reader's naïve minds. Thus, although knitting is an unconscious habit of Mrs. Ansley, it is actually significant because it is an attempt to weave back the disrupted relationship between the two friends. Hence, knitting as a “crimson” alludes to the intensely passionate love and closure that blinds the two from truly understanding each other and gives a glimpse of the unstable nature within the upper middle class in society.

Nothing seems to be going on in this opening of the story, yet nothing could be farther from the truth. The two women have been involved in a battle for the past twenty years, whether they were aware of it or not. I believe the only thing that got these two women back together was them running into each other after their husband’s deaths, back in Rome. If it weren’t for that coincidence there never would have been any more animosity towards each other. While discussing the beauty of the landscape in Rome, Mrs. Ansley states, “After all, it’s still the most beautiful view in the world. It always will be, to me” (255). It is then, after Mrs. Ansley stresses the “me” in her statement, that Mrs. Slade finally, after all these years unravels the whole incident pertaining to Mrs. Ansley’s case of roman fever. Mrs. Slade tells her life-long friend that it was she that sent her the note from Mr. Slade, asking her to meet him at the Colosseum. Mrs. Slade was jealous and wanted to keep Mr. Slade no matter what the cost, so she sent the letter to get her friend out of the way for a few weeks.