The Consumption of Desperation: A Telephone Call Can a telephone control our love for someone? In the short story "A Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker, she captures the reader’s attention by using various narrative devices such as conflict, style, setting to foreshadow the theme of desperation and anxiety a woman faces when she discovers her love for someone. Women are attention crazed beings, and this is seen thoroughly in this story. The author’s use of conflict is illustrated by the narrator’s battling with herself as to whether she should contact him or not. The protagonist in this story is very confusing due to the fact that she is in trepidation as to if she would receive a phone call from him and if she should be the one contacting him. Her lack of realizing she had false hope was hindered because of her focal point being centered on sweet names such as “darling”, which gave her a sense of assurance. Some men extol the use of admirable names to achieve supremacy over women, which then forces women to become more emotionally attached. Furthermore, she became very indecisive which lead to her conflicting habits throughout the story. “This is the last time I’ll look at the clock (Parker 3),” and “He might even hope that I would call him up (Parker 13).” These are distinct quotes which demonstrate the personal conflict of her calling him and her trying to convince herself that procrastination will lead to a phone call. Hereafter by her counting “five, ten, fifteen,
After a few of these vain attempts to convince the man to consider having the baby, she implores him to "Please. please please please please please please stop talking" (272). The author uses her avoidance of confrontation and denial of self-expression to assure the reader that the girl?s weak and dependent nature prevents her from verbally expressing her point of view. Even the use of character terms?the man and the girl?reinforces this effect.
Answer: The miseries being discussed in this chapter entail only living for today and not having any goals. These women feel like their efforts will not be rewarded and that’s how they become complacent. Dalrymple touches the harsh subject of physical abuse and how it effects the women’s mind. When he’s talking to his female patient she realizes the inability of her questioning her significant others reasoning. So I think it opens up a realm of questions on how abuse can not only hurt a woman’s confidence but also make her lose a sense of self.
This dramatization brings the reader to the realization that the protagonist’s stream of consciousness narration is very unpredictable, yet will ultimately lead to his ability to expose his true feelings as the story develops. The author clearly likes to represent this feeling of indecision with poetic illustration as it is used several times in both stories. In “Newlywed”, the narrator vividly describes his mixed feelings toward his wife, Atsuko, during the peak of his epiphany-like experience:
When the readers meet the young, subordinated wife of a physician, who remains nameless throughout the entire story, perhaps hinting at the commonness of such situations where all those women are the same: faceless and nameless, this woman’s dilemma becomes obvious. She has been stripped off the only function a woman in those times had, the domestic one, due to the fact that she suffers from a mysterious illness which requires the infamous bed cure. Gradually, she is treated more and more as a child, unable and even forbidden to express herself in a creative way, namely to write, being persuaded that it cannot do any good to someone in her condition. This is why the protagonist (who is simultaneously the narrator), takes it upon herself to write a journal about her experiences and the mysterious woman that haunts her from the
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
The heroine, Mrs. P, has some carries some characteristics parallel to Louise Mallard in “Hour.” The women of her time are limited by cultural convention. Yet, Mrs. P, (like Louise) begins to experience a new freedom of imagination, a zest for life , in the immediate absence of her husband. She realizes, through interior monologues, that she has been held back, that her station in life cannot and will not afford her the kind of freedom to explore freely and openly the emotions that are as much a part of her as they are not a part of Leonce. Here is a primary irony.
The other reading of the story might be based on the maturing of a young woman. As it is probably the most important period in every adolescent's life, when they keep searching for their own identity, it should by strongly influenced by their parents. If it is not, a teenager starts looking for directions outside their home, and sometimes has difficulties with distinguishing what is good and evil. They are very often affected by
never “calls out for her husband”. An important theme of name and identity is introduced in
Even in her state of anger she cannot help but once again be the restrained and subdued one in their relationship. Despite all of the happiness she has found with Rochester she still cannot bring herself to stay in a relationship in which she sacrifices part of herself, because she doesn’t know how to reconcile her need feel like she belongs and is taken care of while at the same time remaining uncorrupted.
Anxiety, an unnerving feeling that brings uneasiness to the human mind. Thousands of individuals get help from friends and loved ones, as they want someone to help them. With a constant source of comfort, one can go too far, giving birth to an unhealthy need for someone called separation anxiety disorder. According to the “DSM 5”, this disorder is the fear of “separation from attachment figures to a degree that is developmentally inappropriate”. Darling in Dorothy Parker's “A Telephone Call” displays signs of separation anxiety disorder when talking about her man. The protagonists' symptoms include: an excessive distress when separated from her lover, a constant worry of losing her date, and a persistent dread of a life without her partner.
The novel was published in the year 1937. It is a depiction of a woman, whose life itself is an endeavour to oppose patriarchy. The protagonist show case great characteristic traits of representing the spirit of change. She breaks the norms that are posed by the male chauvinistic people around her. As the novel begins it is evident that Janie is suppressed by her own grandmother. This is the first level of suppression she undergoes. Here, a woman is suppressed by another woman of her own family, who has a mind that is glutted with the notions of patriarchy. The grandmother in Their Eyes Were Watching God though understands the sufferings of Janie, believes that it is her duty to get Janie married to the much older rich man. She believes that only a male support can make her life secured and happy. Here the grandmother represents the familial violence that is meted out to young women by people with patriarchal ideologies. According to her, a man is superior to a woman. She believes that only a man can give life and protection to a woman. The grandmother sticks to the old beliefs about marriage. This is one of the notorious notions that the patriarchal society hold on to. She fails to understand that women can live a secured life without even getting married. However, Janie is suppressed here. Janie is unable to protest against her much beloved grandmother. She becomes Logan’s
To begin with, the author’s implementation of short sentence fragments throughout the poem illustrates the exasperation and frustration bottled up in women in response to
When the narrator first encounters the girl, his friend's older sister, he can only see her silhouette in the “light from the half-opened door”. This is the beginning of his infatuation with the girl. After his discovery, he is plagued by thoughts of the girl which make his daily obligations seem like “ugly, monotonous, child's play”. He has become blinded by the light. The narrator not only fails to learn the name of his “girl”, he does not realize that his infatuation with a woman considerably older than himself is not appropriate. He relishes in his infatuation, feeling “thankful [he] could see so little” while he thinks of the distant “lamp or lighted window” that represents his girl. The narrator is engulfed by the false light that is his futile love.
This attitude is important in showing the lack of communication between husband and wife. He fails to see her psychological issues for what they are and his actions to mediate her supposed problem only make it worse. The narrator even questions the treatment prescribed by her husband and brother in saying "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good" (Gilman 833). However even though she can question her treatment she is powerless to change it. Gilman uses this to again show the inferiority of women to men of this era.
It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.