Last Thursday, as we were out at a restaurant eating dinner we discussed D.H. Lawrence’s short story “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.” We talked about Mabel and her family’s past and their present situations. Surprisingly, you mention to me that you did not understand why Mabel attempts suicide. This statement shocked me since I could think of multiple reasons that led Mabel to attempt suicide. Throughout the short story Lawrence gave clues and reasons to why she attempts suicide. Mabel attempts suicide for the following reasons: To feel closer to her mother, bankruptcy after her father’s death, and because she feels unloved.
One reason Mabel attempts suicide is to feel close to her mother and be with her again. Once her mother had died,
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Lawrence explains Mabel’s thoughts on how having money made her feel secure and happy. Also, how no longer having money she no longer feels secure as follows:
For months, Mabel had been [sic]servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers. She had kept house for ten years. But previously, it was with unstinted means. Then, however brutal and coarse everything was, the sense of money had kept her proud, confident. The men might be fouled-mouthed, the women in the kitchen might have bad reputations, her brothers might have illegitimate children. But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved. (Lawrence 4)
The earlier quote shows how money and housekeeping has kept Mabel satisfied with her life. Now that her father has died Mabel and her family has gone bankrupt and will lose their money and their home. Lawrence notes, “Now he was dead and everything was gone to the dogs, there was nothing but debt and threatening” (4). Furthermore, Mabel has lost everything that makes her feel secure, established, proud, happy, and confident. Yes, indeed, Mabel attempts suicide because her family’s bankruptcy caused her unhappiness.
Once Mabel’s mother had died Mabel began to feel unloved. In effect of her mother’s passing her father remarried, causing the loving relationship between her and her father to disappear. Consequently, leaving Mabel feeling alone and unloved by her
These strict rules made the narrator feel trapped, and she moved away from this parental imprisonment through travel and food. The narrator was an only child and was never married. This lead her to remain home with her parents until the passed
Sara Smolinsky is the youngest of four sisters; the eldest is Bessie, whom everyone calls the “Burden-bearer” because the whole family lives on her pay check. “I knew the landlord came that morning hollering for rent. And the whole family were hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, we’d be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world.”(1) The second eldest
He sees that by doing so, Richard will not only please the preacher, but he will demonstrate the strong love he has for his mother. This finally makes him do what he was trying to avoid most. Although he has a rough childhood, it is clear that love remains in his heart, but as he begins to be deprived from it more and more, his hunger for it becomes less intense.
By losing this father figure she was left to fend for herself and was virtually helpless.
In his short story, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries”, the author George Saunders crafts an all too human tale as he shows the journal entries of the narrator, a husband and father of three who faces financial insecurity, and displays the effect money, whether in lack or excess, has on our actions and thoughts. The social setting of the story is almost identical to our current society, however there is a distinct divergence in the Semplica Girls, which are girls from impoverished backgrounds that hang from a wire in their heads as an odd, inhumane, and yet expensive, lawn ornament. In the pursuit of the “good life” for both his family and himself, the father places great importance on wealth in order to secure happiness, joy, and status through
The next couple of lines portray the idea that it is only through the mother that the father and son are united. In life, her presence and assurances that they are alike linked them, and once she is gone, there is little to bring them together except their shared grief, which as they are so emotionally divided they find impossible to communicate.
In Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, the concept of understanding sacrifice to establish a greater moral good is central to the main characters and their developed values. Specifically, McCarthy incorporates a great sacrifice of young love made by John Crady Cole’s love interest, Alejandra. Alejandra strategically surrenders her promising relationship with John Grady in order to accomplish a greater agenda: bailing him out of jail therefore, assuring the forbiddance of their of their future union. In this instance, the sacrifice of love and union reveals the character’s deeper values rooted in moral obligation. This passionate act of love exemplifies Alejandra’s strength and selflessness, while also displaying a deeper understanding to the overall meaning of the book by highlighting how valuable friendships and relationships come at a great cost.
“I know I’m a fool. But I cannot help it. I haven’t the courage to live for myself. My own life is knocked out of me. No wonder Father called me the burden bearer.” This was regarding Bessie, this shows how Bessie’s life was shaped through the influence of religious teachings, forcing herself to stay loyal to the societal expectation and giving up her personal pursuits. She calls herself the “burden bearer” because it was the religion and/or societal teaching for females in Judaism should dedicate their lives to men’s. This was, in fact, the case in which every female figure of the Smolinsky family has suffered throughout the book. Sarah, too, was suffering from such conflict until she realized this is not what she sees herself into if she is to make herself break out the poverty and the so called “religious obedience”.
Conflict, in general, is a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one. When conflict is studied in literature, the subject is broken down into a few major types, or classes of conflicts. This includes person versus person, person versus nature, person versus society, person versus self, as well as some others. Out of the Dust, a historical fiction novel by Karen Hesse, contains many types of conflicts, with person versus nature being prominent, as the book is based upon the Dust Bowl. However, there are multiple instances in the novel where a person is having a conflict against him/herself, and those conflicts impact their decisions, actions, as well as their relationships.
This shows that, although the worth of these objects was measly, they seemed to fill up the whole table, and in a way the narrator’s world. The narrator describes her mother’s appearance as having “tightly braided hair turning white” and convey that her mother has endured much hardship throughout her life. She also uses words such as “flung”, “crowds”, and “quick” to describe her mother’s actions, suggesting a sense of fervor and urgency when it came to handling
1. Mrs. Mallard was in a marriage with her husband which passed away in a train accident at work. Mrs. Mallard was heartbroken that not only her husband had passed away, but his friend also passed (so they thought). She was saddened at the thought of having to be alone at first. She loved her husband, but felt a sense of relief that she didn’t she wasn’t going to let his passing hold her back in life. She had her husband in her spirit, heart, and soul.
In the passage from her novel Passing, Nella Larsen uses visual imagery and tone to contrast Clare, Gertrude, and Irene, and the differing social perspectives that each represents. At the beginning of the passage, Larsen uses elaborate adjectives, such as “rich,” “tall,” and “slim,” to illustrate Clare and her wealthy image. Additionally, Clare’s possession of “tea-things,” “rich amber fluid,” “glass pitcher,” and “slim glasses,” stresses Clare’s prosperous materialism, setting the basis that Clare’s advantageous social position from passing allowed her to reach this wealth.
While Mrs. Mallard remembers Mr. Mallard as a kind and tender man who loved her, she also viewed him as the oppression that marriage put upon women and men. While Mr. Mallard was kind and loving to his wife, he was also controlling and overbearing. Josephine, Mrs. Mallard’s sister and Richards, Mr. Mallard’s friend is there to break the news of Mr. Mallard’s death. Richards has learned of Mr. Mallard’s death at the newspaper office, not wanting to believe the information that was received, Richards waited for the new to be delivered for a second time before enlisting the help of Josephine. They are both there to support Mrs. Mallard and their support shows that they care for Mr. and Mrs. Mallard.
In D.H Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," Mabel Pervin and her three brothers are left with debts to pay after the death of their father. To pay these debts, the Pervins are forced to sell every horse that they own. Then, they must separately create new lives elsewhere. Although Mabel's brothers have decided where they will be going and what they will be doing, as the story opens, Mabel's fate seems undetermined. Her apparent inability to plan her future is initially a source of tension and conflict. However, the events that unfold make clear that the life that Mabel has led for the past twenty-seven years has molded her into a determined and independent woman. Through these
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’.