The Portrait Of A Lady By Henry James

In a surface examination of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it is quickly evident that no good things come from the wilderness. Therein, the wilderness is often associated with the savages and the devil. In his work The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne finds herself exiled by society for having an adulterous affair with the town reverend which brought forth the child known as Pearl. Pearl is quickly established as the child of the wilderness: wild, capricious, and thought by the town to be a demon-child. She represents several entities in the novel just by her being, but when her morality is delved into, much more of the nature of the story can be revealed. Pearl’s role is often overlooked as a formative force in the novel. Some scholars have gone as far as to denounce her as unnecessary to the story’s makeup. Upon close examination, it can be determined that Pearl is indeed a necessary element. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Pearl presents themes of morality, both personal and cultural, as well as the divide between society and nature, through her interactions with Hester, Reverend Dimmesdale, and the scarlet letter itself.

A vampire is defined as “a prenatural being of a malignant nature, supposed to seek nourishment, or do harm, by sucking the blood of sleeping persons;” (1). Whereas a parasite is defined as “a person who lives at the expense of another, or society in general;” (2). A sleeping persons can be interpreted as an innocent person, this is due to countless stories and lore depicting vampires stealing the blood of conscious innocent persons. Therefore, by doing harm to the innocent, a vampire is living at the expense of the humans whose blood it steals, making vampires a form of parasite. In The Good Lady Ducayne, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Ducayne is genetically a human, but her mind has become fixated on life. By exploiting technology, her moral and ethical standards change, allowing for her personal relationships to become meaningless in her search for an elongated life. She goes so far as to steal the blood of young girls; this act of stealing innocent girls blood at their own expense, makes her a special parasite, human vampire.

Main Characters: Macey Clare, Austin Fent, Mr. and Mrs. Macey, Monica and Henry Fent, Venita Edna, Grace, and Lindsay.

“As long as you live, shine feel no grief at all Life is short Life demands its toll” (Pilich).

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss in life is what dies inside us while we live.” -Norman Cousins

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” -Norman Cousins

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl allows Harriet Jacobs, speaking through the narrator, Linda Brent, to reveal her reasons for making public her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation. Although originally ignored by critics, who often dismissed Jacobs ' story as a fictional account of slavery, today it is reported as the first novel narrative by an ex-slave that reveals the unique brutalities inflicted on enslaved women. Gabby Reyes

Jay Gatsby’s dream was to spend his life with Daisy Buchanan, but the only way he could ever be with her was if he had money. He knew that if he did not have money Daisy would not even consider him. Gatsby obtained great wealth through illegal activities such as bootlegging. “He and this Wolfsheim bought and sold grain alcohol over the counter” (133). Gatsby also lied about how he obtained his wealth because he knew that Daisy would not approve of his life style. He said, “My family all died and I came into a good deal of money” (65). He would throw lavish parties to attract Daisy’s attention. He thought that if she saw his wealth she would fall in love with him again and leave her husband Tom. Gatsby had a purpose for living and he moved right

The first proposal is from Mr Collins, a man to whom Elizabeth was not even his first choice; Jane, the eldest and most beautiful, was his first fancy, but when informed that she had been privately engaged, he swiftly switches to Elizabeth, who is ‘equally next to Jane in birth and beauty’. His introduction to Elizabeth is not a pleasant one, although he is too ignorant to notice; she finds him ‘a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man’. Her observation is quite correct, and illustrated to the greatest affect in his proposal speech.

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex suggests that to resolve the tension between bad faith and authenticity, people must regard women as subjects and not objects. They must also collectively fight against the idea of womanhood in order to remain authentic to themselves.

This sentence from Claude Haton’s memoirs demonstrates the anti-Protestant and misogynist sentiments harbored by Catholics upon the emergence of Protestantism in France. In his writings, Haton claimed that seduction and sexual debauchery were responsible for the significant number of conversions to Protestantism, that “most followed them only on account of this carnal and voluptuous charity” (50). He accused the women of prostituting themselves for the sake of gaining converts and portrayed the Protestant men as being just as shameless. If this was the case, one would assume that both males and females would be equally tempted by carnal desire; however, Haton insinuated that among the upper class, women were more easily seduced than the men.

Freud’s belief was that mental health and psychological wellness requires a harmonious relationship between the different parts of the mind and a lack of harmony can lead to neurosis. Plato invented the original tripartite and Freud expanded on it in 1923. The tripartite is divided into the sections: The Superego, the Ego, and the Id. The Superego is basically the conscience of our mind. The Ego is consciousness created by the combination of the Id and Superego. The Id is having thoughts of instincts and drives which are necessary to satisfy. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, we see the main characters representing the Superego, Ego, and Id.

The dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” was penned down by Robert Browning. In this poem, the narrator is the Duke of Ferrara, and the listener is the count’s agent, through whom the Duke is arranging the proposed marriage to a second duchess. The poem is ironical and reveals its rhetorical sense, gradually. In the later part of the poem, the Duke claims that he does not have a skill in speech, but his monologue is a masterpiece of subtle rhetoric. While supposedly entertaining the listener by showing his wife’s portrait, he clearly reveals his character. Through his formalized tone of rhyme, he reveals his egoistic and jealous attitude.

Vanity and undeniable ego are characteristics of self-destructive properties. In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde shows how these can lead to a man’s downfall. He displays this through the character of Dorian Gray. The novel explains how as Dorian grows up and through his life, he is ultimately destroyed by his own ego, vanity and inability to change or realize how what he does affects not only him but the lives of those around him. Dorian Gray struggles throughout the novel with the daunting facts that he is Vane, has an enormous ego and cannot realize the full extent of his own actions

When Winterbourne first meets Daisy, he is willing to accept her for the vivacious young American girl she is. Although Daisy's customs are not what are expected of young girls in European society, Winterbourne is charmed by Daisy and her original ideals. He defends Daisy to the aristocracy, claiming that she is just "uncultivated" and is truly innocent. As the story progresses, Winterbourne finds himself questioning Daisy's true nature in comparison to the standards of European society. Winterbourne's opinion of Daisy changes from acceptance to condemnation as his tolerance of cultural standards is clouded by the prejudices of the European aristocrats.