Trying To Talk With A Man By Adrienne Rich Essay

Paul Newman once said, “People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked” (74). There is no such thing as the perfect relationship, however, being involved in a healthy relationship is essential for a person to feel valued, safe, and happy. Unfortunately, in the situation of Kelly Sundberg’s personal essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” and Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of An Hour,” include extreme examples of unhealthy relationships. The essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” shares painful experiences of Sundberg’s physical and emotional abusive relationship with her husband Caleb, while “The Story of an Hour,” shares a rare reaction of a married woman, Louise Mallard, who explores her emotions cautiously when hearing about the death of her husband. Each woman faces their own prison created by their husbands. The two marriages represent the figurative meaning of doors being locked in a marriage. Both pieces of literature convey the theme of confinement by using the literary devices of foreshadowing, imagery, and conflict.

When her husband is killed in a train accident Mrs. Mallard cries, but for different reasons than would be expected. She is sad for her husband’s death, but, moreover, she is overcome with joy. For now she is free. No one recognizes her true emotions because women fall apart when their spouse dies; it’s required. Marriage is portrayed as a life sentence. "She said it over and over again under her breath: ‘free, free, free!' Her pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body"(1). Mrs. Mallard was relieved that her husband died for she thought her sentence was over. When she realized that he was still alive, and therefore she was still committed to the marriage, she died from the shock and horror of being trapped.

Women are taught from a young age that marriage is the end all be all in happiness, in the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and the drama “Poof!” by Lynn Nottage, we learn that it is not always the case. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and Loureen from “Poof!” are different characteristically, story-wise, and time-wise, but share a similar plight. Two women tied down to men whom they no longer love and a life they no longer feel is theirs. Unlike widows in happy marriages Loureen and Mrs., Mallard discover newfound freedom in their respective husband’s deaths. Both stories explore stereotypical housewives who serve their husbands with un-stereotypical reactions to their husband’s deaths.

This book review is on the book, Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit, which was published in 2014. Rebecca Solnit writes a book of essays that interprets the silence that women hold towards men in their everyday life. Young women must know the reality that we do not live a fairy tale life where women are treated as royalty by their husband or boyfriend. Women are treated as objects in where men could play with them as if they are dolls, whom they pay attention to whenever they would like to or need something from them. Despite what a woman says to men, all men are always going to have the reason, even if they are not right. The silences that a woman holds towards men are creating an even broader issue towards women in the present and in the future. The author mainly argues that women should not silence themselves and their issues such as abuse, harassment, rape, violence, stalking or any other crimes that are hurting them emotionally and physically. “Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender” (Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me, page 21). If women continue not to speak up and take action, men are going to continue to take abuse and control over their power.

As a woman, the narrator must be protected and controlled and kept away from harm. This seemed to be the natural mindset in the 19th century, that women need to have guidance in what they do, what decisions they make, and what they say. John calls her a “little goose”(95) and his “little girl”(236), referring her to a child, someone who needs special attention and control. His need for control over her is proven when she admits that her husband is “careful and loving and hardly lets me stir without special direction”(49). John has mentally restrained the speaker’s mind, she is forced to hide her anxieties, fears and be submissive, to preserve the happiness of their marriage. When the narrator attempts to speak up, she is bogged down and made guilty of her actions. Her husband makes her feel guilty for asking, he says, “‘I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind!’”(225-226). By making her feel guilty for her illness, John has trapped her mentally from speaking up about it, convincing her that she must be more careful about her actions. Men often impose the hardships placed upon women during this era. They are often the people reassuring them of their “womanly” duties, and guiding them

“Undressing Aunt Frieda,” is a poem about the narrator’s remembrance of his Aunts life while visiting her on a death bed. The narrative is in first person, and takes place as the narrator and his daughter are about to leave the relative. The first half of the poem explores Frieda and her past. The second half is about how the narrator and daughter have grown and learned from the aunt. While undressing her aunt, the narrator feels emotions and remembers his past with Frieda. The poem describes these emotions and memories in a metaphor explaining unique characteristics of how Aunt Frieda undressed, and how she impacted the relatives.

John, the narrator’s controlling, but loving, husband represents the atypical man of the time. He wants his wife to get better and to be able to fill the role of the perfect wife that society expected from her. John, being a doctor, did not quite believe that her mental illness was out of her control and insisted on

Adrienne Rich, poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” can be read similar to Alice Walker 's short story "Everyday Use” both are compared by the women’s ways of showing their strengths and how they identify their values, expressions and strength. Advertised in the general outlines of the plot, both literary themes talks of a quest for freedom, the characters identity and self-expression.

Akin to intersectional romance fiction, poetry is equivalently as radical. Poetry magnifies the significance of language as a revolutionary tool, one that liberates women and cultivates an environment in which women are free to address their aspirations and anxieties while condemning the ideals of a society that operates under the canons of male chauvinism. In a collection of letters published as a tribute to the late Audre Lorde in Off Our Backs, a feminist newspaper journal written for women by women, one anonymous contributor discusses how Lorde “encourages all women to find their own means of expression, their own poetry to value and to use” (Tyler 32) in her piece “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. In the piece, Lorde discusses how for women, poetry is not a nonessential indulgence, as Caucasian men throughout history have suggested through how they render poetry as an opportunity to “cover [a] desperate wish for imagination without insight” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde contends that poetry is a “vital necessity of [the] existence” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36) of women because it establishes the infrastructure on which women “predicate [their] hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde’s text motivates women to exercise “the power of the word, a freedom for women greatly feared by…patriarchal society” (Tyler 32). Lorde states the poetry

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

It is impossible to discuss the role of women in literature without mentioning the influence of feminism. The later in the timeline one reads, the more prominent it becomes. Each new wave of feminism brings with it its own goals, yet it also continues to strive for some of the same goals as past generations because not everything is accomplished all at once. Although “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall and “Rubyfruit Jungle” by Rita Mae Brown, are two starkly different texts that strongly reflect the feminist eras in which they were written, they have some similarities as well.

Literary and rhetorical devices can greatly strengthen texts and their significance. Kait Rokowski excels at using them in her critically acclaimed spoken word, “How to Cure a Feminist”. In this poem, Rokowski writes in an instruction book form and begins with witty remarks, but it soon escalates into a horrendous exposé on the atrocities women face. Rokowski’s use of similes, personification, and numerous rhetorical devices creates an astounding spoken word that leaves its audience haunted.

Her refusal to react with a “paralyzed inability to accept its significance” as many other women would have, proves that she is not the customary woman (307). Furthermore, the mere fact that Mrs. Mallard possessed the ability to fully decipher her feelings within a short space of time, reveals her self-awareness and efficiency. Given the lack of evidence to say that her husband was anything less than kind to her, readers are reinsured she simply had no interest in being a wife as confesses she often had not loved her husband (308). This conveys the dated notion that despite a woman’s personal wish, marriage is a necessity. Mrs. Mallard had fallen victim to a patriarchal society, choosing to endure a marriage in which she would “shudder at the thought of life being long” (308).

Before the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, women struggled to hold on to their identity while raising children, caring for their husbands and homes, and in Olsen’s case, working to support the family. Like Tillie Olsen, Adrienne Rich struggled with society’s expectation of women to become wives, mothers, and homemakers. Both women bought into the "angel in the house" theory and found themselves unsatisfied. They fought to hold onto their individuality by expressing their ideas through writing, which was not readily accepted in the male dominated literary world. Author Margaret Atwood understands the magnitude of Olsen’s accomplishment saying, "Women writers, even more than their male counterparts, recognize what a heroic feat it is to have held down a job, raised four children, and still somehow managed to become and to remain a writer" (qtd. in Charters 1128). Though Olsen tells her story honestly, with a matter of fact quality, she stirs the reader with emotion and empathy for the overworked mother and the unintentionally neglected daughter.