Virginia Shreves Character Traits

When Jeannette begins school in Welch, an African American girl Dinitia Hewitt and her friends harassed and beat up Jeannette for being scrawny and filthy. She is constantly made fun of because it is apparent that she lives in poverty. The other children do not accept other that aren’t like them and Jeannette is no exception. Her worn clothes and grimy hair are like a neon sign shouting about her life in poverty which makes Jeannette an easy target to bullies. Jeannette tries very hard to stand up for herself, however, the bullying only stops once other realize that living in poverty and being different was not Jeannette’s

Anderson’s story contains a four-page description of the events that led to Melinda, the main characters, rape scene. These four pages were enough for Scroggin and Swier to challenge this novel in its entirety and hide it from students, hindering their horizons of literature.

To begin with, Connie’s an adolescent rebellion, always disobeying, and breaking rules. She believes herself to be the most gorgeous in her family, that all boys are attracted to her, and her life is a fairytale. This causes her to focus on the wrong beliefs, which gets her into danger later. Everyone knows Connie feels the most entitled in her family and this causes her to get into disputes with her mom, or put her in unfavorable comparisons with her sister, June. “June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn’t do a thing, her mind was filled with trashy daydreams” (36). Connie, who is always in her sister’s shadow, can never do anything right in her mother’s eyes. Oates explained, “She spent hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups” (36). Connie would be physically attracted to any boy she set her eyes on, so she adored sneaking into drive-ins with men, and cherished precious time alone with them. Perfect happily ever-after’s and fantasies would always be running through

The beginning of the short story enlightens the reader into the relationship that Connie has with her mother. Connie’s mother does not agree with her admiration for herself. This is due to Connie’s mother’s own insecurities. Oates writes, “Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie” (Oates 3043). Connie was aware that her mother was jealous of the way she looked and envied her young adolescence. Her mother was nagging her daily and constantly comparing her to her sister. The constant comparison and nagging left Connie to deal with internally judging herself. Oates expresses Connie’s strong unhappiness with her mother by stating “…but around his bent head Connie’s mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (3043). Connie’s frustration with her mother lies deep within her internal judgments. She repeatedly obsesses over her mother’s words and desires attention from older males. Even though she does not feel as if she fits in with her sister June, there are some characteristics that she likes about her sister. One of these characteristics is that June is older. Since June is older, Connie is allowed to go out when her sister does which allows her to embrace her rebellious adolescence. She wishes she was older and battles with her internal misconception of her age. In the story, Connie is at an age where she is experimenting with her surroundings. Young girls are regularly comparing themselves to their friends and their elders. The obsession of comparison leaves Connie continuously striving to be better and to increase her attractiveness. Her misconceptions suggest to her that she needs to be more sexual. Her varying internal conflicts leave her with a void that she tries to fill otherwise.

The disparity of the outward imageries by Mama is a small manifestation of her cloaked animosity and resentment as compared to her hyperbolic soliloquies. Even in her dreams she says Dee wants her to be “a hundred pounds lighter, [her] skin like an uncooked barley pancake; [her] hair [glistening] in the hot bright lights” (60). Mama refers to Dee being embarrassed and ashamed of her mother’s appearance. Mama indicates that she can never be what Dee wants her to be in stating “Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue” (60); rhetoric corroborated by Mama’s admission that she “never had an education [herself]. After second grade the school was closed down” (61). However, Mama shunned Dee’s quick tongue, acquired from her education; Mama recalls “[Dee] used to read to [them] without

Although the daughter’s shame in her mother is evident, she is also prideful of her as well. The strong love that the mother and daughter share is pervasive throughout the story. The story is being told by the daughter after she is all grown up. The fact that Jones uses such vivid detail on the mother’s preparation for her daughters first day of school shows that the daughter loved her mom and all that she did for her. The daughter recalls that her mother spent a lot of time preparing her when she says, “My mother has uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour on my hair that morning, plaiting and replaiting so that now my scalp tingles.” (Jones) She also remembers that her “pale green slip and underwear are new, the underwear having come three to a plastic package with a little girl on the front who appears to be dancing.” (Jones) The daughter having remembered details like these illustrate that she has an immense love and takes pride

1) The Virginian: The Virginian was a man of justice and order. He strived to keep peace and make sure everything was fair. He was clean and orderly. The Virginian is a cowboy in Wyoming. He is good with people. He is a strong man that fights for himself and justice. When he was faced with Balaam, he attacked and won against him. Balaam was the horse killer, and since the Virginian saw Balaam trying to beat the horse, he became infuriated and killed Balaam. He falls in love at first sight upon meeting Molly Wood.

She once wished to disappear, but her peers showed her the idea of the average American teenager. Jeanne fell into their world, changing herself and the way she dressed. Her conservative clothes disappeared, and were replaced by gaudy clothing that became a distraction from her heritage. Papa became outraged when he found out that Jeanne had been voted carnival princess at her new school. She barely won the vote, only after confronting teachers that stuffed the ballot box because they wanted Jeanne to lose. For her coronation night, Jeanne found a dress that was traditional and elegant. When she arrived that evening, her fellow contestants taunted Jeanne, making demeaning comments about her dress. One girl in particular was especially mean, ““The high neck,” she explained, studying my dress. “You look so… sedate. Just perfect for a queen.” As the other girls arrived, she made sure they all agreed with this. “Don’t you wish you’d thought of it,” she would say. And then to me, during a silence she felt obliged to fill, “I just love Chinese food.”” (Manzanar 180). The way that Lois Carson spoke to her reeked with sarcasm and made Jeanne feel like she didn’t belong with the other

In her sorrow for the behavior of her daughter Connie, the mother often expresses a bit more appreciation and consideration for the older sister June. She declares somewhere in the story, ‘’Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? How’ve you got your hair fixed-what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk’’ (Henderson ). It is well-known that anything in excess is harmful, but Connie does not seem to have been aware of this. Connie’s behavior, far away from doing good to her, exposes her to her sexual predator as an easy prey.

“Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?”(1408) As a mother, she should be happy for her daughter’s good looks and support her, especially at the age Connie’s at. Instead, she always compares Connie to her sister, criticizes Connie on the way she acts, essentially degrading Connie every chance she gets; “Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over”(1408). This constant harassment and lack of a strong mother-daughter relationship pushes Connie away from home and subject’s her to keep her emotions and thoughts bottled up, essentially making her vulnerable to

Connie rejects the part of being a little girl, sister and ‘pleasant’ young lady to develop her sexual persona, which prospers just when she is far from her home and family. She ridicules her unattractive more established sister, June, and is in consistent clash with her family. Her worries are normally pre-adult: she fixates on her looks, listens to music, hangs out with her companions, flirts with young men, and investigates her sexuality. She enjoys the way that younger and even older men find her appealing. Connie has developed a specific way of dressing, walking, and laughing that make her sexually engaging, in spite of the fact that these idiosyncrasies are just brief affectations. She acts one way in her home and a completely different way when she is somewhere else. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to

In Kathleen Wilson’s Short Stories for Students, she states, “‘Oh Look at the cute little pickinanny!’ She continues, ‘Wouldn’t that make a picture now?’ when the granddaughter comments on the lack of the child's clothes, the Grandmother says, ‘He probably didn’t have any…. Little n[****]rs in the country don’t have the things we do’” (Wilson 101).This gives the reader and incite on the Grandmothers personality and how she thinks.

Mrs. Johnson was also conscious about her looks describing herself as a big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands and fat that keeps her warm when the weather turns cold (Walker, 1973). She dreams of being on a television show where Dee shows appreciation for her. The mother knows that Dee does not care for the way

James' manipulation of appearances in Daisy Miller as well as other character's notions of these appearances provides us with a novella of enigmatic and fascinating characters. Daisy, the most complicated of these ambiguities, is as mysterious as she is flirtatious. James gives her a carefully constructed enigmatic quality that leaves the reader wondering what her motivations were and who she truly was. He structures the novella in such a way as to stress the insights that the supporting characters provide into Daisy's character, weather accurate or erroneous. Despite their questionable reliability, they allow James to make commentary on both European and American cultures and social class.

Through critical reflection, both girls and their feelings toward their mother’s, are mirrored through Maggie’s character. Twyla introduces Maggie as being short, dressing like a kid and “sandy-colored.” (240) Maggie did not speak and