The Others

When I first read The Yellow Wallpaper, I didn’t perceive Gilman’s writing as a piece that was advocating change. Although Mandy’s lead respondent activity certainly made me rethink some of the motives of her writing, I still don’t necessarily believe that Gilman was writing a story about liberating women or advocating change. For instance, one of the examples that was brought up in class was the quote, “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” (Gilman 365) which was suggested to represent the fact that women were hidden behind the duties of the home and controlled by men. When she finally frees herself from the paper, John faints in front of her and she “had to creep over him every time” (365) which is also supposed to represent that by freeing herself from the paper, she in turn has liberated herself from John. While certainly an interesting perspective on the text, I don’t agree with any of that. How is a story about a woman who kills herself and/or is dead and existing throughout the story as a ghost dealing with women’s liberation? If anything, this is a story about defeat. The dominance of her husband and being in solitary confinement with that wallpaper drove her crazy and she killed herself. I believe that this story is more about the dominance of men over women and not about liberation.

I also don’t agree with some of the other pieces we’ve read this semester that have been ‘written to affect change’. For example, The Yares of Black Mountain although certainly written about the North and South, did not, in my opinion, symbolize the baby as ‘our sick nation’. I personally think that is ludicrous! You can pull anything and see what you want to see from the text, that’s one of the great things about literature, however I personally fail to take the side of these pieces being written to change society.

Superbad

One of the things I found particularly interesting about Tom Sawyer is that it’s the first time that we get to see the boy’s point of view of getting a girl’s attention and being ‘in love’. When he first encounters the unknown girl outside her house, he tries “to ‘show off’ in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win her admiration” (Twain 23). Although the idea of the boy showing off to win the girl’s heart isn’t new, I find it hilarious that a boy, not a teenager or a man, is trying to show off with “some dangerous gymnastic performance” (23). Also when Tom is in Sunday School and the little girl and her whole family shows up, every one in the class begins to try and make themselves look better, but it’s very different for the girls than for the boys. “The little girls ‘showed off’ in various ways, and the little boys ‘showed off’ with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings” (38). This highlights that the way that boys and girls think about “being the best” is quite different. For girls it seems to be about the whole picture and being the best overall; being good, smart, and accomplished. While for boys, it’s being the best at one particular skill; being the loudest, the fastest, or the toughest.

Also, another point I found interesting is that the ‘wealth’ of a boy is equal to the amount of junk he can accumulate. When he is painting the fence and tricks the boys of the neighborhood into paining it for him, “Tom was literally rolling in wealth” (18). But his ‘wealth’ is really just a bunch of junk from four pieces of an orange peel, to a kitten with only one eye, to a dilapidated old window-sash (18). Who caries all this around in their pockets? It’s as if boys during this time period were constantly on the hunt to trade their junk with another boys junk to see who could have the most junk. Even at church, Tom trades a “piece of lickrish and a fish-hook” (33) for a yellow ticket.