Blog #4

The "Wallpaper" is a story about a women diagnosed with having some kind of nervous depression, and therefore moves to a summer house in which she is told to get better. Right away from a feminist perspective one can tell that this women is clearly struggling with her situation and remains very passive through out the story. She is the typical housewife of the early twentieth century in that she is compliant and does what ever she is told by her husband. Through out the story she never undermines her husband even when  it looks like what can help her condition is something that goes against the husbands proposal. The story clearly shows that this woman feels greatly opposed to the methods she has been giving, but the time period and role of woman from the apparent times doesn't let her express her true emotions or feelings about the situation. The husband and brother which are both doctors tell her she needs to rest and get her mind of work. She on the other hand feels that working on her writing will help her more than what she is being told to do. Therefore, being shut down by men makes her sneak around to do her writing and then lie to her husband since she knows he will get upset. Almost every argument or discussion with her husband through out the story ends with her being subdued into her husbands reasoning and with out much opposition from her. Later on she becomes fascinated by the wallpaper in her room which she wants to get rid of. By the end of the story she rips the wallpaper of her self after being told she wasn't able to by her husband and in doing so she figured out that the person trapped behind that wallpaper was her. The symbolism of the wallpaper was that of her trying to escape the restraints put on her by man mainly, as the story ends she yells out "I've gout out at last".

The second story I read was a poem "The Lady in the Pink Mustang" by Louise Erdrich. From the beginning one can tell that the lady being described could easily be an archetype of what someone would consider a whore or prostitute.  Reading the line "her price shrinks into the dark" implicates that she is a commodity at night and also the " or How Much." can give away what kind of living she does. The fact that it says she travels light and doesn't really have many belongings creates the image of a woman who is on the road for very long periods of times as the poem describes. This poem has a woman who could be seen as someone who has given herself up or possibly the other way around.
-Leo N.