Robert Frost

This week we look at the poems of Robert Frost. I have not had much exposure to Frost in the past, what little I’ve had I found interesting but not quite my “cup of tea” to be honest. It was nice to dig a little deeper into his work, and find out a little bit more about him and his ideology.
I picked out three poems that stood out to me. Most of his poems, the longer ones, seemed to be more like narrative verses, almost as though they belonged in a passage of short story. Too short for a story, too long for a poem, for my taste, although the descriptive elements were amazing. I preferred “Fire and Ice”, a shorter piece compared to some of his others. In it he talks about the end of the world, and how it might end, and what might bring it about- desire (fire) or hate (ice). He is of the opinion that the world will end in one sin or another, and he puts himself in the “desire” group, saying he has “tasted of” it before. I also liked “Nothing Gold Can Stay” which I take as symbolizing the fleeting nature of new spring, but also maybe youth, or beauty itself, maybe new love as well. “The Road Not Taken” is a familiar poem to many, frequently recited to remind us to heed our inner voice, be independent and make the right choices. Personally, I’ve never really known if he made the right choice, or if he regretted his choice; to me it’s a bit ambiguous. He says he took the road less traveled, but how did he know? In the middle two sections he said they were worn about the same, and were equally covered in leaves. Either way, it’s a lovely poem, and it does make you think.

The Other Two

Unlike Crane’s poetry and story “The Open Boat”, Edith Wharton’s “The Other Two” illustrates how nature comes out in our emotions, and how forces beyond our power, like society (and marriage, depending on the time period), can have absolute control over us. The husband in this story started out being more than a little confident, happy with his choice of wife, despite her twice-divorced status. He seemed to be proud of the way she didn’t care what others thought about her, and he was especially happy with the way she cared for her child, but not overly so. When her first husband entered the picture again, he was not thrilled, and neither was she, but he told her not to worry, and was happy to see that she “obeyed”. He saw her as an object, and the idea of her first husband’s visit threatened him. Soon he met up with her second husband, and he began to think about his wife’s earlier marriages. When he saw her later, she did not seem to be as charming as she once had been to him. But then, he took in her beauty, and “yielded to the joy of possessorship”- he was filled with a sense of ownership for her. At least until she mistakenly made the same drink she used to make for her ex-husband.
As Waythorn began to have more dealings with his wife’s past husbands he began to think less and less of her; the fact that she “took her change of husbands like a change of weather” bothered him immeasurably. To him, she was “as easy as an old shoe”, one that had been worn by too many feet. She was no longer special, no longer just his. He felt like part-owner in something he didn’t know the first thing about.
Alice used the only thing available to her- marriage- to move up the social food chain. Each time, she moved farther up, until she married Waythorn. She did so without regrets on the surface, but in shadowed looks and veiled comments, Alice’s unhappiness is seen at various times. She is a victim of the time, in a way. She may have found happiness with Waythorn, she seems happy with him most of the time, but her inability to freely express herself and her thoughts never lets us know. Even in the last scene, when she is confronted by all three of her husbands, she has to conform to social conventions and be polite, regardless of what she really may have wanted to do. Even in this day and age, that would be have been an awkward situation; I can’t imagine how crazy it would have been back then.

The Open Boat

This was not my favorite piece this week. I understand that it has significance, and I do appreciate the imagery, but again, not my kind of story. I enjoyed Stephen Crane’s poetry- short, dark, ironic and to the point. I could see his naturalist tendencies at work in this story, as the four men battled the sea for their lives. Trapped in their little dinghy, they relied on each other to survive, taking turns rowing their small boat through the rocking waves. Crane makes the sea almost come alive, it is so aggressive and seemingly bent on their destruction. In section VI, the narrator makes the observation that to have worked so hard to survive and then to still be drowned by the “seven mad gods” of the sea was surely an injustice- he realizes that nature does not value him or his life. He is insignificant. Much like the poem “A Man Said to the Universe”, the universe feels no obligation to the men in the boat. In section VII, the correspondent sees the tall, deserted wind-mill on shore, and it causes him to think about nature. To him, nature no longer seemed brutal, it was unfeeling, indifferent, uncaring. It gave him the opportunity to see his life and all of its mistakes, and he wished for the chance to repair them. At the end, the overturned men are swimming for shore, and nature’s unpredictability is shown. As a wave flings the correspondent towards the shore in a “miracle of the sea”, the cook and the captain survive, but the oiler apparently drowns.

The Poems of Stephen Crane

I barely remember our high school reading of “The Red Badge of Courage”, and that is probably a good thing, because I didn’t want anything to interfere with my enjoyment of Crane’s poetry. I never knew there were poems, and I was pleasantly surprised to read these. They are short, but certainly not sweet, and in my opinion, they are petite masterpieces of the naturalism and honesty he tried to portray in his work.

They are very dark and sometimes a little scary, but then, they are intended to show how man is often just part of the world, often a victim, having no more importance than anything else in it. My favorite is “A Man Said to The Universe”, in which a man finds out that he is not important just because he exists; the universe owes him no obligation because of his existence. It does serve to remind all of us that we are all mere mortals on this rock and we should be mindful of our place; we are no more important than anyone or anything else simply because “we are”. I also liked “A Man Feared That He Might Find an Assassin”. One man fears he might find his killer, one fears he might find his victim. We know that one will find the other first, and so do they. It is very short, very dark, and very thoughtful. Who was the most fearful? In a way, I think the assassin was the most fearful, because he would have to live with himself and the sin of his misdeeds afterwards. That kind of guilt twisting through you, I think it might last longer than the quick death of an assassin.

The Yellow Wallpaper

I first read this short story last summer, in American Women’s Studies. It was, and still is, a great study of the emerging voice of female writers of the late 1800’s. It, like so many others we have read, speaks loudly of the “unheard” woman, who desperately seeks self-expression, but finds herself at odds with an overbearing patriarchal society. Like “The Awakening”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s tale is one of a heroine who felt suppressed by her husband and society as a whole. Unlike Chopin’s Edna, we feel more emotion for and from the narrator in the “The Yellow Wallpaper”; the horror experienced by the narrator is felt by us.
We feel for this character, we sympathize with her plight, even though we do not entirely understand her circumstance. Did her problems begin with the birth of her child, or was she perhaps a bit “nervous” already? Certainly being left on her own with nothing to occupy her mind, her husband’s best medical advice, was the worst thing to do, as it just fed into her anxiety and frail mental state. Her hallucinations of the women trying to get out of the wallpaper seem to echo her own inner desire to get out of the room, out of the stifling conditions she felt. As she “crossed over” and became completely delusional to the point of thinking that she was the one trapped in the wallpaper all along, we begin to see how desperate her situation is. In fact, we see that it is she, from the start that has destroyed the room. Her husband did appear to care for her, and in his ignorance, tried to provide her a place to recuperate; he acted out of the best advice of the time, as foolish and backwards as it was. Her stepping across him in the last line as she made her rounds of the room probably served as some sort of triumph for her, as to her she had conquered her captor.

Edna's Awakening

This week brought us some very interesting reading. Kate Chopin should be familiar to most people in the class, from “The Story of an Hour”, about an unhappy housewife who gets a glimpse of happiness when she hears of her husband’s “death”. In my high school in Louisiana, we read this story in 12th grade, although I have to admit I forgot just about everything but the ending. My preferred Chopin story is “Desiree’s Baby”, (HUM 122- Southern Culture), about an abandoned baby girl who was raised in a prominent family, who grows up and marries a wealthy plantation owner, and then has a baby who is obviously not 100% white. Her husband accuses her of being non-white, and in shame she kills herself and the baby. (remember the time period) The story goes on to a shocking ending, and it only compounds the avoidable tragedy.
I can see why “The Awakening” is both her best and the most controversial story. It delves into the subject of women who feel incomplete and stifled by the constraints of marriage, like the “The Story of an Hour”, while it also tapped into the psychological study of depression and inability to cope, and how they link to suicidal tendencies, like in “Desiree’s Baby”. I felt like Edna’s character had some flaws, but perhaps many of her problems could have been avoided by steering clear of marriage, at least marriage to someone she did not love. I realize our notions are not the same as those our ancestors had 110 years ago, but it would have solved at lot of her problems. She loved her children, but had she been childless, she would have been happy. She was a person who suddenly found herself incomplete- not happy with her marriage, her responsibilities or her lack of vocation. While I don’t necessarily agree with her method to rediscovery, I can sympathize with the lack of direction and choices given to women of the day. In her mind, death was the only way she could prevent her husband, her children, even her lovers from subjecting her to their will; not only is that sad, but to me, it speaks of a certain level of selfishness. Just my two cents.