The Young Housewife

As I read through the short poem The Young Housewife by William Carlos Williams, the first question that popped into my head was: Who is the narrator? Since there is someone looking outside their car window watching this young housewive carry on with her daily activities. "At ten A.M. the young house wife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary in my car" (1007). Because the narrator gives a specific time I feel as though the person speaking knows or once knew the woman or is even perhaps a neighbor, and seeing her is a daily routine. Also I feel the car and the housewife in her house serve as counter parts. The car symbolizes freedom and the privilege to go wherever, while the house for the woman is sort of a cage and she is confined to the house with "wooden walls". Then as the person in the car is watching her, he/she sees her interacting with other man who aren't her husband "then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair" (1007). To me, I think the woman calls upon the men not to restock on resources, but out of lonliness because her husband is away and since she is so young she calls upon men who are willing to come to the house and flirts with them. Only after the narrator witnesses this is when he/she compare her to a fallen leaf because she leaves her position as housewife and goes outside the house to interact with other men and then drives off. In a way, this story reminded of The Yellow Wallpaper and that back in the day women mostly worked as housewives and were confined to their homes that men owned. The same happens with the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper because her husband has a job as a doctor and bought a new house for them. He also keeps his wife in the house, believing outside made her sick when it was really what she needed.

Trifles by: Susan Glaspell

I really enjoyed reading the beginning of this story because I envisioned the opening to some sort of detective/mystery movie. Also, when Mr. Hale asked Mrs. Wright what her husband had died of and she answered by saying "He died of a rope around his neck" (919). I though at first he had killed himself. But as the story progressed, the readers realize it wasn't a suicide, but murder.

As the story goes on the men are searching around for evidence in order to convict Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discover an empty birdcage and a bird nowhere to be seen. They eventually find the dead bird in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket while they are searching for materials for the quilt. They also discover that the bird had been strangled in the same manner as John Wright. The two women are hesitant to flout the men, since they found evidence when they didn't, and instead decide to hide the evidence. Without a trace of evidence, the men are unable to find any proof against Mrs. Wright which will prevent her from being acquitted by a future jury.
I feel like Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale hid the evidence to protect Mrs. Wright because they felt "It never seemed a very cheerful place" (920). Also Mrs. Hale mentions how happy Mrs. Wright was before her marriage which led me to believe she was abused throughout the marriage by her husband and killed him as a result. With regarding the bird, I feel like she used the bird to practice on before she carried out the act on her husband.

Elsa Wertman

The poem by Edgar Lee Masters tells the story of a German woman named Elsa Wertman, who has blond hair and blue eyes, and is working for a politician named Thomas Greene and his wife Frances Greene. When Thomas' wife is away, he seduces Elsa into sleeping with him. Although it describes that "neither of us seemed to know what happened" (878), Elsa says when Thomas came onto her "I turned my head". After reading this, I'm convinced Elsa was raped and had no desire to be with Thomas Greene. However, when Elsa's "secret began to grow" meaning she is pregnant, Mrs. Greene finds out about the affair and tells Elsa that she will take the baby and raise the child as her own, since Elsa is not married and can't support the baby. Mrs. Greene's behavior strikes me as very strange because I expected her to be angry, upset or even shocked, but she presents herself as very calm and understanding. Reading the lines "so she hid in the house and sent out rumors, as if it were going to happen to her", I'm not sure whether her intention is to cover up the affair from the public or if it was a planned event between Mr. and Mrs. Greene so they could have a child to pass on their name. At the end after Elsa has married another man and years have passed, Elsa sees her child again at a political rally and acknowledges Hamilton Greene as her own son, not with pride but with verification.

Roman Fever and The Open Boat

In the short story “Roman Fever,” which I had read previously, I always found Mrs. Slade to be a horrible, stuck up upper class woman. Horrible in the sense that she become so blinded by jealousy from Mrs. Ansley, someone she had known since childhood, and her relationship with Mr. Slade that she hurt her. The fact that she tried to give Ansley Roman Fever through a fake letter, just to illuminate the competition is awful and tells me that women back then had nothing better to do then hurt each other over a man. “It’s odd you never thought of it, if you wrote the letter.” “Yes. I was blind with rage.” (P. 786). I was glad at the end when Mrs. Ansley revealed to Mrs. Slade that she had a child with Mr. Slade, a daughter named Barbara.

I found the “The Open Boat” to be quite interesting because by not often using their names, and referring to them as their professions instead, I feel like Crane expands the background of the story. It’s like Crane almost wants his audience to identify with the four men. Their obscure naming interprets them as more anonymous and therefore relatable and generalized.

Though the characters angered me at times because I feel they didn't really communicate or work together with each other, and stretch a theme that is misconception. The men do not communicate with each other that extensively, but they do have various misconceptions. For example, the cook and the correspondent have differing notions of the location of the nearest station that could launch a rescue mission; both are incorrect. “None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of this wreck,” said the oiler, in a low voice, “else the life-boat would be out hunting us.” Also I think it wasn't fair that the oiler and the correspondent where the only ones rowing when everyone could have taken a turn so the two weren't completely exhausted and the oiler could have survived.