My First Blog

When I began reading, I was worried nothing would catch my interest and I would have a hard time with this assignment. This was not the case.

In "The Yellow Wall-Paper" my attention was immediately brought to the description of the wall-paper on page 43 " sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.... a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight." This caught my attention for two reasons. One was that it just seemed like such a depressing room to be in. I couldn't understand why someone would put a lady who was already mentally ill in such a room and expect her to get better. The other reason why I was drawn to this description was because it described perfectly the old wall-paper in the basement of the house I grew up in. It brought back so many memories that I had not thought of in years. This particular image doesn't really remind me of any thing else we have read so far. However, the story does. It is exactly what we talked about in class. Women in the past were just seen as crazy and were never treated for their mental illnesses.

In "Ain't I a Woman?"I was drawn to the line "I cried out with my mother's grief." I am personally not a mother but I am extremely close to my nieces and if I had to watch something horrible happen to them or to have them taken away from me I can only imagine the sadness I would feel. This is similar to the strong emotions that could be seen in many of the texts that we brought to class.

"I rise with my red hair/ and I eat men like air" caught my attention in "Lady Lazarus". It was so different than the rest of the poem to me. Throughout the beginning she is talking about committing suicide, which to me I associate with having low self-esteem. Then all of a sudden I got the image that she is this vixen who eat men and then spit them out. This is very different than many of the passages we read the first day of class because many of the women in them were passive. This does not seem like a passive woman to me.

"When I Was Growing Up" had a lot of great imagery in it. "Blonde movie stars, white skin, sensuous lips and to be elevated, to become a woman, a desirable woman, I began to wear imaginary pale skin" caught my attention the most. This just struck me as something a man would say, not so much a women. It was very similar to the physical descriptions of a women's body that we saw in "Leda and the Swan" and other of the poems we read early in class.

In "The Thirty Eighth Year" my attention was brought to "i have taken the bones you hardened and built daughters and they blossom and promise fruit." I can definitely see myself taking everything my mother has taught me and worked for and trying to make her proud through my offspring as well. Also, this quote reminded me of "Queen Anne's Lace" because in this poem she is referring to her daughters as a plant (fruit) that are blossoming just like he refers to the woman in the poem as flowers that bloom under his touch. So that is a definite similarity.