This reading response will be covering chapter one of Ann Petry’s 1946 novel The Street. The first chapter introduces us to the character Lutie Johnson who is trying to create a stable life for her and her son. Using Lutie Johnson story as a medium, Ann Petry paints a picture of the struggles of being a woman in the inner city. The story opens with a few paragraphs talking about the wind. The wind is perceived under the view of naturalism. This means it’s denoted with a negative connotation. Lutie’s battle against the wind symbolically shows the battle a woman goes through to make it in life. Whether it’s because of society or people in society a woman is held back and pushed back against for making headway. The wind pushes back at …show more content…
Despite it all, Lutie attempts to settle the unease by using humor. She pictures the complex with tenants sleeping in cots outside to settle her mind. This brings us back to the tone the wind set, concerning obtaining a break before being tossed back into the storm.
She is thrown back into the storm, when she meets the Superintendent and his hunger filled eyes (p.172). This sparks a very real fear for a woman left alone with a strange man with lust filled eyes. Lutie fears she will be sexually assaulted or rape. Her femininity is objectified as she can feel his gaze looking up at her as he makes her take the lead upstairs. This fear becomes more intensified as she is left alone in a tiny apartment with the nearest witness being downstairs. Lutie attempts to reassure herself by reminding herself she is doing all this for her child and the man could very well be fixated on something else. But even she knows instinctually that may not be the case as she recalls her grandmother’s words on being able to feel out evil people as well the police may come eventually if she’s being raped (p.176 & p.177). As a desperate mother, she decides to forgo these feelings of dread to do right by her child. She does make a final attempt to subvert the danger by implying that she is married by giving the name of Mrs. Lutie Johnson. This could be taken as she had a husband all along but based on the reading, she is likely using this as a deflection tactic. A man, when
Mrs. Wright eventually deteriorated just has her environment, her rocking chair, and the canary. In “Jury of Her Peers” Minnie Wright’s situation illustrates many women of the world. In the story and in our society many woman are stereotyped in the marriage to complete all home duties and take of care the children while consumed in pleasing their husband. While doing so we lose ourselves. While reading the store I also realized how blessed I am to be symbolized as a modern
In The Street, Ann Petry describes the life of Lutie Johnson, a single mother who lives in a poverty-stricken area in Harlem, New York. Petry details all of Lutie’s problems, along with the diverse individuals she encounters and their issues as well. Being that the particular area the story is set in a lower-class area, the issue of injustice arises. Lutie, as well as the other characters, face some sort of injustice living on “the street.” Petry’s powerful novel was written to explain the injustices people like Lutie face in the real world, and how these injustices impact their lives.
The developer of the “code of the streets” was Elijah Anderson (Siegal & Welsh, 2015). The two cultural forces addressed in this theory are decent values and street values (Siegal & Welsh, 2015).The people who are classified as middle class are taught decent values. These values lean towards the values that most individuals follow, which involve working hard to attain a decent lifestyle (Siegal & Welsh, 2015). The second cultural force addressed in this theory is street values. This force differs from decent values because it consist of individuals who live in the inner city which are mainly the lower class (Siegal & Welsh, 2015).
Despite this clear violation of her boundaries, Lutie stands her ground, ignoring the manipulation the wind attempts on her which reveals how even with the full adversity, Lutie’s relationship to the environment is one with resilience, as while the wind “drove most of the people off the street” Lutie instead push Finally, Ann Petry uses details to additionally unveil Lutie’s persistence in her relationship with the urban
The woman found is assumed by those who knew both her and Lennie to have brought this upon herself. She is described by them as being provocative and flirtatious. Many spoken to believe she lured Lennie to herself, leading to her death. Her intentions in this assumed luring are thought to have been sexual, or at the very least wrong.
When Charlotte moved in with Kennith there were things happening that weren’t normal. Letters were appearing and things were odd in this household of the Ashbys. There was definitely something mysterious about Elise, Kennith’s loyalty to Charlotte, and the letters Kenneth receive from Elise. Elise is the dead wife that is the ghost in the short story, and Kenneth is recently married to his new wife Charlotte. Edith Wharton uses mystery and the fear of the unknown to create tension throughout the story.
In a war torn London, a prosaic woman named Mrs. Drover had returned home to retrieve some of the stuff that she had left behind. She arrives to find that not everything is the way that she left it. She soon gets the feeling that she is being watched. Mrs. Drover’s character evolves throughout the story. She goes from a very ordinary woman to a paranoid mess.
Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.
The theme of the story concentrates on women's suffrage. Mrs. Wright apparently has been pushed over the edge with the restrictions set on her life and one day she finally snaps. This implicit theme suggest
She was not one to love Literature or the writing of Shakespear, but had seemed to follow the basics in class. As she was walking in the garden of the university, Lurie approached her inviting her to have a drink at his house. She politely accepts as the night was full of drinking and movie watching. With the movie coming to a close, Lurie asked if she would sleep with him. She politely declines, curious, however, to know why he would like to sleep with her. In response, he said,”because a woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it”(16). She recognizes it as a Shakespear quote and leaves Lurie’s home. Lurie took matters into his own hands by going through school records to find Melanie’s number to ask her out to dinner. He shows up at her doorstep, uninvited, and carries Melanie to her room as she repeatedly said she did not want to have sex with him. After all was said and done, Lurie had gotten what he wanted, not caring about how Melanie felt about the situation, and left. He took advantage of a young woman who was not even half his age just to get what he wanted. This situation led to Lurie being let go by the college and without a job. At first, he did not understand why his case was under such scrutiny with the University. He gave up and plead guilty to all charges that
In the play, descriptive language teaches the audience more about the surroundings than what the characters are actually saying to one another. "I've not been in this house--it's more than a year" (6), Mrs. Hale tells the county attorney. It is a very run down house, and the audience discovers there are no signs of anyone really ever being happy. The kitchen is dirty, and the women begin to feel uneasy about being in a house where there is nothing but darkness and coldness. The darkness is to signify how alone and empty Mrs. Wright was feeling while living with her husband. Mrs. Wright did not feel wanted, and she felt like all hope was lost which the audience recognizes with the help of Mrs. Hale's saying, "...he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him. Like a raw wind that gets to the bone" (11). Mrs. Hale conveys these important details to Mrs. Peters, which proves that the environment in the Wright house was dark and dreary. The audience can imagine living in house where there is nothing but solitude and misery. The solemn atmosphere makes the readers start to understand how lonely and depressing living in the house actually was.
An initial reading of A Jury of Her Peers suggests that the author focuses on the common stereotypes of women in the 1800s; however, a close reading reveals that the text also examines the idea that they are more capable than men may think. The fact that Mrs. Wright was able to pull off killing her husband by herself and without the men finding out proves that she is very capable and did not need the help of men to pull it off. The men at the time believed that women were incapable of doing things by themselves and thought that they should just stay in the kitchen, cook, and clean. They thought that they could not manage to do things that men could and did not trust them with a man's job.
When her husband is killed in a train accident Mrs. Mallard cries, but for different reasons than would be expected. She is sad for her husband’s death, but, moreover, she is overcome with joy. For now she is free. No one recognizes her true emotions because women fall apart when their spouse dies; it’s required. Marriage is portrayed as a life sentence. "She said it over and over again under her breath: ‘free, free, free!' Her pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body"(1). Mrs. Mallard was relieved that her husband died for she thought her sentence was over. When she realized that he was still alive, and therefore she was still committed to the marriage, she died from the shock and horror of being trapped.
When the narrator first encounters the girl, his friend's older sister, he can only see her silhouette in the “light from the half-opened door”. This is the beginning of his infatuation with the girl. After his discovery, he is plagued by thoughts of the girl which make his daily obligations seem like “ugly, monotonous, child's play”. He has become blinded by the light. The narrator not only fails to learn the name of his “girl”, he does not realize that his infatuation with a woman considerably older than himself is not appropriate. He relishes in his infatuation, feeling “thankful [he] could see so little” while he thinks of the distant “lamp or lighted window” that represents his girl. The narrator is engulfed by the false light that is his futile love.
Blanche is then wrestled to the bed and we are made to believe she is raped. This section demonstrates a firm dramatic climax, which is a turning point of a narrative work; the point of highest tension. The use of stage directions adds to the intensity of the dramatic climax within the section. This illustrates to us that the