Blog 6

Writers such as William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson have always caught my attention. I enjoy reading their riddles and how they write has one or more meanings. Gilian's reading on "The Yellow Wallpaper," is quite similar to Shakespeare and Dickinson's. her excerpt is like a riddle that could be interpreted in many ways. This reading or riddle was easier than your average literature. Gilman made it clear that she was trapped in her own house and because of this she was depressed. The wallpaper acted like a barrier or a disease in a sense because she could not relieve herself from the conditions she had to face. In her readings she had wrote, "It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following. pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions." Here she is obviously in distress. To have these opinions of a wallpaper one must have a mental disability. She even compares the wallpaper to suicide. Comparing a wall to suicide is unheard of. It is clear that she is lost in her own house and depressed because she has no freedom. Her husband John amd brother does not believe she has a mental condition to which drives her even more insane. This reading has another meaning which we described more in class. This is the idea of women inequality. It is clear in this reading a display of androcentric culture. Men are the workers and women are under appreciated in the workforce or in society in general. they stay at home and take care of children and home duties. As we described in class women have their public and private spheres. Men I believe at this time had a majority of these spheres that they would call their own or dominate. Women could not even call their home a place of theirs because the male would determine what the home would consist of. This reading was a great interpretation of how women can get lost in their own home and lose their sense of self. Below is another riddle that I believe deals with unappreciated women. See what you can interpret.

Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson


She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.

If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,

It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl and weed,
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.