Death

Elizabeth is a grotesque for a number of reasons, but mostly because of her failure of placing absolute faith in love. Throughout the book, Elizabeth is constantly searching for “true love,” which Dr. Reefy believes is wrong. He advises her by saying, “You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips in flamed and made tender by kisses.” However, through love Elizabeth is constantly looking for release, which is illustrated when Elizabeth nearly kills her horse as she, “wanted to run away from everything.” Thus, Elizabeth searches for love because she wants to find freedom through her lovers, Dr. Reefy and death. The eight hundred dollars is also symbolic of another aspect of grotesqueness. Although the father contends on his death bed, “even now I owe money to the bank,” he still manages to save eight hundred dollars for his daughter back in the early 1900s, which is a significant sum of money. Yet, Elizabeth’s father also sees right through the failure of Elizabeth’s marriage—“Don’t marry Tom Willard or anyone else here in Winesburg. There is eight hundred dollars in a tin box. Take it and go away.” Yet, Elizabeth does not follow her father’s commands, but does keep her promise to never tell Tom about the box. Still the box remains hidden following her death because Elizabeth was unable to reveal its hidden location to George. The box therefore symbolizes Elizabeth’s grotesque life on Earth. Even though her father suggests that the box could help her escape as an open door, it remains hidden and concealed, forgotten. Therefore, the door was never opened, the release never occurred until death itself happened which suggests that grotesqueness is something that can’t be escaped. The worn out steps also symbolize grotesqueness. At the beginning of “Death”, there is an ominous tone generated simply from the title that foreshadows there will be isolation and misery. The description of the environment, “Dr. Reefy’s office was but dimly lighted. At the head of the stairway hung a lamp with a dirty chimney that was fastened by a bracket to the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector, brown with rust and covered with dust,” emphasizes the isolation and emptiness because of the absence of any new furniture; everything is depicted as old and obsolete. Moreover, another significance of the beginning setting concerns the worn out steps. These steps are also symbolic of the lives of the grotesque, including those of Dr. Reefy’s and Elizabeth’s. The worn out steps represent Elizabeth’s erosion of her figure, “already the woman’s naturally tall figure had begun to droop and to drag itself listless about.” Moreover, the stairs also represent the restricted, narrow lives of both figures in addition to the routinized patterns they live their lives by.

Revisting Winesburg, Ohio: Tandy

Throughout “Tandy,” Anderson describes the young, small girl ambiguously by failing to describe certain characteristics that are crucial to her identity. The banal setting that her childhood takes place in, suggests that she like the “unpainted house on an unused road” which she grew up in is inconsequential. The fact that her father gives her no love and her mother is dead suggests that the little girl was not loved or developed. The absence of religion in her life, likewise, signifies how empty her fate is and worthless. Likewise, Anderson purposely keeps the little girl nameless because like her identification, her name is also insignificant. Without her name, the little girl represents the empty shell of humanity that comes at the loss of self. When the stranger comes into town, he serves an ironic role. Although he and Tom Hard both become friends due to the fact that they both are agnostics, the stranger comes to Winesburg for salvation. Like Tom Hard, himself, the stranger is also a drunkard. He hopes that by coming to Winesburg—essentially, taking a holy pilgrimage—to cleanse his sins of drinking, he might save himself. Yet he is unable to control his alcohol consumption and thus he becomes a tragic figure who is unsuccessful and ends up bingeing on even more alcohol than he had previously. Thus his thirst for liquor represents the failures that corrupt his person as he falls even deeper into an endless route of hopeless recovery. As the stranger realizes the futility of his objective, he turns to the Tandy and tells her that he “ran away to the country to be cured, but [he is] not cured,” therefore emphasizing the ineffectiveness of his purpose in coming to Winesburg. As he falls on his knees and raised the hands of the little girl to his drunken lips, he kisses them ecstatically. In her, he sees everything that he himself has lost, but above all the stranger sees potential in her. The little girl, although childishly innocent has already been exposed to several truths that could harm her, but her youth saves her. Similar to George in the book, the little, unidentified girl represents the safeguard of purity against the reality of adulthood, and although the little girl is unable to fully comprehend what the stranger speaks to her his influence deeply penetrated her as he cries to her, “Be Tandy, little one. Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy.” The stranger, therefore, endorses in Tandy his hope and desire that she will become something greater so that she can be strong enough to face all the false hopes and truths that he has experienced. By kissing her hands, the stranger gives her not only a discreet indication of affection but also gives her a formal token of appreciation of trust in her. Tandy therefore represents not only love for the stranger, but someone who has promise. After the stranger, names her Tandy and leaves, she completely incorporates the name as part of who she is, symbolizing the unyielding position and total recognition of her role. She refuses to be called by anything else, therefore suggesting that she was branded by her name, unable to be misnamed or forgotten.

Age of Innocence Review!!!

Throughout the Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton masterfully uses irony as she sardonically chastised Old New York society by using subtle yet artful techniques. Such can be illustrated when Archer rides “his wife’s dark blue brougham (with the wedding varnish still on it) (183)” in order to retrieve Ellen at the train station when the night before he lies to May by saying that his business tip is postponed when May asks, “…how can you meet Ellen tomorrow, and bring her back to New York, when you’re going to Washington (182).” Yet unlike before, May catches Archer in the lie but doesn’t confront him about it, though it is obvious that she May knows due to the fact it is evident as Wharton describes her awareness in context, “Her voice was as clear as a bell and full of wifely solicitude (182).” However, Wharton’s technique is so strong that even through such a brief scene during Archer and May’s conversation one is able to feel the effects of an implicit argument and suspicion arising even when there is no raising of voices or violence. Instead, it is a very subtle, convoluted, and formal argument that though implicit in speech is obvious enough to make the reader conscious of the hidden intentions and guilty quivers the characters feel. For instance, Wharton makes it clear to the reader that Archer feels guilt-ridden when May knows of his intention to pick up Ellen during the phrases which say that “it did not hurt him half as much to tell May an untruth as to see her trying to pretend that she had not detected him (183).” Yet in the phrases beforehand, Wharton uses layers and layers of veiled suggestions to prod the reader towards confirming such a direct statement as when May suddenly questions Archer’s authority and truthfulness by saying, “Then it’s not postponed? (182)” Therefore suggesting a sense of disbelief or suspicion in what Archer has said. Moreover, after Archer gives away too many details there is a challenging tone that occurs when Archer “turned his eyes to hers in order to not appear to be avoiding them. Their glances met for a second, and perhaps let them into each other’s meanings more deeply than either cared to go (183).” Through this quote, the reader realizes that both characters are cognizant of the fact that Archer is lying through his teeth yet no one cares to confront the problem further illustrating the hinted but unspeakable components of what is considered ‘appropriate’ in society. Yet Wharton also illustrates in this short scene the unspoken conventional restrictions that are implied through Old New York’s social code. When May raises her voice and questions Archer’s authority she does so “with an insistence so unlike her that he felt the blood rising to his face, as if here blushing for her unwonted lapse from all the traditional delicacies (183).” This quote therefore suggests that Archer was very taken back, nearly baffled by May’s sudden confrontation against her prototypical role, and assuming a character quality that is very unlike her, resulting in an impressionable but fleeting moment of intolerance. Through this brief but very important moment one realizes that May has just barely crossed the line in defying a woman’s right to voice her thoughts and question a man’s judgment. Wharton, therefore, uses this instance to lightly make the reader aware of such restrictions that have been set upon her and how society, like Archer, is startled by such a burst of defilement against their strictly instilled social norms.