Sissy

Sissy, by Kellog, is a story about a young boy who has the characteristics and personality traits of a girl. I believe that Sissy, or William Shipherd, would not have grown up that way if it wasn’t for the fact that he was raised only by his mother and was not allowed to play with other boys. His mother ever “kept him in girls clothes till he was turned five…” (Kellog 545). Sissy did not have any male influences in his life and this is why he turned out so feminine. While reading this story I could not help but think about little Lord Fauntleroy. Although, Lord Fauntleroy might not have been considered girlie back in his time, today we can see that his features and his personality were pretty feminine. I noticed that he too only had a maternal influence for most of his life, and although he did play with other boys, he looked a lot like a girl.

Another similarity between Sissy and Fauntleroy was the fact that when given the chance both boys wanted to help out another person. Little Lord Fauntleroy helped all the people who were down on their luck as soon as he got some money. Sissy washes Margie the minute he sees her because he can not stand seeing someone so pretty look so dirty. Then after finding out where Margie lived and seeing that “it’s so miserable there” and “They cant half take care of Margie” he begged his mother to adopt her and give her a better life (Kellog 562). He tells his mother that he “believes that’s what God made [him] for- to take care of Margie” (Kellog 562). Most boys, if they got the chance, whether by money or because they had a giving mother, would not bother with making other people happy. They would demand things like toys and candy!

Another similarity between these two stories is the female author. Both stories were written by women and although we would like to think that men and women are capable of the same things, I do not thing a man would have wanted to write these stories let alone could have written them. I think a boy like sissy or like little Lord Fauntleroy, with all their girlish qualities, would be more accepted by women than by any men. I am not even sure if men would want to read a story about a boy who is called “sissy” and a “girl boy” (Kellog 545).

Gilman and Chopin

When reading The Yellow Wallpaper non of my habits changed, because I read that story in high school so I already knew what it was going to be about. I can guarantee that if I didn’t already know the story that I would have had to slow down or maybe even read it twice. It is confusing when the main character says ‘[she] peeled off all the paper [she] could reach standing on the floor…” and then somehow she is not the women peeling wall paper she is now wondering “if they all came out of that wall paper as [she] did…” implying that she was the women in the wall paper the whole time (Gilman 515). In class we went back and read the text more clearly and picked out evidence that she was dead the whole time. For a first time reader these clues were hard to pick up, and I remember reading this for the first time and being astonished when my teacher made so much meaning out of it. It is because of this that when I set out to read Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin, I decided to go about it differently. I read it once really slow, and still by the time I got to the end I was shocked! I don’t think there was any evidence that Armand Aubingy’s “mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery” (Chopin 521). It threw me off when I read the last paragraph for the first time so I had to read it more than once before I realized what it was saying. All in all, I don’t think all short stories have hidden meaning, and if they do then it is definitely not easy to pick it out. I think some of them are just good stories written to surprise you. I also don’t think it makes a difference how you read a short story but rather how many times you read it. The first time I read Gilman’s story, I don’t care how slow I read it, it did not make any sense! It is the second and third time you go back and read these stories that you can pick up on the clues to the ending. For example, in Desiree’s Baby Madame Valmonde exclaims “This is not the baby!” when she sees him for the first time in awhile (Chopin 518). She even “walked with it over to the window that was lightest” to look at the child. Now I can see these hints that the child was mixed but I do not think there were any hints that it was Armand who had African American heritage.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Frances Hodgson Burnett being a women seems to make more sense when it comes to the story of little Lord Fauntleroy. This is the first time we have read a story about a little boy written by a woman and I think this may explain Little Lord Fauntleroy’s appearance and attitude. The author describes her character as “so beautiful to look at” and “he had so sweet a temper and [was] always so charming that he was a pleasure to every one” (page 444). I don’t think these qualities were important to men or boys back in the nineteenth century. Only a woman would prize these qualities and wish for her own son or even husband to act this way. Ceddie was such a nice fellow that “there was not a person in the neighborhood of the quiet street where he lived- even to the grocery man at the corner, who was considered the crossest creature alive- who was not pleased to see him” (page 445). To me this whole story, besides the death of the father, is what every woman would want. A nice little house, a perfect child, and a handsome husband, who conveniently was the heir to a large fortune.

In the previous text featuring little boys, they were all described as rough and tough independent characters. Qualities that a man might prize more than a women, especially at this time. The whole country was starting over and so to be successful men believed you had to either be a very hard worker or very good at convincing people to work hard for you!

Another interesting thing about this text, not related to the author, was the fact that there was a boot black named Dick! In class, professor Irvin mentioned that all these authors read one another’s writing and this is pretty obvious in Little Lord Fauntleroy. Ceddie even says that Dick gets mad because his partner cheats and “it would make you mad…if you were blacking boots as hard as you could, and being quite square all the time, and your partner wasn’t square at all” (page 485). In Ragged Dick, Dick also expresses how much he hates cheating and how he works hard for honest money. This most certainly has to be the same character!

Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain makes it a point for us to realize that kids, not unlike adults, are constantly “showing off”. No matter how high or low you may be in society people are always trying to one up each other. Tom has been trying to win over Amy for months by “all sorts of absurd boyish ways…[such as] dangerous gymnastic performances” (pg 419).
I think this shows how Tom, and probably many of the other boys this age, can not easily express there feelings so the have to resort to “showing off” physically. When you think about this its almost like animals! Most of the times animals show off physically to attract a mate and out due other males in there society. Keeping this in mind, later in the text Twain describes a scene with many different kinds of people “showing off”. For example, the librarian ‘showed off’ running hither and thither with his arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss…the young lady teachers ‘showed off’ bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed…the young gentlemen teachers ‘showed off’ with small scoldings and other little displays of authority…” (pg 434). The adults were showing off in much the same way that Tom did in the school yard trying to impress the little girl. This bridges the gap between adulthood and childhood. Twain makes us see that not only kids act this way, adults do to every day and probably unconsciously.

Also Twain steps out of the text at one point and tells us that “ in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain” (pg 414-415). This creates an interesting point that can still be applied to life today. People are constantly working towards something better and bigger that they can not attain. Our world is so materialistic that we don’t realize we are always going to want more, more, more. Once we actually get what we were working for it is never as great as we thought it would be and it gets quickly replaced with another material that we work towards and it is a never ending cycle. On the other hand people who realize this use it to exploit and make a profit from others. For example, when Tom pretends to be having so much fun painting that fence he ends up getting a bunch of kids to do it for him and he doesn’t have to work at all!

Ragged Dick

Ragged Dick made me believe that, while litter girls were brought up to be quite and well trained in order to be successful in finding a husband, boys were expected to think of themselves first and become financially independent as soon as possible. It seems like since Dick has no parental figure the text suggests that boys to do not need a strict upbringing to turn out “good” while in all the other stories the young girls needed adults to raise them and show them how to act. This can be seen when Dick is talking to Johnny and they make the statement that Mr. Nolan had an “inflamed temper…[and] Johnny’s life was in danger” (pg 349). Parents are never seen as very good in this story.

Also, one main difference between boys and girls in literature that I think we can conclude is that boys will be allowed to make mistakes and sort of learn things on their own instead of being brought up in a strict home. Maybe because people want little boys to have fun while they can because much of their later lives will be spent working and supporting their wives and families? For example even though Dick was “always wide-awake and ready for business, [and] he earned enough to have supported him comfortably and respectably” (pg 340). In spite of how he could live, Dick chooses to live in the moment and spend his money on night life and gambling and things that will make him happy at this moment.

Another difference is that from the very beginning of the story we meet Dick’s friend. When we are introduced to Johnny we can see that Johnny refers to Dick as “his more fortunate friend” (pg 344). In most of the other books we read none of the little girls had friends or even people of their own age to hang around. They spent most of their time with adults. Later when Dick meets Frank, they become friends on their journey about the city. I don’t think if any of the female characters would have been introduced to another girl they would have embraced the friendships quite so readily.

Thinking beyond gender relations, maybe the author was trying to point out that people will never amount to anything without loads of ambition and a hard working attitude. She also made it a point to show us that although Dick had many bad habits he did not drink. The only person who drinks in the story is again, Johnny’s father who was portrayed as s drunkard and wasteful with his money, among other things. The author could have been hinting that alcohol ruins people, like we discussed in class.

A Whisper In The Dark

After Sybil is sent away it took me awhile to figure out she was in an insane asylum because she does not actually know it right away either and we only get the story from her point of view. The concept of insanity is really creepy when you think about it because if someone says you are crazy all you objections are just considered part of your craziness. Some of Sybil out breaks of anger would usually just be considered a tantrum were looked at as the rantings of a crazy girl. For example when she hears her mothers voice she frantically “beat upon [her] door in a paroxysm of impatience…” (pg 237) She also picks up the habit of pacing back and forth in her room like the stranger above her. She does this so much that the carpet was “worn to shreds by [her] weary march…” (pg 236). Knowing all these things made did not make me trust the narrator any less because I felt like I got to know her so well in the beginning that I knew she was normal and not crazy. It just made me feel really bad for her. I could almost feel her helplessness! Although the mother daughter relationship was approached very differently in this text than in the others we have read I can still tell that both of them cared deeply for one another even in their absence. Sybil even says, when she sees the picture of her mother, that “[she] know[s] so little, and often long[s] for her so much” (pg221). This just shows they have an unseen connection despite the fact that they are not around each other. When Sybil gets the letters from her mom off the dog, the tone in the letter is even full of some amounts of love. Her mother, even not knowing it was her daughter, was full of concern for this young girl and saved her from her suicide. I think that if Sybil had grown up with her mother their relationship would have been a lot like the relationship between Ellen and her mother in the Wide Wide World. Both girls were brought up similarly when it comes to working and winning a man, so I believe they would have shared the same bond with their mothers.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin we see most of the theories we created flipped upside down. Although this is the first story we have read about a little boy, it is hard to see very many similarities in this text and the others we have read. One main thing that sticks out however, is a mothers love for her son. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin Eliza risks everything to run away and save her son from being taken by the slave trader. Eliza shows so much affection toward her son. They are running to save his life and she still feels bad for making him walk! We can see this when Eliza says “Poor fellow! He isn’t used to walking, and I’ve hurried him on so” to the woman who offers her food and shelter for the night (pg 247). Also along their journey Eliza gives all the food to her son and takes none for herself. This relationship reminds me a lot of the relationship between Willie, from The Lamplighter, and his mother.

In addition to this, one of the conclusions we drew from reading the Sanchez and MacLeod texts was that touchy issues of the time were often ignored in books. In this book however, the entire story line is filled with one of the most difficult subjects in all of American history. Slavery is what the very story is built on. One thing is clear, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was definitely written to inspire some sort of social change. To help with this social change Stowe put a lot of religion in the text, much like all the other readings we have done. Eliza prays when she is running in the middle of the night to save her child. Mrs. Bird, the senator’s wife, clearly states that “passing a law forbidding people to give meat and drink to those poor colored folks that come along…is something downright cruel and unchristian” (pg 274). Later in the book the senator, who voted to pass this law, decides to break it and help Eliza and Harry seek some shelter. I think for people reading this back in the 19th century the fact that someone as high up as a senator would help a runaway slave would have been shocking and possibly very controversial. The remarks about how “unchristian” slavery is would definitely be a way to change people perceptions of slavery, and while reading this text we almost get to know Eliza and some people can identify with the fear of loosing a child, which would alter peoples minds! When Uncle Tom is on the boat to New Orleans to be sold, a women and her baby are purchased and put on the boat too. Then a man buys the baby, and the mother is forced to part with her child. This parting is enough for the women to through herself overboard that very night. Things like this were heart breaking to read for me so I can only imagine how hard it was for people to read back then!