The Lamplighter

After watching the video of Anna and reading the excerpt from The Lamplighter about Gerty I can see many similarities between the two. Anna strives for balance in her life in much the same way Gerty strives for a way to be useful to True. This is quite the challenge for Gerty since she “never did anything, and don’t know anything…” (pg 115). Still Gerty tries her best to help True out around the house and make toast and tea. We can see how attached she is to the idea of being helpful because on her first encounter with Willie she forgot to make the toast and tea. After seeing that True had done it “tears came into Gerty’s eyes [and] she looked very much disappointed…” (pg 115). She is desperately trying to help True obtain balance in his life, which brings me to Anna. In the video, Anna tells Amy the main way she tries to bring balance into her own life is through yoga. Anna encourages others to try yoga and have balance much the say way Gerty tries to bring this balance in True’s life. Also some of the yoga poses that Anna shows us reminded me so much of Gerty. For example the child pose with her covered is a lot like Gerty covering her face, and the warrior pose made me think of Gerty hitting Nan Grant!

I think if Gerty were featured on this show she would have told everyone that screaming helps to relieve stress, and that if screaming did not help then they should pray to God. Although she does not learn about God until later she does use him to relieve some of her worries and stresses. She turns to God and “pray[s] to Heaven that night for strength to keep her resolve and aid…” (pg 150). She would probably tell people that helping others should be their main priority or at least helping those that you love and the satisfaction of this helps make stresses disappear. When she cleans the room “the pleasure [True] manifested made the day a memorable one in Gerty’s life, one to be marked in her memory as long as she lived, as being the first in which she had known that happiness, perhaps the highest earth affords, of feelings that she had been instrumental in giving joy to another” (pg 109). So as you can see, even though these girls lived 150 years apart from one another some of the things they struggle with are very similar and they both try and help other people, Anna with yoga and Gerty with cleaning. They both have to find ways to cope with stress even though it comes from very different places.