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| "Chrysanthemums," Claude Monet (1897) |
Answer ONE of the following questions with 200-250 words; cite relevant texts to prove your point:
1) How does "Araby" convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
2) In "The Dead," what do Gabriel's thoughts about and interactions with other people tell us about his character? What words would you use to describe him? How comfortable is he with himself and with the world?
3) Describing Elizabeth, the narrator of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" says, "She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead"(1279). What "truth" does Elizabeth discover?
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
60 comments:
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
Love is endowed with a new image in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”. Traditionally, men are usually considered more superior than women. Just like Mabel’s three brothers described in the story: “He did not care about anything, since he felt safe himself.” In comparison to Mabel, her bossy brothers live in their comfort zone. They just sit there without doing any domestic chores. However, Mabel shows her independence and detachment under the oppressed surrounding. The inequality of gender role is seemly changing with the development of the story. After being rescued by Dr. Ferguson, Mabel constantly repeats “You love me” and tries to hypnotizing him. Love between them is not a romantic thing but a tug of war. “He was afraid now, because he felt dazed, and felt dimly that her power was stronger than his, in this issue.” At the beginning, the dominance refuses and resists. “His soul seemed to melt.” The superior one toughly keeps battling with the inferior one, and no one knows who will be the victory. “He had no intention of loving her: his whole will was against his yielding.” At last, the man becomes powerless. The conventional role of men and women totally turns upside down. Women triumph and prevail against the dominance. The new image of love has made the readers feel different and surpasses the traditionally typical love.
#410002043 鍾亞筑
410121064-Khulan
1). A young boy's visit to Araby was totally different from what he had been expecting. He explained the real situation in bazaar by saying “darkness”. Almost all of the stores were closed, and he couldn’t buy anything; but, he just saw gloomy and dark place. After he saw all of this, he had encountered with frustration, and understood the reality which he said, "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." Before going to bazaar, as a young boy, he felt very fascinated and over excited about the event that he would buy a beautiful gift to a girl who he liked. The fact of young boy becoming an adult is also shown, because before his devastating experience, he had no idea that it would turn out like that, but he was just in his own little fantasy world, dreaming about a girl. It shows his young and pure characteristics. When it came to reality, all of his fantasies had gone. He wasn't only devastated because of bazaar itself, but also of self-realization. He finally understood that he himself was the only one who was elegiac.
英美四蔡宗翰
Q1:
Through the portrayal of the weather, the arrangement of the narrator’s home, the neighborhood, the boring life in school, and the odd interaction with people, the creepy sensation is strongly suggested. In the village, people spend everyday working on the same thing, emotionlessly. Most people in this story are like machines in some degree. The narrator’s uncle’s boring poetry and the stern teacher’s anger are good examples which represent the passionless ones in this story.
Joyce describes the neighbors by using “imperturbable faces.”
Other than that, a tension forms when the narrator confesses that the romance cheers him up while others in the bazaar are still showing their rudeness and tediousness. Joyce uses “jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, the curses of laborers” to emphasize the conflict between fantasy and reality.
Bazaar is a symbol of the confrontation between reality and dream. Before the narrator arrived in the bazaar, the place is close related to energy, love and romance. Nevertheless, the narrator has encountered difficulties from reality during his progressing. His mean teacher and late uncle symbolize the dark side of reality.
In the end of the story, the narrator expresses his negative feeling that
“my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” To be brief, the bazaar is a turning point where he realizes that reality may somehow defeat our passion, love and sweet expectation.
英美三 410002048 石睿凡
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
In "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", Lawrence displays the traditional English society through the doctor, Jack, and the girl, Mabel, who are having affair. He chooses not to use the romantic style to write this fiction; however, he tries to make atmosphere which is female can be a dominate role and expresses her feeling or desire of love. Furthermore, male should be submissive and need to fulfill female’s expectation.
After Jack saves Mabel, Mabel starts thinking that Jack loves her, and yet Jack feels he is doing his job. This division eventually unified. Mabel assumes that she is the dominate role. She forces this thought onto Jack. She repeat” you love me” again and again. Therefore, Jack has to continue caring for her because Mabel assumes that it’s his responsibility. Even though this idea horrifies Jack, he somehow has compassion to her. She is a victim, and he is the one who can offer her assistance.
As the result of Mabel’s dominance, Jack gives her a compromise and resolves the confliction in his mind. This couple quickly and impulsively commit to each other even though Mabel uses force to make Jack submit her desire. Their relationship is entirely involuntary. Mabel asks Jack to accept her love and commits it. In Lawrence’s perspective, he argues that love is a combination of impulsive, illogical emotions. Hence, Jack is united to Mabel through love, even if his love for her is out of guilt rather than true emotion.
49902064 英美四 張宏瑋
1)In James Joyce’s short story of Araby, it demonstrates the narrator’s stream of consciousness. The narrator is adolescent boy who was struggled between his Catholic bias and his physical reactions. The scenes of story revealed his world of internal mind. In the first and second paragraph, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street... An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end …”, “The former tenant of our house…Air, musty from having been long enclosed…and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers…the pages of which were curled and damp…” The words “blind”, “quiet”, “uninhabited”, “musty”, “waste” and so on described the atmosphere of the town’s desolation and gloom feeling, yet it also conveyed the narrator’s internal mind that his passion of love was hidden behind these gray corners. In the end, the narrator’s despair was not only because of the shutdown of the bazaar, but also owing to his internal change. He was delighted to go to the bazaar but he turned into shame and anger that he saw a women who vulgarly chatted with two men. The scene eliminated his imagination of love which goes against his pursuit──idealism and romantic. His faith is based on his religion Catholic that is sacred and virtual but oppressive.
In "The Dead," Gabriel is a disgusting person. He tries to make himself look great and perfect. Everything he does looks smart, but actually he is silly. To his aunts, he is an intellectual. To Lily, he looks like a snob. To Miss Ivors, he is the person who looks down his own culture. That is, Gabriel is a selfish and affected professor.
The proper word to describe Gabriel is “bumptious”. From the whole day, he only cares about himself. He talks to Lily who helps him take off overcoat with insulted tone. Through this impolite deed seeing Gabriel’s proud. He shows his superiority by hurting others’ self-respect. In addition, Gabriel keeps thinking the speech and struggling with what he should put. For example, should he mention Shakespeare in the speech? He is afraid that people may not understand what Shakespeare is, because for him, these people are shallow. From this, knowing that Gabriel thinks that he is the best and his worried is very considerate. When he and his wife listen to the same song, only desire comes to Gabriel. However, how is his wife? Gabriel feels satisfaction about himself. His thought and deed only demonstrate his self-conceitedness and nothing else.
Gabriel does not have connection to the real world. He realizes his brainless until the story from his wife. His comfortable with himself is caused by the whole society. Because nobody directly corrects his deed and thoughts. In addition, his relatives keeps praising and places importance on him. So, can we expect that he will change?
英美三 謝孝昇
1) “... being blind, ... quiet street… An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours … …gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.”
At the beginning of the story, Joyce described a street as a blind, and also no much sounds. By this symbol, blind, the readers could feel it loneliness and sadness from the starting. Next, Joyce also used the words “detached” and “imperturbable” to express the problem appeared on that street. Perhaps this description implies that the people at the street do not show any emotional involvement.
“... a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.”, “I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service.”
Joyce used the death of priest, the messy around his room, and the silence of the church as a metaphor for the corruption in church.
“I thought little of the future.”, “I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.”, “At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train, for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage.”, “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
The moment when the narrator suddenly feels that he understands, he has new perspective, reflection about something. He is growing older and more aware of adult life. The loneliness, growth, and maturity are what he supposes to be experience onward.
英美三 葉子菁 410002028
Q2
Gabriel is an egoist and a windbag who thinks himself as a high-class person and only talks but never act. The speech, the serve of the goose, and the procession of his wife well show his arrogance. Besides, his talk to Lily and Miss Ivors also reveals his unease with the women. Due to Gabriel’s socioeconomic status, he was respected in his family. However, it also results in his sense of superiority and kind of egoist. Just take his speech as an example; he revises the content for fear that the audience cannot understand the lines from Robert Browning. Furthermore, Gabriel views himself as the head of a well-laden table simply because he cut the goose for the guests. After the end of the party, Gabriel would like to possess his wife and have the intimacy with her unilaterally instead of knowing what she really thinks of. In contrast to his pride, Gabriel is kind of unease with the New Woman. When he talks to the servant, Lily, he ridiculously advises her to go to marry just because she has done schooling. In addition, he tries to argue with Ivors who is the nationalist. His palaver with a little bit discrimination only makes him like an unintelligent person. It seems that the world should orbit around Gabriel just as he is the center at the party. He does not care about what others’ thoughts and just keeps doing anything from his own perspectives. Undoubtedly, he is an egoist and windbag.
410002030 英美三 吳敏綾
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
In "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", the setting is that Mabel’s parents had already died. Even though she has three brothers, she still felt alone. “The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast-table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation.”But all of them did not care about Mabel, and they even did not need to worry about their life, except Mabel. She had nothing and she did not know what to do after her father died. What’s more, Mabel’s brothers called her” bull-dog”. According these points, it shows men’s dominance and superiority. I think the young doctor Jack Ferguson’s appearance can be seemed to the rescue to Mabel, but also another struggle to her. “Mabel looked at him with her steady, dangerous eyes, that always made him uncomfortable, unsettling his superficial ease.” We can know there is something unusual between the doctor and Mabel. When Mabel went to commit suicide, Ferguson saved her. I think it seems to that women’s fate is controlled by men. After she was saved, Mabel asked the doctor weather he loved her. First Ferguson did not think he loved her. However, finally he kissed her and even said he loved her and wanted to marry her. I think it can be seemed to that it becomes women to master men. Therefore, we can see a relentless struggle for possession and dominance in the story.
英美二 陳俊承 410102060
Q3:
Seeing the naked body that she once had sex with, Elizabeth came to realize the truth that the naked man didn’t turn her on anymore. The masculine, blokish, and muscular body she had obsessed with turned out to be a burden after marriage.
Marriage is the tomb of love.
After marriage, all that Elizabeth could do were to be waiting for the door opened by her husband in the dead of night, but the door was still closed, full of silence. She desired night by night that her muscular husband could clutch her waist and rip her clothes into pieces. Then, spend a good night with her husband. However, day after day, she is waiting for the door opened by her husband from dusk till dawn, but her husband rather than stays at the bar, drinking all night. After her husband’s death, Elizabeth discovers the truth that she no longer suffers from the torture of the marriage anymore because her husband’s dead. Thanks to her husband’s death, she is liberated from the trap of marriage. She hadn’t seen her husband’s naked boy for a long time; ironically, the last time was the naked dead body she saw.
生科三 劉珈延 410013014
Q1：
• “Araby” convey a sense of desolation and gloom by the decaying setting. The first key word is the word “blind”. “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street.” The “blind” means that the street is closed at one end. As it’s a blind street, people living in the street are difficult to communicate with the ones outside. So it indicates the station of un-open up of Dublin as well as Ireland. “An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground.” This quotation takes us to a place with images of desolation. Similarly, the feeble lights, somber houses in the street and the long enclosed musty air create the gloomy situation. “Araby”'s key theme is frustration, as the boy deals with the limits imposed on him by his situation. When he finally does arrive, the bazaar is more or less over. His fantasies about the bazaar and buying a great gift for the girl are revealed as ridiculous. The bazaar seems to represent one's ability to choose one's destiny. As the bazaar contains many stalls, life contains many choices. Making a choice, or entering a particular stall, affects what you can buy, or what further choices you can later make. Upon arriving at the bazaar, the narrator finds only one shop to be open and what he actually gets from the bazaar is a crashing disappointment as there is little there and it is closing. In the end he realizes that there is nothing for him at the bazaar, and all his hopes about entering a romantic world beyond the quiet, decent, brown street of his childhood have been reduced to fantasy. His realization and acceptance represent a loss of innocence, which is also the main theme of “Araby”.
英美三 陳奐霖 410002032
Q4:
Mabel and Ferguson struggle for possession and dominance in the love relationship. It seems that they step into the marriage because of kind of forces instead of the true love. As for Mabel, she does not have any place at home. What she could be is to do housework under three bossy brothers. Therefore, when she is rescued by Ferguson in the pond, she seizes the chance to hunt this prey with her magic power of eyes. Continually, Mabel insists that Ferguson must fall in love with her. By doing so, she can use her control and dominance to obtain what she wants that she forbids doing before. Although results apparently show that Mabel achieves a complete triumph with Ferguson’s promise to the marriage, she may have some struggles in her mind using the dominance to keep the relationship. However, as for Ferguson, he does not love Mabel at all but he still chooses to blindly agree with her requests. It is a struggle in his mind that he should betray himself to accept the love and yield to Mabel in order to possess her beauty. In "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," Lawrence succeeds using the struggles for possession and dominance between Mabel and Ferguson. The struggles make them possess the marriage based on the control and blindness.
英美二 410102027 陳雅慧
1) How does “Araby” convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of “Araby” confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
James Joyce uses the setting of “Araby” to convey readers a dead and silent atmosphere. “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street…… An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end……” In the first paragraph, the words “blind”, “quiet”, and “uninhabited” give us a sense of desolation and gloom. The narrator thinks of the former tenant, a priest in the second paragraph, describing the room with musty air. By mentioned the dead and the uncomfortable environment of the room, this paragraph strengthens the desolated atmosphere. And it is hopeless and spiritless when the priest died, this can be a symbol of the boy’s despair in the end. When the narrator starts to talk about his goodness, he also narrates the place she lived. “the houses grown sombre”, “feeble lanterns”, “cold air”, and “the dark dripping gardens” these words give readers a lifeless sight, also a comparison to the light from the half-opened door when Magan’s sister first appears. “Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness.” the bazaar almost closed when the narrator arrived there. The darkness bazaar symbolizes the boy’s despair. And it’s not only represent the boy’s frustration to his goodness and the bazaar, but also symbolize the religious failure.
410102017 英美二 黃少軍
1) James Joyce conveyed the desolation and gloom by using dark colors and words. For example, the first sentence gives us a preconception that this story is very gloomy “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free.” James Joyce mentioned a priest’s death at second paragraph and I think this also create a desolate feeling. Also, the plot can convey the desolation too. The young boy adored Mangan’s sister and he decided to go to Araby bazaar to purchase a gift for her. However when he arrive the bazaar, he could find nothing but only feel the darkness. He felt that he was a fool and he finally said: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” In my opinion, this sentence was the most important of all. And I think his despair was not confined to his frustration to the bazaar but toward his life because his dream was broken and this made him feel no hope. The author just use the bazaar as a symbol of human’s desire. Once the young boy couldn’t get what he want, the only thing he got is emptiness.
英美二 410102021 柯思羽
1)How does "Araby" convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
The first sentence in the story, “North Richmond Street, being blind.” It’s the street closed at blind end. People there detach from its neighbors. As it’s a blind street, people living in the street are difficult to communicate with the ones outside. So it indicates the closed Dublin situation. The environment in that street is gloomy. Those somber houses, the dark muddy lanes and musty air create the whole story an image of desolation. It also shows that James Joyce is disappointed just because of their own society and their blind to the bright future. On the boy’s way to go to Araby, the condition has become unpleasant. The train has an intolerable delay and slowly moved to Araby, his dream place. And when he arrives there, the dreamed world turns out to be “darkness”. The little boy walked in to the shop, the young lady was busy flirting with men and has spoken to the boy out of a sense of duty. “I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.” It is a huge gap between his romantic fantasies of love and the realities of his life. The story ends by the boy’s moment of epiphany. The boy is still too young to have a good understanding of the real world.
英美二 410102052 葉靜芝
Q1:
In “Araby,” the narrator uses setting and the narrator’s feeling to convey the sense of desolation and gloom. For instance, “North Richmond, being blind, was a quiet street……An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground…….imperturbable faces.” (Page 1223) Those words “blind,” “uninhabited,” and “detached” create a desolate atmosphere. And then, both “the back drawing-room in which the priest had died” and “deserted train” show the desolation in “Araby.” The narrator also uses some words to represent the gloom through the whole story, such as darkness, dusk, and ruinous houses, etc.
At the end of “Araby,” the narrator shows his frustration and anger in the last sentence: “Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (Page 1227) The narrator represents not only his despair of the bazaar, but also his failure, in other words, his quest for love is futile. However, the “darkness” brings an epiphany to him. It is more like a growing lesson to him because he gets an opportunity to look at himself and experiences of the gap between the idealism and ugly reality.
410102055 英美二 黃佳珏
Q3: Describing Elizabeth, the narrator of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" says, "She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead"(1279). What "truth" does Elizabeth discover?
The truth which Elizabeth discovers is that she has never known about her husband.
Although they got married for many years, there was no connection between the couple. They never tried to understand each other. That is to say, they were just like two isolation souls but lived together. Elizabeth thought she was an intelligent, elegant lady. Therefore, she looked down on her husband, Walter, who was only an alcoholic miner in her eyes. She only focused on his alcohol addiction and going back home late. However, in fact, it was the society that made her husband corrupted. It was the society that twisted a person’s personalities. Elizabeth did not understand the truth until Walter’s death. “He was a man of handsome body, and his face showed no traces of drink. He was blond, full-fleshed, with fine limbs.” This quotation shows that she was able to appreciate her husband finally. “The fact was too deadly. There had been nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness repeatedly. Each time he had taken her, they had been two isolated beings, far apart as now.”, “And her soul died to fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her…” the two quotations show that Elizabeth discovered the truth that she and her husband have never known each other.
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
I think there are two different things which be dominance by each gender: status by men, love by women. In the beginning of the story, Mabel doesn’t have financial ability to support herself after her father’s death, but her brothers can live well without their father. In this situation, it reflects that women are disadvantaged in the 20th British society, because men had dominated the finance in family, rather than women. Following the story plots, we can realize D.H Lawrence wants to reveal the other dominance. But this time is not for males, is for women – the love dominance. After father’s death, Mabel goes to her mother’s tomb crying badly. In the moment, she have a pessimistic thought for herself- committing suicide, but she doesn’t success because of the Jack Ferguson, a doctor, friend of her brother. Jack grabs Mabel making her out of water and rescues her life. For saving Mabel, Jack must takes off her wet clothes. Suddenly, Mabel awakes, and sees this scene.
“You loves me”, Mabel says to doctor, and the doctor can’t precisely tell his feeling. I think this is the story’s climax, also reflecting the dominance by women. Because men are vision animals, easily be attracted by appearance. A woman who are pretty and naked in front of a man, the man definitely be glamor by the woman. The helpless woman wants a person who can save her in this massive chaos, so Mabel shows her attraction to the doctor. As a result, Doctor loves Mabel, just like sailor attracted by merman, attracted by Mabel. Here are my opinions to the story” The Horse Dealer's Daughter”, status and love are two different dominances by men and women which D.H reveal in the story.
41000A005 台灣三 裴浩哲
The most important theme of the story is the isolation of the human soul. At first, Elizabeth stays at home and waits her husband for dinner. However, he doesn’t appear until it’s time to go to bed. At that moment, Elizabeth feels angry because she misunderstands that her husband may linger the night club. Although she hates the judgment from the neighbors, she still goes to her husband’s friend and asks where he goes. However, the result is that her husband is dead in the accident. When Elizabeth looks at the dead body, she feels odd. It seems that her husband is a stranger to her. They never try to understand each other at all. Besides, Elizabeth has a totally failure in the marriage. She has to endure all of Walter’s bad habits and can’t be herself. The marriage for Elizabeth and the women is that they should stay home and take care of children. They give up their lives, adjust themselves to the family, and become more solitary and isolated. She feels angry to Walter, but suddenly she learns the truth. The truth is she always wants Walter to become someone he isn’t but never accept the husband who he is. Finally, she mentions that she knew she wasn’t dead. It means that she still has the opportunity to change herself in the future. 410002046 蔡易紘
410002042 賴鈺欣
1)In “Araby,” James Joyce attempted to create a gloomy atmosphere between the main character and North Dublin by depicting the fact such as bad neighborhood, barbarian in the market, and a waste room.
At the very beginning of the story, there are mass clues about the indifferent relationship between Dubliners through the description of the boy, who is the narrator and the main character. At North Richmond Street, being “blind”, and an uninhabited house “detached” from its neighbors, and the others conscious of “decent lives” within them, gazed at one another with “brown imperturbable faces.”
Moreover, the boy mentioned a “musty room” in which a priest had “died”. The “waste room” was littered with “old useless” paper. From these few sentences, the readers can easily ascertain that the writer uses many negative words to strengthen the sense of somber.
Except for his neighbors, the boy must endure the market on Saturday, a place which is “most hostile to romance,” not to mention of drunken men, bargaining women, and a street singer who sang a ballad about “the troubles in our native land.” “All these voices converged a single sensation of life. I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.” This imagination reflects the boy’s loneliness and tumultuous Ireland, which contribute to the development of gloomy atmosphere.
The last paragraph, “Gazing up into the darkness I saw to myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” It shows that the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" not only confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself, but also represses his regret and shame that he was driven by irresistive impulse toward the selfless and unrequited love for Megan’s sister.
610202406 劉宇宸
Q2
Gabriel plays a high rank in the society; however, he makes a joke on a maid’s marriage prospects. In this way, we can see that he doesn’t really respect a woman at all. Later on, he thinks he’s superior to the other guests since his education background, so he worries about the quotation that he wants to share with might be too difficult to understand for them. During the party, he has a chance to dance with a woman, a nationalist, attempts to challenge Gabriel’s loyalty to his country. This woman disparages Gabriel’s words and deeds which are not in accord; as a result, she finally irritates Gabriel. In this event, we can also find out the contradiction in his political standpoint. At the end of this story, Gabriel heard of his wife’s past which is about his wife and her ex-lover and gets annoyed. While his wife explains that her ex-lover has passed away, he starts to feel ashamed due to this man is so young to lose his life. As to Gabriel himself, he even wants to have a sex with his wife before her sharing the story with him. This makes him think further if he’s too shallow and too innocent.
曾佩琪 410002062
3) Describing Elizabeth, the narrator of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" says, "She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead"(1279). What "truth" does Elizabeth discover?
- In "Odour of Chrysanthemums," Elizabeth was waiting for her husband, perhaps her drunken husband. Eventually her husband came home dead, she was forced to think about their marriage. Her husband's death made her to confront the truth that her marriage was not what she wanted. Her husband, Walter's death gives readers a hint to get to know what Elizabeth is about to realise: Walter was suffocated in life and ironically, he died in suffocation in real life. Her confrontation of the truth guides her to get to know something that is very important about her marriage. She found out that there had not actually been anything between her and Walter, except for sexual intercourse with each other. Moreover, she feels her relationship with her husband was not real. There's a quote in "Odour of Chrysanthemums" that shows her feeling about their marriage, "I've been fighting a husband who did not exist." In addition, she feels like her "unborn child" was "like ice in her womb," it is because their relationship was just based on sex.
英美二 410102019 李明倢
1) How does "Araby" convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
We can see that surroundings of the North Richmond Street were all unpleasant. As it is a blind street, people living in the street are difficult to communicate with the ones outside. “an uninthabited house”, “at the blind end”, “detached”, and “musty air” from the dead priest’s house are words contribute to the desolation and gloom atmosphere. The narrator at first was thought that Araby is a dream new world and Mangan’s sister is a fairy who guild the narrator there. However, his way to Araby was full of obstacles. Such as his uncle went home late, the train had an intolerable delay and started slowly. The bazaar started to present how shameful and disgraceful the situation the narrator has met at the end of the story. The dialogue between the woman and men makes the boy feels angry because it wipes out the meaning of true love in boy’s mind. The boy’s world was pure and innocent but it was changed by all the things he’s experienced in the end. This description tell us about the boy’s world is totally different from what it used to be. The boy has learned something realistic and inglorious. The highly-expected affection turns out to be a miserable outcome.
410002049 Leighton
Love is definite as a tug of war in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.” Typically, men are in a superior position in the relationship but not in this story. Mabel is described as a woman with dangerous eyes. That’s one of her weapons. I think one of the reasons that she wants to conquer Doctor Jack is to escape from her family for the inequality and her new thoughts of a woman. The relationship between her and Jack is a more like a relentless way. She first attracts Jack by her eyes which send out the beauty of not conventions. For Mabel’s personality and thoughts, she wants to be on a higher position by repeating the sentences,“ You love me.” She is the stronger one in the relationship. She wants to control Jack. In the traditional way, men controls woman not only in the relationship but also in the society. Mabel wants to escape from this stereotype not only in the love but also society but she can even not escape it from her family. So, she wants to be in love with Jack to escape the family and want to be in the higher position in the love. She takes it as a war not a traditional romantic way.
1) How does "Araby" convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
In Araby, the narrator gives the dark atmosphere to reader. In the story, the boy went to bazaar and hoped can bring a gift to a girl who he liked. When he arrived to bazaar, most of the store closed. It was different from he expected. He expected here was the glory environment, but he only saw dark environment. It was the beginning of his dream broken. “North Richmond Street, being blind”(line 1) the narrator uses the blind street to symbol hopeless. The blind street also can symbol the boy cannot see the truth from the beginning. The musty air in somber house gives the desolate image to reader. Through the narrator’s description, it is a place where cannot see the future and bright. On the other hand, it also can see as narrator’s disappointment to the society. The bazaar and the environment where the boy lived all give him the epiphany. He finally knows the world not full of hopes. Sometimes he needs to conquer many things and the face the real environment.
410002055 陳詩婷
410102015 鄭茗尹
Q3:
Through Walter’s death, Elizabeth finally realised the truth that they had never known each other even though they’ve been married and have had children. In Elizabeth perspective, while Walter was still alive, he didn’t behave as a love-caring husband. He was an alcoholic who always didn’t’ go home early, and what Elizabeth thought of him is the indifference he brought in home and the inability to offer her a genteel life she used to live in. However, it should not be a fault of Elizabeth nor of Walter. Under the harsh and tough living condition, doing the miner labour seem to be the only option for the men in the small village, and Walter was no exception. Therefore, Walter escaped the suffering and pressure from work by alcohol, and this disappointed Elizabeth even more. Her love for him transcended into hatred that made her unable to recognize the original good nature in his personality. Miserably and shamefully, Elizabeth obtained the epiphany. Inspired by Walter’s death, Elizabeth eventually understood that they had been two isolated beings, who never really understood each other, and she denied what he was. The environment distorted their life, and forced them to submit to it. Nevertheless, through death, Elizabeth was frightened and shameful for her misunderstanding, and the complicated the emotion under her turbulent heart turned into gratitude for death that guided her to the truth she didn’t realise before Walter passed away.
410002026 邱惠愉
The author described places and scenes around the main character’s house to show about desolation and gloom. For example, he used blind, quiet, cold, musty, darkness and silence. Symbols were talked, for example, the house detached from its neighbors, which meant their house was estranged form others; the priest was dead in back drawing room, which is in air, musty house. I think someone was died in some place and caused this place to become gloomy and dark. After all, it was not a good event. Motif is that the boy admired Mangan’s sister, but he did not know how to express his mind, which led him to be upset, and finally he discovered the girl, who was not his ideal expectation and he felt disillusionment.
Because of her, the boy expected to go to the bazaar, which was splendid. He was even angry at his uncle, who came home late and almost caused him not to go. When he arrived at bazaar, he originally wanted to buy something for the girl. But he saw the girl told with boys and did not care about him and he left without buying something. He was in disillusionment about the girl. He was with anger and anguish into the darkness. I think it extends about epiphany. Nowadays people always have illusions and ideal dreams, but later they sometimes find dreams and illusions, which become nothing. This fact will cause people to have seriously influences.
410002031 英美三 王佑文
3) Describing Elizabeth, the narrator of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" says, "She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead"(1279). What "truth" does Elizabeth discover?
Elizabeth gets further realization until her husband's dead. In her marriage life, she is stern, cold, and pragmatic. Because of Walter's society status which belongs to working class, Elizabeth is deeply resentful of it and reluctantly to live in a coal community. She deems that she deserves for a better husband and a better quality of life. There exists a huge distant between them. When her husband's death, this is the first time she "looks" at him in her long marriage life. Gradually Elizabeth attains some understandings of her life, husband, and marriage. Though Walter lives in low class and with some bad habits, he plays his role and more closes to be a human than Elizabeth do. She just spends her life for complaining of things and denying the reality. At this moment, she can see her husband clearly without the anger. Also she accepts the truth that she really has done harm to him. She admits that she is the person kills their partnership by her constant disappointments upon their life. As she gets the truth, she is going to change her attitude for her latter life now.
410002011 Vivian Lee 李彥儀
1.
The first sentence of this story is “North Richmond Street, being blind”. It reveals the hopeless feeling in the very beginning. Also, it gives the hint of the dead end to readers. The priest who is dead remains some old books in the “musty” house. However, the boy’s favorite one is The Memoirs of Vidocq, and the reason is because its leaves are yellow. It shows that the boy only falls in love blindly for the appearances but not what’s inside. The fascination with the girl is also based on the visual observation in the dark and the blindly romantic fascinating. For the boy, the adventure to the bazaar is like a soldier who fight for his woman. He holds this kind of feeling to ask to go to the bazaar. During the long time while he is waiting, he goes into the “cold empty gloomy” room to image the brown-clad figure. When he finally enters the bazaar, it almost closed. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger”. He owns imagination in the dark and has romantic fascination in the blind street. However, when he really steps on the journey, the shallow and meaningless conversation between the young lady and other men made his desires gone. When he gets the epiphany, he realizes his disillusion and vanity.
410002010 呂岳芳 Carol
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
In history, there is usually a distinctive division between men and women. Men were often dominant, possessive, playing a leading part in their family while women were submissive, passive, usually taking orders from their fathers, brothers, and husbands. However, that’s not the case in The Horse Dealer’s Daughter by D. H. Lawrence. Mabel is the only female character in the story, whose characteristics are impassive, inscrutable and proud, but most of all, she takes charge of her own life without following her brothers’ orders. “They had talked at her and round her for so many years, that she hardly heard them at all,” the description shows that she is quite untraditional as other women. She is the one who manages the family affairs. She feels independent and self-established when the house chores are within her reach. Even under such poor circumstances that she has nowhere else to go except for being a servant in her sister’s house, she would not give in. She makes her own decision, just like when she determinedly walks into that pond. Things change when Dr. Ferguson saves her life out of sense of duty and compassion as a doctor, but she insists that the reason why he’s doing this is because he’s in love with her. And because of his ignorance of love and lack of experience on such matters, Dr. Ferguson is convinced by Mabel that he indeed loves her. He tries to deny the feeling but failed as Mabel keeps repeating “you love me” to him. He’s spellbound by Mabel’s insistence. Here shows Mabel, though as a female, dominates a male character. Of course Dr. Ferguson would rather think himself is the dominant one, but actually it is quite the reverse after he rescues Mabel. Before the water incident, he uses words such as “dangerous” and “portentous” to describe her, showing that even though she’s a woman, Mabel emanates a feeling that she’s not easy to control. Mabel needs something to believe that her situation in life would change, so she persuades herself and Dr. Ferguson that he loves her. Their struggles between dominating and be dominating is obvious. The presumed “love” is rather based on self-delusion and pity.
410102039 英美二 鄭巧俞
The description of the beginning conveyed a sense of desolation and gloom. “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street…An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.” The words, such as ‘blind’, ‘detach’ and ‘imperturbable’, expressed that how cold and emotionless the street and the people were. Besides, from the context we can feel the sense of touch, sound and smell in that atmosphere. “The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.” “Our shouts echoed in the silent street.” “…the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits,…” I think these clearly descriptions help a lot for readers to more understand about the background and have more similar sense with the characters. In the end of story, we can see that the boy was frustration with the bazaar. And the last sentences “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” conveyed the boy’s epiphany. He found that the girl he desired just an object, so actually he didn’t love the girl at all. Therefore, the first love which he encountered was just the worthlessness. Because everything became disillusionment, even he felt angry and anguished, he still could do nothing.
Q1 410002027 英美三 曹立運 Nick
Throughout the whole story, James Joyce uses a huge amount of ways to convey the sense of desolation and gloom in Araby. First of all, we can feel it through things in various scenes. For instance, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.” and “The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.” Second of all, we can feel it through the serenity of stuff in the story. For instance, “Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.” and “The wild garden……straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump.” Third of all, the story ended in a despair way, when the light turned off as if his life is desolated forever. “The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” During the whole story, he uses many words, symbols, and motifs to contribute to this desolation and gloom atmosphere, such as “musty room”, “waste room” , “at the blind end”, “musty air”, just to name a few. To the narrator, he wasn't only overwhelmed by bazaar itself, but also his failure.
Q4 410002038 英美三 陳蕙玉 Candy
In "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", we can see the theme play out in Mabel’s relationship to her family and lover. In the relationship between Mabel and her brothers, she is dominated and belittles by her brothers. We can know this message from the quote: “‘You’ll go and stop with Lucy for a bit, shan’t you?’ he asked. The girl did not answer…‘If I was her, I should go in for training for a nurse,’ said Malcolm, the youngest of them all. He was the baby of the family, a young man of twenty-two, with a fresh, jaunty museau.” (page 1281, 14 lines from the bottom) Mabel has no right and has a low position in her family. In contrast, Mabel has a superior status to her lover, Dr. Ferguson. We can see he is totally controlled by Mabel from the following quote: “Her hands were drawing him, drawing him down to her. He was afraid, even a little horrified… he had a horror of yielding to her. Yet something in him ached also.” (page 1289, paragraph 4) Mabel forces Dr. Ferguson to love her and he has no power to resist her. In family relationship, woman is dominated by man. In love relationship, man is controlled by woman. Men and women stand in unequal status. The saddest is that no one can really profit from this.
英美二 410102043 林萱怡 Olivia
1) How does "Araby" convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
“North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brother School set the boys free.” The narrator conveyed the messages that the street is closed. People who live there seem not to communicate with outside, even each other, which also mean they are indifferent.
Araby is a symbolic of a dream new world for the boy. And, Mangan’s sister symbolizes a fairy who guides him to the dream new world. However, to go to the dream world is difficult that he needs to go through a lot of difficulties. First, he needs and wait the admission of his uncle, but he replied”The people are in bed and after their first sleep now.” After his aunt’s help, what’s more, he found that it’s difficult to go there. “I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly.” Nevertheless, he realized that he couldn’t fulfill his dream. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” When we grow up, we must have the experience of facing the reality. If we want to chase for our dream, we always need to go through many difficulties. But, when we are in a society that is blind and afraid of changing, there is no way to fulfill the dream.
英美二 410102035 黃雅婷
4) It is clear to see the complicated personality and the strong relentless struggle for possession and dominance in the play "The Horse Dealer's Daughter”. At beginning of the play, the heroine, Mabel seems not having those qualities. She acts indifferently and shows that nothing can trigger her desire. But actually she is a person having enormous desire of possession and dominance. Mabel forces Dr. Ferguso to love her. She constantly repeats “You love me” and tries to hypnotizing him. However, I don’t think she real loves him, I feel that she just wants to regain the feeling of being loved and the power of manipulating someone. Such an extreme woman. Except the heroine, the male lead, Dr. Ferguso is also a complex person. Confronting Mabel’s forcing, He always struggles between his will and behavior. Because he doesn’t love Mabel at all, he tries to reject her, but it is strange that his will seemed to have gone to sleep, and left him. He seems losing his mind in the end, he even proposes to Mabel, and all he says is “I want you, I want you”, blindly. What an incomprehensible variation. According to those description, I think the love between Mabel and Dr. Ferguso is unreal. In fact, their love is a desire of possessing and dominating.
410002001 英美三 陳若仙 Sandy
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
Mabel lives in a horse-dealing family with her brothers, whereas their fortune is decline. Because of the realistic problems, such as their poverty and her brothers’ disdain, she needs to be a hunter pursuing what she wants. After saved by Dr. Ferguson, Mabel becomes conscious of him. They get nothing to say to each other at first, but Dr. Ferguson feels dangerous under Mabel’s gaze. “He turned his face aside. He was afraid now, because he felt dazed, and felt dimly that her power was stronger than his, in this issue.”(1288). Here, Mabel has the power over the man who saved her. Dr. Ferguson feels controlled by Mabel, but he feels warm inside himself as well. Mabel seems to have magic upon him. Although Dr. Ferguson had never thought of loving her, he is forced to do that. “And he hardly wanted it to be true, even now” (1289). He still gets a kind of agony in his breast, and he does not know what he is doing. Their “love” is built by his fear of her, and Mabel takes her advantage to manipulate him. “‘I feel awful. I feel awful. I feel I’m horrible to you.’ ‘No, I want you, I want you,’ was all he answered, blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should not want her” (1291). The lines imply Mabel’s possession and dominance toward him.
英美二 410102056 張文馨 Wendy
1)
At the beginning of this work, James Joyce has reveals a dark feeling that the North Richmond Street is blind and quiet, and there is an uninhabited house which is detached from its neighbors at the blind end. He also portrays neighbors as indifferent people who do not care others’ sufferings. Moreover, all the things except Mangan’s sister the boy sees on the street are somber and glum. For example, the drawing-room where the dead priest had lived is full of musty air, the ash pits of the dark dripping gardens arose odours, the upper part of the house the boy lives has high cold empty gloomy rooms, and even the house Mangan’s sister lives is dark. The terrible weather and the tedious school life also convey a dark sense. And I think the most apparent scene is that the boy remains alone in the bare carriage on the way to Araby. And I think that Bazaar is a symbol of dream and reality. When the boy heard Araby from the girl, he is very excited and thinks it must be very good, but after arriving there, he feels frustrated that it is not what he expects. And I think his despair is not only for the Araby but also for love, especially when the upper of the part of the hall is completely dark, the moment also means the disappearance of his prospect about pure love.
英美二410102061胡靜Ali
At the beginning of this story said that “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street…And an uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground…gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces. The author uses the arrangement of these houses and neighbor’s behavior to convey the desolation and gloomy. And “blind”, “detached” are words caused the atmosphere of desolation and gloomy. At the end of this story, the narrator was found himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and his eyes burned with anguish and anger. The narrator thought Araby was a dream place with romance and love because Mangan’s sister guided him to there, and he promised he would brought something to her. But when he went there, there was totally not the place like he dreamed and expected. And then he heard the conversation between men and woman also destroyed the meaning of love in narrator’s thought. Then, he finally realized how disappointment and frustration he was so he felt angry in the end. Araby is like a symbol of reality. This trip went to Araby which gave the narrator a lesson and a chance to learn that the world with reality and darkness.
1)In "Araby", the atmosphere is gloom and. Neighbors detached from each other, so do the society. He describes the street with "blind" to express the dead society. People do not want to change the society instead to ignore other's suffering－ being enclosed. They are calm in "brown faces" which lacked the sense of humor. The priest, who died in a musty room, did not be aware by people. It suggests that people only cared about themselves. The environment is damp, littered, rusty, and dark. The presents of religion references also traps him a lot. The sensation of life: "I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes." However, he has a great passion to Mangan's sister but he does not know how to express his feelings to her. He does not mention the name of the girl all over. It is hard to close the society and realizes the desire of love. She suggests him to visit bazaar for her. His aunt also encourages him to go there. The boy is guided by family and community. But when he arrives, the scene and atmosphere in bazaar frustrates him deeply. It is already ten at night. The young lady speaks to him "out of a sense of duty." It cannot be more true to be discouraged. The last paragraph, it is an epiphany toward his mind. The darkness brings knowledge and a new perspective to him. The opportunity of self-reflection brings from the society.
410102041 李佩珍
2) In "The Dead," what do Gabriel's thoughts about and interactions with other people tell us about his character? What words would you use to describe him? How comfortable is he with himself and with the world?
• I think Gabriel is a very egoistic man who only cares about himself. According to the story, at the beginning, Gabriel didn’t have a good talking with Lily, and it became an embarrassing talk and interaction in the end. He looks down on everyone, thinking himself is superior to others. Before the speech, he even wondered which quotation he should use for his hearer in order to make them understand his verbs (my god, I don’t like this ridiculous man at all.) Later, during the party, he had an argument on nationalism with Miss Ivors which made him feel totally shameful and embarrassed. After Miss Ivors kept doubting and questioning intensely on Gabriel’s nationalism toward Irish, he get angry and shout out “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!’(He showed his true colors finally.) How can a person look down on his country in this way? He is a man who being “all words and no action”, he might be knowledgeable, yet have too much self-preoccupation. He never thinks of others’ feeling and mind, for instance, his wife. When he eager to make love with Gretta, what he cares about is his desire only. After hearing Gretta’s first love story, he finally found out he is a ridiculous man who never truly understand his wife.
410002039 Kendrick
Q1
In the novel Araby, James Joyce used large amounts of symbolic imageries to create a typical setting.
The North Richard Street was “blind”, and “I” used a blind to hide myself from being seen by Mangan’s sister. These are the two “blind” used in the novel. The first one is an adjective, which means that the street is closed at one end. As it’s a blind street, people living in the street are difficult to communicate with the ones outside. So it indicates the station of un-open up of Dublin as well as Ireland. But the people living in the street are all pleased with the situation. So the boy wished to get away from it. This helps the plot develop. As for the second “blind”, it is a noun. By using the blind, Mangan’s sister couldn’t see me. However, the blind also prevented me from seeing her clearly. This indicates that the boy’s dream was only a childish dream; it is hard to be realized for “I” only “watched it from a blind”.
The narrator’s change of heart concludes the story on a moment of epiphany, but not a positive one. Instead of reaffirming his love or realizing that he does not need gifts to express his feelings for Mangan’s sister, the narrator simply gives up. He seems to interpret his arrival at the bazaar as it fades into darkness as a sign that his relationship with Mangan’s sister will also remain just a wishful idea and that his infatuation was as misguided as his fantasies about the bazaar.
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
Lawrence has deal with the struggle from the very beginning of the story. Being asked “What are you going to do with yourself?” by her elder brother, indicates that the heroine, Mabel’s relationship status in the family. Surrounded by brothers, and being discussed by them face to face, she remains no reaction toward them and keeps quiet. However, she has abundance of minds to shout out. Since she can’t come forward for herself, she had spiritual substance over the church, to her passed-away father –which is another male who made Mabel love him in complexity- and the memories of her mother. The highlight of the fiction is the biggest struggle between Mable and the doctor after she was rescued by him.
It is the power, the gaze and the words she said “Did you dive into the pond for me?” as well as “Do you love me, then?” overwhelmed the doctor. Unusually, she seemed to hold him and has cast magic on him to take control of him. At the same time though, there was another desire in him. He felt warm inside himself. Initially, he had never thought of loving her. Yet facing a woman repeating saying “You love me.” triumphantly and confidently, his will of the battle succumbed. Following from that, he realized the beauty and shinning of her body and face. After that, he was afraid but fell to kiss her. Moreover, replied “Yes.” to her “You love me?” The woman was the victory who won the battle.
Mina 陳綎嵐
410002018
Q3) Describing Elizabeth, the narrator of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" says, "She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead"(1279). What "truth" does Elizabeth discover?
Elizabeth discovered the truth in her own personal relationship through the death of her husband.
The chrysanthemums is a symbolical image in the fiction has been thought as the beginning of Elizabeth’s marriage which opened Elizabeth’s married life.
” It was chrysanthemums when I married him. .................”(p1271 par.4)
However, the story in the end described the failure of the marriage by the fade out imagery of chrysanthemums.
There is a scene that Elizabeth picked up the broken vase.
“Elizabeth did not look at her husband. As soon as she could get... picked up the broken vase and the flower.” (p1276 last line-1277 line2 ).
In the fiction the broken vase also symbolizes the broken marriage.
It means that in the end the marriage is a miserable mistake, she realized that this distance between two classes, her higher education and her husbands as a miner labor, and the social consciousness takes the upper hand. As a woman or as a wife was not only isolated from other people, but also from her true self. Woman seemed to be a dominated or subordinated one in the society‘s value.
Is not marriage an single question, it two people’s soul of mind, their value toward love and life. Obviously, Elizabeth and Walter did not keep the same point of view or faith in their relationship.The reality is that she never had a connection with this man whom she loved for so long. He was a stranger to her even when it seemed they were so close.
She is realized that she is the main victims of this unbalanced relationship.
Elizabeth is a looser in the relationship; she is a looser when facing life. When a human-being is too much obsessed with social consciousness, she is far away from happiness, from herself, from human nature.
Whether her husband is dead or not their marriage had been dead long before her husband lost his life that night in the mine.
Elizabeth discovered the truth in her own personal relationship through the death of her husband. No matter how they are represented in life, as chrysanthemums or other, difficulties are evident in her live.
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
In “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”, we can see that the relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. First, are the brothers, in the very beginning: “The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast-table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation.” But what those brothers do was just teasing and laughing at Mabel, they don’t care about Mabel at all. They even called her “bull-dog”. We can see that Lawrence trying to show the men’s dominance. But next, When Mabel met Jack, she kind of forces Jack and hypnotism him to love her. Mabel shows her dominance by constantly repeats “You love me, you love me”. After the presentation, I finally understand that the Love between them is not a romantic story but more like some creepy story. Jack safe Mabel’s life, but his soul seemed to melt after Mabel talked to him. And in the very end, we can see that Mabel did come success. Jack finally kissed her and said that he wanted to marry her. And in this part, we can see that Lawrence trying to give us the message that the woman take control and see Mabel’s possession and dominance.
410002034陶君山
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
In the story, Mabel was treated badly like typical women at that time which the society were dominated by men. When their father died, the brothers all have their plan to survive. But Mabel lost everything she can depend on. When she committed suicide by drowning herself in the pond, Dr. Fergusson saved her. When she woke up, she aggressively saying that the doctor love her. “'You love me,' she murmured, in strange transport, yearning and triumphant and confident. 'You love me. I know you love me, I know.'” Mabel needs someone to depend on after her family broke apart, and the doctor came into her eye. She thinks the doctor saved her because he loves her; she then took the dominance between men and women this time. When Mabel showed her dominance over him, the doctor gradually give up at last and said he love her. “He was afraid, even a little horrified. For he had, really, no intention of loving her.” “And yet wonderful was the touch of her shoulders, beautiful the shining of her face.” His emotions now conquered by her. I think the desire for sexual fulfillment might have influenced his feeling, he wants to possess her. “'No, I want you, I want you,' was all he answered, blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should not want her.” The relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women can be seen in the story; Mabel and the doctor both dominate each other in their way.
1.
“Araby” is a first person narration story which is about a boy is secretly in love with his friend’s sister, somehow struggles in minds. The nameless boy is suppressed not only because of his shyness but also the pretentious atmosphere surrounded. The desolation sources from the narrator’s unspeakable feeling of adoration and fulfillment. Until the second paragraph, the narrator finally has the chance to show up while the first paragraph has already covered readers in a breathless environment with words as, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street,” “uninhabited house…stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours” and “The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.” The priest’s death and the deserted room, especially in which the boy dreams about the conversation and promise to a bazaar, enhance the gloomy emotion. “The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.” The sentence figures the boy’s anxiety of his capability to fulfill the quest in a vivid way. Though the boy seems to achieve his goal in some degree, he realizes soon how practical world is different from idealism. The vanity of quest and utopia at the end of the story carves deeply the helplessness throughout the becoming of age, or maybe a whole life of everyone.
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
Men are often dominant, possessive, playing a leading part in their family, and women are submissive, passive, usually taking orders from their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Men are always considered more superior than women traditionally.
In "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", As for Mabel, she does not have any place at home. What she could be is to do housework under three bossy brothers. “The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast-table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation.” But what those brothers do was just teasing and laughing at Mabel, they don’t care about Mabel at all. They even called her “bull-dog”.
However, Things got change when Dr. Ferguson saves Mabel’s life, she constantly repeats “You love me” and tries to convincing him. Finally, Dr. Ferguson kissed her and said that he wanted to marry her. I think the main reason that she wants to conquer Doctor Jack is to let her escape from her family for the unequal treatment and her new thoughts of a woman.
Mabel has no right and has a low position in her family. In contrast, Mabel has a superior status to her lover, Dr. Ferguson.
1)In Araby, the little young boy indulged in his own self-satisfaction. He was so shy but he became confident in the end. He wants to be a Santa to give the girl a gift from the bazaar. He made his promise but couldn’t do it because delay of his uncle. His dream was broken into pieces. That made him be full of desolation and darkness. The boy was frustrate to the bazaar and to himself. “Darkness” was full of the story and led to a great frustration of the boy. The close of the bazaar contributed to the atmosphere with the darkness. The bazaar was closing down and the lights were shut down when the boy arrived. It seemed that the broken dream as well as the dull love in the boy’s mind. The narrator’s despair confined to his frustration with the bazaar also led to the frustration with the boy himself. He disappointed to himself and his stupid manner. That frustration made his life and his heart full of gloom. He realized how cruel and practical the world was. Everyone have their dreams but we should totally realize the reality and to achieve everything we dream about.
1)How does "Araby" convey a sense of desolation and gloom? What words, symbols, and motifs contribute to this atmosphere? Is the narrator's despair at the end of "Araby" confined to his frustration with the bazaar itself or does it extend to larger issues?
There are a lot of symbols that construct an atmosphere of desolation and gloom, and those symbols can be easily found through paragraphs. Take some symbols for example. 1) The blind street, which forbid him from developing connection with outside world. 2) The house of the dead priest, which is musty, kind of isolated and full of old books. 3) Neighbors, they are detached from each other, and so is the society, just to name a few. Those three above present and constitute a gloomy and desolate atmosphere to the readers.
The boy was excited as soon as he heard there is a bazzar to go, where is full of new things the narrator didn’t have the experience to go. The bazzar is much different from the boy’s daily life, and he longed to go there and find something interesting for Mangan’s sister and for himself. The bazzar also represents reality and dreams; however, it did not correspond to what he had expected. It leaded to the narrator’s frustration. The final scene that the boy was disappointed at the bazzar broke his imagination of love; he seemed to understand something as he grows older. And finally, he had no choice but to accept maturity and reality.
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
In The Horse Dealer’s Daughter, Lawrence shows a different love for readers. First of all, the story was started at Mabel’s family background. Mabel’s brothers were useless and lived in their dreams. They were the production of Paternalism because they thought their status were higher than Mabel. However, we can see the real condition in the story. Mabel was their family’s mainly income and the only one to support the family. The traditional position of gender was changing in the story. After Dr. Ferguson saved Mabel, she just asked him to love her and tried to force him to do it. Maybe Mabel’s desire of being loved was the losing of mother and oppression of brothers and society. So, we can see their love was not equal between Mabel and Dr. Ferguson. “His soul seemed to melt. “Mabel seemed more dominant than Dr. Ferguson in this part. “Triumphant in first possession” and ““You love me,” she murmured, in strange transport, yearning and triumphant and confident.” These two sentences showed Mabel had been controlled the whole condition of their love war. “He was powerless.” The sentence showed Dr. Ferguson had been the loser in this love war. The relationship is very different from the traditional love: men are usually superior than women. Yet, Lawrence displays women are more dominant and possess.
410002006 陳永霆
Respond to 1):
In the novel, it conveys the sense of desolation and gloom through the description of interaction between the narrator’s life and the city, Dublin. For example, there is a paragraph describes the scene that boy stays in the classroom, and his master hoped he is not beginning to idle. However, he could not call his wandering thoughts together. He has hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stands between him and his desire, seemed to him child’s play, ugly monotonous play. This scene express the narrator’s exploration between childhood and adulthood. He sees the routine boredom of school as child’s play. It is easy, unengaging, and repetitive. Desire, on the other hand, is inspirational and liberating. His thoughts, after all, wander everywhere, rather than remain fixed to the place they should be. The eagerness for the freedom of adulthood, the boy keep restrained in the repetition of childhood.
At the end of the novel, the narrator enlightens the epiphany through the bazaar; the despair he feels not from the shop’s close down, but also the realization of his desire. His infatuation to Mangan’s sister makes him promise to go the bazaar and bring back the gift to her. However, when he arrives, the shop is entirely different as he thought. He only encounters flowered teacups and English accents, not the freedom of the enchanting East. He figures out that his desire for her is actually on a vain wish for change.
49902052
鄭百佑 Kenny
Q3) Describing Elizabeth, the narrator of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" says, "She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead"(1279). What "truth" does Elizabeth discover?
Elizabeth discovered the truth that she never knew her husband well after her husband died. She deeply felt the isolation of two souls between her and her husband. In the beginning of the story, the narrator hinted that Elizabeth had a stressful life after getting married. For instance, Elizabeth and Walter’s house was described as “A large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof.” Elizabeth was an imperious woman; she hated her husband of being a minor that couldn’t afford her a genteel life. She looked down upon her husband so she never tried to understand him. The couples did not have close relationship. She was often left at home with her other two children. Day by day, Elizabeth lived the life of anger and resentment. After Elizabeth knew that her husband was dead, she undressed and washed Walter's body. “She looked at his naked body and was ashamed. She looked at his face, and she turned her own face to the wall. For his look was other than hers, his way was not her way.” She had long treated her husband as a stranger. Only when her husband was no longer her husband but a corpse did she find that she never love him. Elizabeth also understood the truth that she never accept the true self her husband was. In her mind, her husband never lived as a husband as Walter never appeared in the story alive.
49602049
馮百謙
1）In the beginning of the story, the narrator describes house with "blind end", "a quiet street", "an uninhabited house", " detached from its neighbours", and so on to show the desolation and gloomy atmosphere. Also, his uncle's boring poetry and his teacher's anger shows the dull and the dark side of the narrator's life. However, before he visits the bazaar, he still has a passion of love for a woman, and the imaginary fantasy world in his mind. While living in a boring life alienated from others, his still has dreams to come true. Unfortunately, after he saw the bazaar and the woman chatting with two men, he was totally disappointed and he feels very angry that the reality is not as good as he imagined.
4)There are many situations and words bring a sense of desolation and gloom to the reader. First, the description of the house is “an uninhabited house…stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground.” Also, “the former tenant, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room.” When the winter came, “the houses had grown sobre” and “our shouts echoed in the silent street”. The narrator uses the word “dark” many times for “the muddy lanes”, “the dripping garden”, “odorous stables”. The scenery that the narrator presents is dim, gray and mostly quiet. The narrator has this affection towards Magan’s sister but they barely talked. He describes his feelings for her like “my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” and “her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises”.Afterwards, when she asked if he is going to the bazaar, he was really glad and made his promise, but in the end he failed to keep it. The narrator was anticipating since the day she asked and acted like other things were meaningless. When he knew he couldn’t bring anything for her, he said, “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity”. It is not only due to the late time when he arrived Araby, but the failure of being courageous and confronting himself or women characters that defeated him.
410002041 張芮甄
1)The narrator of “Araby” is a sentimental and shy boy. The whole short story presents the boy’s keen observation and feeling to surroundings. The first paragraph uses “a quit and blind street”, “school boys” “uninhabited house” and “imperturbable faces” to describe an immutable life in the boy’s community. There is no interaction between people even neighbours. In the second paragraph, the house of died priest convey a sense of gloom. “Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.” and “rusty bicycle-pump” reveals no body care this house and the priest except the narrator. The houses in narrator’s street are somber and their lantern are feeble. People walk on dark and muddy lanes. The color of the street filled with gloomy. And the adoration of the narrator is the first strong motion appearing in the quiet street. However, a series of frustration punch him just like a palm heating on her face. At the end of the story, the sentence "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." reflects the reality the narrator suffered and represent the broken of his illusion.
I wrote the wrong number of the question that I answered. It should be 1 instead of 4.
410002002 姚山 英美三
Q1: The first line of "Araby," “North Richmond Street, being blind,” foreshadows the ending, implying not only the desperate situation of contemporary Ireland but also the boy’s dream which is going to be broken. Some sentences or words, such as “detached,” “imperturbable faces,” “the houses had grown somber,” “feeble lanterns,” “a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the houses,” the high cold empty gloom rooms,” “a deserted train,” “an intolerable delay,” presents the sense of desolation, loneliness, and gloom and the dreariness of Dublin. Also, we can find those senses from other things. The word "shadow" is repeated several times. The three books, The Abbot, a romance novel, The Devout Communicant, a religious book, and The Memoirs of Vidocq, a detective novel, signifies that the dead priest didn’t devote himself to God because he spent two-thirds of his reading on the popular fiction. And he didn’t visit his church members, according to the “rusty bicycle-pump.” In the line, “its leaves were yellow,” the word “leaves” is a pun meaning both parts of a tree and a book. When leaves were yellow, it’s the fall. The image of “a central apple-tree” in “the wild garden” can refer to the Garden of Eden. Falling from Eden means entering into the human world and suffering. In addition, the word “fall” also appears in those lines, “I listened to the fall of the coins” and “I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket.”
In the end, the boy didn’t just feel disappointed about the bazaar, but also the real world. In his imagination, he was questing for the chalice and Araby is his dream place. However, rather than a chalice, he found the tawdry and fragile china which relates to his blind romance. From the images of “two men were counting money on a salver,” “the nonsensical conversation,” and “the lady’s tone without passion,” the boy witnessed materialism and disillusion.
Mandy410102012
4) Lawrence's fiction often concerns a relentless struggle for possession and dominance between men and women. How does this theme play out in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"?
At first, Jack simply takes Mabel as a person that needs to be rescued. He saves her just because it is his job. However, Jack is only the one who can help her to get rid of her recent situation. As a result Mabel believes and has to believe that Jack’s assistant is because of love. Mabel starts to take the dominant role and insert the idea “love” into Jack’s mind. She continually telling him “You love me.” “You love me. I know you love me.” Jake feels afraid because he never thinks of loving her, and the feeling he has is totally foreign. But, he can’t break down from Mabel’s eye sight and feeling powerless. At this moment, Jack is still struggling and saying to himself that he does not intend to love Mabel. However, when Mabel cries, Jack’s weak defense has been knocked down and finally, involuntarily be dominated and says love. And then, it seems even Jack is convincing himself. When Mabel tells him that he can’t love her, unlike the resistance he shows before, he commits his love and even blindly proposes to Mabel. The scene that Jack proposes can be seen as Jack finally giving up and let Mabel takes the dominance.
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