Wd howells editha. WilliamĂ Dean Howells ââŹâ Editha 2022-11-03
Wd howells editha Rating:
7,9/10
1804
reviews
"Editha" is a short story written by William Dean Howells in the late 19th century. The story follows the titular character, Editha, who is a young woman living in the United States during the Spanish-American War. Editha is deeply patriotic and believes in the virtues of war, seeing it as a noble and heroic endeavor. She becomes engaged to George, a young man who is hesitant to go to war, but Editha encourages him to do so.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Editha is more interested in the idea of war and the romanticized version of it that she has in her head than the reality of what war entails. She is unable to comprehend the violence and suffering that war brings, and is devastated when George is killed in action.
Through the character of Editha, Howells criticizes the glorification of war and the idea that it is a necessary or desirable part of society. He suggests that such attitudes are naive and misguided, and that the true cost of war is often overlooked by those who advocate for it.
Ultimately, "Editha" serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of blindly following societal norms and the importance of questioning the values that are held up as ideals. It is a poignant and thought-provoking work that encourages readers to think critically about the role of war in society and the consequences it can have on individuals and communities.
Editha, by William Dean Howells Essay
It's all for the country! However, Editha supports and glories in the war because she readsâan intellectual activityâinaccurate, exaggerated, and unrealistic sources intended to influence the public sphere. It's rather far off; she can't leave her chair--" "Oh, I'll go, if it's the ends of the earth! If I've tried to talk you into anything, I take it all back. Smith, "William Dean Howells: A Revised and Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Comment in Periodicals and Newspapers, 1868â1919," American Literary Realism, 1870â1910, vol. There are no two sides any more. There were not many letters from him, but they were such as she could have wished, and she put her whole strength into making hers such as she imagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him. The air was thick with the war feeling, like the electricity of a storm which had not yet burst.
Her fiancĂŠ George was not Analysis Of Editha By William Dean Howells And The Yellow Wallpaper hand in hand with romantics as it exposes the truth behind marriages in the 18th and 19th centuries. Editha, Uncle Sam wants YOU to get your act together, pronto! I wrote it after you went this morning. Call them from their downy beds, father, mother, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks! I never thought I should like to kill a man; but now I shouldn't care; and the smokeless powder lets you see the man drop that you kill. So, although the convictions and moral ideas are there, they stand useless against the brute patriotism of the majority. I'll think it over; I'd like to believe as you do. And I know you will see it just as I do, yet.
Editha by William Dean Howells, will go down as one of many strong points of evidence when it comes down to literary realism. Open-minded woman urges lawyer beau to join the war because apparently fierce, unquestioning patriotism is the only key to her heart. However, the story drives me nuts. I have been thinking, thinking all night and all day long. Cambridge University Press, 2005: 736. She ran all the way back to the house, and mounted the steps panting.
But when you consider the good this war has done--how much it has done for the country! As the narrator experiences visions of women trapped in her walls, is forced to conform to specific gender roles, and is unable to express or communicate her own feelings, the impact which oppression has on the individual, as well as the idea of patriarchal society, is demonstrated. The tone of this poem is more foreboding and condemnatory, not only describing the training soldiers but outright degrading their forced involvement as morally wrong. The two stories I have read that stood out the most to me on the grounds of literary realism are: Editha by William Dean Howells and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. He drank goblet after goblet of the ice-water without noticing who was giving it, and kept on talking, and laughing through his talk wildly. I know how sincere you are, and how-- I wish I had your undoubting spirit! He wrote various types of works, including fiction, poetry, and farces, of which Christmas Every Day; and Out of the Question are characteristic.
Analysis Of William Dean Howells Editha And The Yellow...
This is shown by her intended late arrival of the baby party and her inappropriate laughter as Ede laughs after hurting the little boy. The seated woman turned her head round and up, and asked the woman behind her chair: "Who did you say? What she called her God, always speaking the name in a deep voice and with the implication of a mutual understanding, would watch over him and keep him and bring him back to her. While she stood looking after him, her mother came out through one of the long windows onto the veranda, with a catlike softness and vagueness. She secretly sees George as less than he is because of his peaceful nature, and she does not imagine that George is aware of her low regard of him. But, she still doesn't recognize that she pushed him into war based on her skewed view of it.
The Yellow Wall-Paper, with further analysis, can be interpreted as having a meaningful message, as the oppression of women is profiled. Her mother said: "Wa'n't Mr. Editha felt sorry about George's mother anger but she was more egoistic, and she ended up seeing her as an ungrateful old lady!! It was very low inside the house, and so dim, with the closed blinds, that they could scarcely see one another: Editha tall and black in her crapes which filled the air with the smell of their dyes; her father standing decorously apart with his hat on his forearm, as at funerals; a woman rested in a deep arm-chair, and the woman who had let the strangers in stood behind the chair. Nevertheless, he is later manipulated by her to volunteer and become a Capitan. She wrote to his mother glorifying him as their hero, but the brief answer she got was merely to the effect that Mrs. Her mother said: "Wa'n't Mr.
Not let the soldier drink? Noting the "documentary" and truthful value of Howells' work, Henry James wrote: "Stroke by stroke and book by book your work was to become, for this exquisite notation of our whole democratic light and shade and give and take, in the highest degree documentary. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co. I should hate that, wherever I happened to be. The silent female imprisonment in the domestic sphere is revealed in this story through the mind of Jane, who is recuperating in the nursery room of a mansion for three months, which her physician husband believes is the appropriate treatment. From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature.
I haven't the conviction or the ambition, and the other thing is what it comes to with me. Perhaps I shall bring you a convert. Her father went with her on the long railroad journey from northern New York to western Iowa; he had business out at Davenport, and he said he could just as well go then as any other time; and he went with her to the little country town where George's mother lived in a little house on the edge of the illimitable cornfields, under trees pushed to a top of the rolling prairie. The story ends with the reminder that there really is no moral to this story. I had never expected to say so much, but it has come upon me that I must say the utmost. Sometimes it seems as if God had put this world into men's keeping to work it as they pleased. In Quest of America: A Study of Howells' Early Development as a Novelist.
Gearson was not well enough to write herself, and thanking her for her letter by the hand of someone who called herself "Yrs truly, Mrs. You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the faces of. The manly eyes and the strong voice satisfied her, and his preoccupation with some unexpected details of duty flattered her. Intuitionists Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke , moral-sense theorists the 3d earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson , and sentimentalists J. It did no good, however, because Editha didn't change, just as Scarlett didn't change. There, after the whirling words that seemed to fly away from her thoughts and refuse to serve them, she made a last effort to solemnize the moment that seemed so crazy, and pressed the letter she had written upon him.
