stir_egg's chamber

The three stories are about the inequality and oppression the women facing in the patriarchal society.  Many symbols are used to show that women are the victims.

The Yellow Wall paper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at the end of 19^th century . In 20^th century, Man assigned and defined women’s role. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. The adverse state of women is showed in the novel. The narrator feels there is illness within her, however, her husband brother, both are physicians, deny that she has illness. He husband make her to stay in the house all day. The narrator has a very strong rejection to the yellow wall paper. She describes the color as repellent, revolting and smouldering. She imagines some women are creeping behind the wall-paper. Finally, she lost control and tear the wall paper off the wall. Readers seem to witness her mental condition deteriorates gradually through out the whole process.

 The yellow wall-paper is a critical symbol to reflect the social statues of women at that time. Yellow give us an impression of inferiority, strangeness and cowardice. Men enforce the idea that women are inferior. This can be evidenced in the novel. For example, her husband always asked her all sorts of questions, and pretended to be very loving and kind. The pretentious attitude shows his attempt to control her wife both mentally and physically by treating her like a child. It can be induced that the wall-paper symbolized the dominating patriarchal power. Besides that, the narrator imagines several women creeping behind the wall paper. She pities the women creeping behind and wants to peel of their bondage. This symbol shows the struggling process of the women’s rights movement. It changed painfully slow. Gilman was a very active member in the women’s rights movement. She tried to peel away the gender bias, just as the narrator wants to pull of the wall paper. Compare to the other two stories, The Yellow Wall Paper shows an optimistic attitude at this point. At the end of the story, she takes action to fight back by throwing off the wall-paper in order to take control of the situation.

Death in the Woods tells us a tragic story of a country woman. The narrator recollects that an old woman died naked in the snow. To the narrator, the old woman was not an individual; she was a stocked kind, her life and dead is universal. The nameless woman is a maid of a German farmer. The farmer’s wife thought she induce her husband. Therefore, she treats the maid badly when her husband is not at home. One day, Jake fights with the farmer for the maid, and then they run away and got married. However, after she marries to Jake, she becomes the one who always feeding. She feeds the animals on the farm, her son and her husband. Jake and his son mal-treat the woman. They have no sense of morality and responsibility. The woman is left behind to struggle for herself. One day, the woman has to carry food to home in winter. She is exhausted and died on the floor.

The woman is a maid before she get married, she remain a maid after she get married. This is the tragedy of her life. She doesn’t have a word through out the novel. Her voice is suppressed by the patriarchal power. On one hand, the story presents us the tragic life of the woman, on the other hand, it glorify the contribution of the woman. The glorification is showed by the symbols in the story. When the old woman lying naked on the floor, what the boy sees is not a spiritless, deceased and wrinkled old woman, but a frozen beauty and illuminated figure of a maiden. The woman is the

       I am confidence to handle most of the things, but there is one thing makes me so frail. Like a mockingbird struggling with great storm. Every time I begin to fly again, I hope I won’t fall with my wings broken. I like the sky, the deep blue sky with snowy clouds drifting. I like the sensation of touching soft wind, which makes me feel calm and safe. However, you can not predict the temper of the sky. I know a storm, a hurricane, a lightening will broken my wings all in a sudden. Then I fall, I cry, because my wing is broken, I am not able to do anything to cure myself, I am not able to stop the rain. I lie on the floor, with my tears wetting the earth, I am all alone. I am helpless. I am not so tough, although I pretend to be. People said once you get hurt, you will be tough, and then tougher and tougher. But I can’t do that, being tough to arm yourself is a coward. I am not a coward. I have to fly again and again until I perish.

   Once upon a time, someone told me a story. There is a little boy who always mad at people around him. One day his father tells him to hammar a nail on the wall whenever he quarrels with someone. The boy does as his father tells him and finally, he finds that the wall is full of nails. Then his father tells him to pull out a nail whenever he does a good deed to people. Eventually, the boy pull out all the nails on the wall, but the wall was spotted with holes. His father said, the holes on the wall was the scars on their souls. Every time you said something mean to the others, damage has made.

    Remember to have a tolerant heart, to cherish the people around you, never hurt the people who love you.

  The holiday has begun. What am I going to do? Sometimes I feel like a substantial phantom. Everyday, I have classes, read my books, do my homework, and have lunch and dinner with my boyfriend. Life is simple. Sometimes I have a very bad mood, some words haunted me and some images flash on and on in my head. My stage is like a cardboard house, it crashed once upon a time. I am trying to do my best in this relationship, trying to rebuild a stage for myself, trying to construct a bridge to the future. However, I am vacillated for a long time. To use your whole energy to love someone might have a devastating result. Women are born to have a rather precise six sense, that’s what Professor Ma always telling us. Do I? Silence will, speak. One day, I will know.

    When we walked to the dorm, I accidentally saw a friend of my ex-boyfriend. Her eyes sank into my soul. I could read surprise, angry, fear and desperation. I can understand, because she knew nothing. My boyfriend was hit by my ex. I can never imagine the TV show will happen in real life, what’s worse, my life. I stood there, without knowing what to do. I wanted to run, to escape from this embarrassing moment. It’s my responsibility to solve the conflict, but how?

      “Life is tough, but I am tougher.” This is a motto of the students who are working on their essays in the midnight. The more nearer the deadline is, the more students exercising this rule; the more prestigious the university is, the more enough assignment to keep the students burning the midnight oil. They burn the candle at both ends and breakdown before they can feed their family. College pressure is a double edged sword; it can be your tonic or toxic.

I myself share many similarities with the American students. As the commencement getting near, my heart laden with peer pressure. We all want to look better on the paper, besides diploma and certificates, work experience are also glitter decoration on the C.V. Therefore, we must study hard and juggle our crowded hours to work hard.

Besides the peer pressure, family pressure also steers me towards certain slots. For 15 years, all my working-class parent’s savings are being spend on my tuition fee. I was racked with guilt whenever I didn’t do well in my study. Unlike American families, Chinese parents pay their children’s college tuition fee. As an undergraduate in China, no matter how hard you work on your part time job, the meager payment only able to feed yourself.

In American universities, there are more than a thousand courses for you to select. However, China universities provide us less choice and chance to sample other courses except our major. For example, in our university, students from business English faculty tend to have more employment opportunities than students from English faculty. We have to spend one more year to get an economic degree if we want to have better chance.

Life is connecting dots, every dot is a change. We are a lost generation in the protean world.  We regret with every choice we made. We afraid every chance drains away. University should be a place which sparks our interest instead of prison us in the tower of ivory.

Recently, I read a novel named " The White Heron" . I like the story.
  The white heron describes a growth process of a nine-year-old girl. Sylvia gained her enlightenment through the climbing of an old pine tree. She sacrificed her virginal love for her innate moral. Sarah tried to convey three messages to us through this story.

First, mankind should be harmony with nature as well as culture. Sarah shows her admiration for nature through the eyes of Sylvia. When Sylvia reached the top of the pine tree, she saw the bewilderingly sun, clouds that were purple and rose-colored and yellow at first began to fade away and the handsome white heron. All those are bestowed by Mother Nature. Sylvia could feel her innate part belongs to nature. Her life was restored since she lived in the countryside. The beautiful and unexploited scenery indicate that nature benefit our life. However, the frail nature is facing many crisis imposed by mankind. The hunter is an intruder of nature and Sylvia’s peaceful life. Sarah calls him as an ornithologist, which means he also represent science. The young man hunted and stuffed the bird means science conflict with nature, yet he can use another way to admire the birds instead of killing them. Sylvia’s choice indicates that culture and nature need a peaceful coexistence.

The process of growth is a painstaking one, and the process of learning is lonely. The ancient pine tree represents the tree of life. Sylvia struggle to climb up the top symbolized she was struggling between the temptation of the material world and the innocent nature. Finally, she reached the top and saw the sunlight. Light represent human wisdom. She gained enlightenment at the top of the wisdom tree. To see much far, to stand much high. However, climbing upward requires one to against all odds and to make difficult choices. First, she must mount the white oak tree that grew alongside, and then she made the dangerous pass from one tree to another. The path to success is not a straight one; it contains a lot of twist and turns. Meanwhile, the process of learning is a process of self-reflection and contemplation. Sylvia climbed up and down the tree all by herself. She had no one to rely on.

Finally, Innocence is lost once we make a choice. Although Sylvia is lonely in the woodland, yet she is happy with her animal friends. Life is simple at that time, she don’t have to make any choices. However, one day a generous intruder offered them money in exchange for the white heron. He is such a handsome and energetic young man that captures her heart without the slightest effort. Sylvia had to struggle between her virginal love and her innate moral. She had to sacrifice one of them to protect the other. During the contemplation and self-reflection, she was no longer the innocent happy girl she used to be.

   Eternal  Relationship

If someone tells you that he/her loves you forever, will you believe it?

I cannot think about any reasons to deny that. Whatever the future will be, at that moment, we would rather believe that the promise will be kept. Someone asks, do you believe eternal love? Yes, I do. Yet even eternal love will change. You may love someone forever, or you may be loved eternally. However, the ingredient of love will change as time moves on.

Love is not unique. During your growth, you will experience more, you will change your concept of love. The eternity you believe once upon a time is to love someone passionately all your life. Later, eternity may change from passionate to unromantic. Long lasting love based on unromantic. However, the so called eternal will become mutual dependence. We used to insist on separating love and like. Love is much more charming than like. One day we will start to believe that love and like is a whole.

Like is a kind of love. Just like forever dependence is forever love. I hope I can believe someone will love me till the doomsday. However, we all know that it is only an over romantic notion. Eternal relationship is more possible.
I translate the artical into English. I cannot agree more with the author.