class 14 2016

1. EWRT 1C Class 14
The Short Story

2. AGENDA
 Author Introductions:
 Kate Chopin
 Gabriel García Márquez
 Short Story Discussions:
 “The Story of an Hour”
 “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
 Historical Context
 Literary Style
 Questions
 QHQ

3. Kate Chopin
Katherine O’Flaherty was born
February 8, 1851, in St. Louis.
Her father was an Irish merchant
and her mother was the daughter
of an old French family. Chopin’s
early fluency with French and
English, and her roots in two
different cultures, were important
throughout her life.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. Edited by
Margaret Culley. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.

4. Early life
 Kate’s father was killed in a train
accident in 1855 (the imagined
effect on her mother was later
depicted in “The Story of an
Hour”).
 At the age of eighteen, Kate was
known as one of St. Louis’
prettiest and most popular. Her
diary, however, shows that the
stress of the social pressures to
be feminine pushed against her
passion to read her favorites:
Victor Hugo, Dante, Molière, Jane
Austen, and Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow.

5. Marriage, Family, and Money
 At twenty, Kate married Oscar
Chopin, a young,
cosmopolitan businessman.
Kate gave birth to five sons
and a daughter. Important
themes in her fiction
include motherhood’s joys
and demands, as well as
societal restraints on
women.
 Her husband, worn down by
financial worries, died in
1882, leaving Kate with a
huge debt and six children to

6. Life’s Work
 The death of her husband, and soon after, her mother,
and her own unconventional ideas demanded that she
make her own way. She started her first short story in
1888, and became a published author in 1889 when
her poem “If It Might Be” appeared in the journal
America. Her stories and sketches from this early period
show that she questioned traditional romance. “Wiser
Than a God” depicts a woman who chooses a career
as pianist over marriage. Other stories portray a
suffragist and a professional woman who try to
determine their own lives. Chopin’s friends during this
period included “New Women”—single working
women, suffragists, and intellectuals—who doubtless
influenced her previously private questioning of women’s
role in society.

7.  Kate Chopin’s reputation as a writer faded soon after her
death. Her 1899 novel, The Awakening, was out of print for 50
years. By the late 1960’s, however, Norwegian writer Per
Seyersted rediscovered Chopin and edited The Complete
Works and a critical biography in 1969. Chopin’s reputation
blossomed, and her novel is considered a classic, taught in
university literature and women’s studies courses. Largely
through the attention of scholars and critics, Chopin’s work
has enjoyed a renaissance. Her writing illustrates a variety of
feminist concerns: the tension between individual freedom and
social duty; the stifling quality of unequal marriage; the
hypocrisy of the sexual double standard; women’s desire for
creativity and independence.

8. Historical Context: The Woman Question
 "The Story of an Hour" was published in 1894, an era in which
many social and cultural questions occupied Americans' minds.
One of these, referred to as the "Woman Question," involved which
roles were acceptable for women to assume in society. Charles
Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) had further incited this
controversy. Darwin's theory of evolution was used by both
sides of the issue: some argued the theory supported female
self-assertion and independence; others felt the theory proved
that motherhood should be the primary role of a woman in
society.
 The suffrage movement (1848-1920) endeavored to achieve
voting equality for women, yet mainstream Victorian culture still
supported the self-sacrificing wife, dependent on her husband and
devoted to her family, as the ideal of femininity.

9. Literary Style:
Point Of View and Setting

10.  “The Story of an Hour” is told
from a detached, third-person
limited point of view through
Louise, the only character
whose thoughts are accessible.
At the beginning of the story,
Louise is unable to consider her
own position in the world. As she
becomes aware of her emotions
and new situation, the reader
gains access to her thinking,
and therefore, her character. At
the end of the story, the reader
is abruptly cut off from her
thoughts, as Chopin
manipulates the narrative point
of view to underscore the theme
of the story.

11. Setting
 Chopin does not offer many clues as to where or when the
action of the story takes place, other than in the Mallard's
house. This general setting supports the theme of
commonly accepted views of the appropriate roles for
women in society. Given Chopin's other works and the
concerns she expresses about women's role in marriage in
this story and in other writings, the reader can assume that
the story takes place during Chopin's lifetime, the late
nineteenth century. Chopin was known for being a local
colorist, a writer who focuses on a particular people in a
particular locale. In Chopin's case, her stories are usually
set among the Cajun and Creole societies in Louisiana. For
this reason, "The Story of an Hour" is usually assumed
to take place in Louisiana.

12. Group Discussion
Chopin: Tension, Paradox, Irony,
Ambiguity, Questions and QHQs
A Brief
Summary

13. Discuss the story through one
critical lens
 New Criticism
 Feminist Criticism
 Psychoanalytic Criticism

14. 1. Tension
2. Paradox
3. Irony
4. Ambiguity
New Criticism: The Formal Elements

15. Psychoanalytic Theory
If we look at Chaplin’s work though a Psycho lens we see can see her
room as a Female image. Tyson states that Female imagery is
an,“enclosures and containers of any kind” (tyson 20) and in locking her
self in her room we see that Mrs. Mallard is hiding herself in this female
role: “she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow
her.” if we view the room as a Female role, then one can say that Because
she was forced to form an identity around being a wife she is insecure or
unstable sense of self due to the social stereotypes placed on her sex and
her defense mechanism is to she locks herself into that role after she is
told her husband died. However in this room ”There stood, facing the
open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair” (chopin) The open window
symbolizes the freedom that the death of her husband has given her. It
looks out at “new spring life” and “blue sky showing here and there
through the clouds” And while at first she looks out the window with a “dull
stare in her eyes” she then come to the realization that she is “free, free,
free”(Chopin). Looking out her window she sees an “open square”
emphasizes possibility and a lack of restrictions right outside the door, and
suggesting the restrictions that the house imposes on her.

16. Discuss trauma in the story. Who suffers it?
How and why?
.
“She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess
her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will–as powerless as her two
white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little
whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over
under hte breath: “free, free, free!”
Perhaps through finding that her husband had never been
involved in the railroad incident she lost her hope. She
couldn’t have both at the same time and the return of her
husband brought unbearable tension to her renewed and
renovated life.

17. Do you think Chopin's critique of the institution of
marriage, as expressed by Louise, is applicable today?
I think that Chopin’s critique is applicable in some cases. Ideally
a marriage is a compromise, a collaboration between two (or
more?) people who give and take, working together to improve
their lives and each other’s lives. In the story, Louise is initially
horrified at the death of her husband, but upon a period of
reflection discovers that she is not saddened at all, but feels
relieved and released from unhappiness. Chopin writes, “She
breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only
yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be
long.” Obviously she has felt relief that she is unshackled from
this marriage, whether it is loveless or abusive or just not what
she wants. Louise is ecstatic to be free of her marriage, which
could be Chopin projecting his disdain for the institution itself, or
just his unhappiness with an individual pairing.

18.  Kate Chopin, the author of “The Story of an Hour” presents a
very simple question to us: should the institution of marriage be
so permanent? If analyzed in hindsight, Louise’s answer to that
question is a flat No. But if we dig a little deeper, we see some
strange, even quirky ideas that Chopin presents. Firstly, sex.
The entire passage where the main character is having some
form of a panic attack, doesn’t seem like a panic attack at all.
True, she is feeling the pangs of freedom, but the “coursing
blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body”. And then
phrases like her “parted lips”, “her bosom rose and fell
tumultuously” and “[her] pulses beat fast” are all examples of
sensual descriptions of this character. Chopin uses this strange
escalation of her freedom, and mirrors it with being sexually
aroused. I think that this was a way to indicate that the
institution of marriage is the end of sex. Obviously, many
married couples enjoy sexual relations but Chopin is trying to
show us that women in particular, like Louise here, are sexually
oppressed, and are unable to ask, want, or even enjoy sex.

19. Discuss Mrs. Mallard as a sympathetic character or as a
cruel and selfish character. How might your own gender,
age, class or ethnicity influence your response?
Though Mrs. Mallard shows little sympathy towards the news of her dead
husband, she is not a selfish or cruel character. The narrator shows that she
did sometimes love her husband, and even shows it through her thoughts, for
“She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands
folded in death”. The idea of seeing her husband’s dead body did, in fact, make
her feel something towards the idea that he was gone, but there was also a joy
in knowing he was gone as well. Mrs. Mallard seems to show more joy for
herself especially when the narrator says, “There would be no one to live for
during those coming years; she would live for herself.”
There are so many expectations to being a woman, especially within a
marriage that can probably drive a person insane, so in that sense, I see why
she would want to be free. Yes, she felt sympathy when she was told he was
gone, but the idea of living for her herself brought an overwhelming joy that I
understand.

20. Discuss Mrs. Mallard as a sympathetic character or as a cruel
and selfish character. How might your own gender, age, class or
ethnicity influence your response?
Although I want to feel bad and sympathize for Mrs. Mallard, I do not feel bad
for her despite her death at the end of the story. It is ironic that she dies (from
being over joyed) under the assumption that her husband passed away,
instead of her husband dying. Taking into consideration the year this story
was written, and the narrator describing Mrs. Mallard’s husband as someone
who took away her youth, and controlled her life, I feel like Mrs. Mallard was
selfish for blaming her unhappiness upon her (presumed) dead husband. It is
hard to believe that she at one point “loved” her husband with how joyful and
zealous she was upon the news of her husband. It is also hard to sympathize
or even empathize with Mrs. Mallard because we know little about Mr.
Mallard’s character, and whether or not he was a good or bad man. I think
that being a young adult woman influences my attitude towards Mrs. Mallard
because I believe in fighting for your own happiness, and if Mrs. Mallard was
so unhappy, she should have taken action into her own hands and been
proactive about her marriage. In a way, I think Mrs. Mallard’s death was due
to karma.

21. QHQ: What was the importance of the
open window in Mrs. Mallard’s room?
“There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable,
roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a
physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed
to reach into her soul.”
“There were patches of blue sky showing here and there
through the clouds that had met and piled one above the
other in the west facing her window.”
 “‘What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open
the door.’
‘Go away. I am not making myself ill.’ No; she was
drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.”

22. Gabriel García Márquez
1928-2014
Gabriel José García
Márquez was born on March
6, 1928 in a small coastal
village in Colombia. The
eldest of twelve children,
García Márquez was reared
by maternal grandparents.
He grew up with an
extended family of aunts
and great aunts who, like his
grandmother, were constant
storytellers of local myth,
superstition, and legend.

23. Career
 García Márquez’s literary development occurred
concurrently with his career as a journalist. In 1954, he
returned to Bogotá, where he worked for El
Espectador and wrote short stories in his spare time.
One of them, “Un día después del sábado” (“One Day
After Saturday”), won for García Márquez a
competition sponsored by the Association of Artists
and Writers of Bogotá. In 1955, his first novel was
published. La hojarasca (1955; Leaf Storm and Other
Stories, 1972) presents life in the fictional town of
Macondo from 1900 to 1930. García Márquez’s fiction
did not attract significant attention outside literary
circles until the publication of his masterpiece, Cien
años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of
Solitude, 1970).

24. The Garcia Marquez ''boom'' was fueled by a number of
developments, both in popular culture and in critical
scholarship, which made it easier for many readers to
embrace a work of ‘‘magic realism,’’ and an author from a
non-English speaking culture. The late 1960s are
characterized as a period of intense cultural change, in which
traditional values of all kinds were challenged. College
campuses were a particular focus for this controversy
(occasionally via violent confrontations between law
enforcement and student political protesters), but it also
found expression through passionate debates within the
scholarly disciplines, debates in which the most basic
assumptions were questioned, and apparently radical
changes were given serious consideration.
Historical Context

25. In literature departments, one result was an effort to
expand the ''canon''—the list of ''classic'' works whose
study is traditionally considered to form the necessary
basis of a liberal arts education. Critics charged that,
with few if any exceptions, the canon had excluded
women and people of color from the roll of ''great
authors,'' as well as writers from poor or working-class
backgrounds and those from non-European cultures.
Efforts to expand the canon, to include a more diverse
blend of cultural voices among the works considered
worthy of serious scholarship, have continued for over
thirty years. Garcia Marquez can be seen as an early
beneficiary of this trend.

26. Finally, much like the last stories we have discussed, this
story has a context within Garcia Marquez's own career. It
was written in 1968, a year after his sudden fame.
One reading of ‘‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings''
sees it as a satirical account of his own encounter with
instant fame, as a commentary on the position of the
creative artist in modern culture. Here, the ‘‘old man’’ is the
artist, while his "wings" stand for transcendence, greatness,
truth, beauty—that which is valuable in art. The villagers are
‘‘the public,’’ greedy for whatever ''magic'' he might bring
them—but who insist on having it on their own terms. Rather
than accepting him as he is, they treat him as a carnival
attraction and look for ways to profit from his odd celebrity.

27. Literary Style

28. Style: Magical Realism
 Magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which
magical elements are merged with a realistic environment in
order to access a deeper understanding of reality. These
magical elements are often explained like they are normal
occurrences; this allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be
accepted in the same stream of thought. In combining fantastic
elements with realistic details, a writer like García Márquez can
create a fictional “world” where the miraculous and the everyday
live side-by-side—where fact and illusion, science and folklore,
history and dream, seem equally “real,” and are often hard to
distinguish. The form clearly allows writers to stretch the limits of
possibility, and to be richly inventive.
 Q: What does magic realism say about the story, and what
meaning do the magical events try to convey?

29. Magical Realism Continued
The uncertainty (or ambiguity) of magical realism applies not
just to the old man, but evidently to life itself, as it is lived in
this timeless, nameless village. It seems to be a place where
just about anything can happen (for example, a young
woman can be changed into a spider for disobeying her
parents)—or at least, it is a place where everyone is quite
willing to believe such things happen, and to act as though
they do happen. This impression is partly a result of García
Márquez's use of narrative voice.

30. Setting
 The time and place of this story are undetermined.
The characters' names suggest a Spanish-speaking
country, and a reference to airplanes indicates that
we are somewhere in the twentieth century; but
beyond these minor details, the setting is
fantastical. The narrator tells of events in the past,
using the phrase ''in those times'' in a manner
common to myths and legends. These associations
help prepare the reader for the story's "magical"
elements by suggesting that this is not a factual
history to be taken literally, but a tale of the
imagination where the usual rules may be
suspended.

31. The Narrator
 For the most part, the story seems to be told by an
“omniscient observer” of third-person fiction—a narrator
who knows all the necessary facts, and can be trusted to
present them reliably. When this kind of narrator gives the
reader information, the reader generally believes him or
her.
 However, in this case, the inconsistencies in the narrative
voice reinforces the ambiguity within the story. The narrator
is, after all, the "person" presenting all this odd imagery to
the reader, and readers habitually look to the narrator for
clues to help find a proper interpretation.

32. The Narrator
Readers rely on a narrator for clues about “how to take”
elements in the story that may be unclear. But this
narrator seems determined to be untrustworthy, and
leaves us uncertain about important events. Without
telling us how, he treats everything that happens as
though it “makes sense.” Though he is habitually ironic
in his view of the “wise” villagers' beliefs, at other times,
he seems no more skeptical than the villagers. For
example, the story of the spiderwoman seems at least
as fantastic as that of an old man with wings, but the
narrator gives no suggestion that her transformation is
particularly unusual and seems to expect the reader to
accept this ''magical'' event as if it presented no
mystery at all.

33. Reliable or Not?
 Are we to conclude that this fantastic
transformation from human to spider actually
happened? Or that the narrator is now as
deluded as the villagers? Or even that he is
purposely lying to us? As the label “magic
realism” suggests, some elements of the
story seem meant to be approached with the
simplistic “logic” of fantasy, while others are
depicted with all the complexity and
imperfection that mark “real life.”

34. Group Discussion
Garcia Marquez

35. Speculate on the identity of the “old man.”
There are several transitions in this old man’s identification. The first one
comes right after the couple earns a lot of money: “Pelayo and Elisenda
were happy with fatigue, […] they had crammed their rooms with money and
the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the
horizon.” Right after this paragraph, the writer indicates the old man as an
angel: “The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act.” Before
this transition, the author uses the world, angel, only for describing the old
man’s characteristic of having wings. Before that, the author describes this
old man as a filthy creature. People feed this old man after they earn a lot
of money as well. The second transition is the emersion of the spider
woman: “the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed
[the angel’s reputation] completely. […] Pelayo’s courtyard went back to
being [empty],” and the winter comes. While people are enjoying their lives
in the two-story mansion, the angel is left alone in the chicken coop. The
winter is the third and the last transition. When he overcomes the winter, he
finally recovers his power and flies back to the sky.

36. Speculate on the identity of the “old man.”
I think the old man is supposed to be God. Now I say supposed,
because there is little textual evidence to support any divine,
omniscient or omnibenevolent behavior on the part of the old man.
However, his treatment at the hands of the various human beings
that he interacts with makes it very clear that Marquez intended
him to be God. For example, the priest “had his first suspicion of
an imposter when he saw that [the old man] did not understand the
language of God or know how to greet His ministers”. At first this
just seems like a throwaway comment about the angel’s confusion,
but actually, it shows how ignorant humans can be when it comes
to faith of any kind. This priest is so sure of his world of Latin
speakers and greetings that he can’t even fathom that God, or this
angel can’t understand him. There is a living breathing man with
wings on his back sitting in front of the priest, and he still finds it
difficult to consider that there might be some levels of the universe
that humans can’t understand.

37. Speculate on the identity of the “old man.”
It is possible that the old man was actually an angel who was sent
by God to help Pelayo and Elisenda achieve financial success. It is
plausible that God, having witnessed the suffering of Elisenda’s and
Pelayo’s newborn child, purposely planned for the angel to take on
the task, of appearing as if he had fallen onto the beach, in order to
help them. Elisenda and Pelayo have the angel live in the chicken
coop where Elisenda charges five cents to have “The curious
c[o]me from far away,” so that they can observe the angel as if they
were observing a carnival, but “no one paid any attention to him
because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a
sidereal bat” (par. 7). It may appear cruel for God to subject the
angel to the seemingly torturous conditions, but God did put his own
Son into a much worse position. The angel remains true to his
mission from God, and remains patient “ during the first days, when
the hens pecked at him”

38. How does the manner in which Garcia Marquez treats the
traditional idea of angels in "A Very Old Man with Enormous
Wings" compare with the way angels are represented or
interpreted elsewhere, in some other work or media?
Traditionally, angels can carry or represent many symbols or meanings. As
angels of death, they can carry a sense of fear and awe. Other times they are
seen as messengers or warriors of God that bring on mentions of either good
or bad omens. Garcia Marquez, instead of making the angel in his story a
regal figure, makes his version of an angel an old man that falls to the earth.
Instead of carrying a divine message to Pelayo and his family, all he gives
them is his own presence. His presence in itself, broken and dirty, ironically
sets them on a path to curiosity and prosperity. As they open their courtyard as
an exhibition of his existence, it brings Pelayo’s family money, creates an even
larger house, and the angel becomes a mirror to Pelayo’s son. Instead of
being the angel of death that takes their son away because of a high fever, the
old man with enormous wings becomes a good omen, undergoing his own
fever and transformation to represent the budding life of Pelayo’s son.

39. 1. Tension
2. Paradox
3. Irony
4. Ambiguity
New Criticism: The Formal Elements

40. New Criticism
When looking at “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” through a new critical
lens the story is about the debasement of morals in society. The story begins
with the image of a courtyard flooded with rain causing the death of many
crabs. It is during this time that “a very old man” (1) with “enormous wings” (1)
was found by the homeowner. This flood resembles the flood in Genesis in
many ways. First it is raining, and it is flooding and second this rain is causing
mass killing, in this case of crabs. I am not reading too much into the text for
there is also the appearance of a man resembling an angel, a sign of heaven.
What is most peculiar is how the town reacts to this interesting arrival. The old
man is named an “angel” (1) by a wise woman. Upon this knowledge you would
expect him to get the royal treatment, but instead they intend to set him out to
sea with provisions and “leave him to his fate” (1). This is only decided upon
after deciding that they could not “club him to death” (1). But locked in a chicken
coup, the old man with wings turns into a roadside attraction and his captors
had “crammed their rooms with money” (2). It is also decided that the man with
wings is in fact not an angel, because he can’t speak latin and resembles a
human too much. The matter of whether this man is an angel or not is
unimportant, for either way, society treats this man who in a weak state they
treat very poorly.

41. QHQs
1. Q: Is the angel a symbol for Pelayo and
Elisenda’s painful struggle to accept the
impending death of their son?
1. Q: What is the significance of the child and
why is the child mentioned rarely?