Loss of Innocence

I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen is a simple story of a mother’s regret for neglecting to always be there for her daughter. Reading this made me wonder about how Emily must have felt. AS the oldest sibling she had to grow up the fastest so as to help out her mother and watch the other children. Emily had to give up part of her childhood to her younger sister Susan. While she was a toddler she received a lot of love from her parents, but eventually they had no time for her and had to send her away to a sort of boarding school. I think it’s ironic that even though we share the same name, our situations are polar opposites. She had to abandon her childhood at a young age in order to help care for her younger siblings while I, being the youngest (well, former youngest), always had someone taking care of me.

I am not the youngest anymore but I was the baby of the family for the longest time so I almost always got my way. On the other hand Emily from the story had to quickly grow up and sacrifice her innocence. Her mother almost never had time for her so she stopped hoping. She stopped expecting to receive love and affection from her mother. I guess that’s why the tone of the story is kind of guilty and regretful. The mother wanted to provide all the care that her daughter needed but there just wasn’t enough time with the housework and other kids. This may sound contradicting, but although I was the youngest in the family for so long, I can somewhat relate to Emily. Even though my baby sister was born thirteen years after me, I had these two little cousins that I had to take care of. I lived with about twelve people in my house, so I had to take care of my little cousins because all the adults were busy at work or cooking dinner or on the phone. But I don’t think it was quite the same, although I had to babysit my cousins all the time my parents always made time for me. I was still their baby, but for the fictional Emily, her mother just didn’t have enough time.

I touched on it earlier but I didn’t fully try and explain it. I think that in the story Emily had o knowingly give up her innocence. When Emily had to go to her father’s family’s house I think is the turning point for Emily. That where Emily changes. She realizes that being a single mother is hard and that she needs to grow up to help her mother.

Welp. That’s all I have for today. Thank you for reading!

-Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen

Bonjour all! C’est moi, Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen. Today is Tuesday, so you’ve probably already guessed it. Yep that’s right I am going to be talking about something related to innocence. Girl by Jamaica Kincaid was a very perplexing story to me. I didn’t quite understand it at first. It’d seemed like it was a mother scolding her daughter and sternly telling her what she needed to be doing. It kind of reminded me of my mother whenever she tells me to clean my room and get good grades. But then the mother in the story started to say stuff like to not be the “slut you are so bent on becoming.” Wow. I mean, my own mother can be critical of me sometimes but she has never called me a slut or anything like that. The overarching question for this story was something like whether or not the mother was [helpful or hurtful] to her daughter. Initially I had thought that whatever advice this mother was giving to her daughter was hurtful. What kind of mother accuses her daughter of wanting to be a slut? I had thought that the mother was limiting her daughter to fit into the same mold that she herself is in. However, as I was talking to the rest of the people in my group I realized that I had to rethink that. At the time period that this story was written in, the daughter probably didn’t have many options anyways, so in a way the mother was encouraging her daughter to be the best that she could be within her limited circumstances. Even with that in mind, the slut comments don’t seem very positive, but perhaps she means to say that she wishes that her daughter will be a respectable woman that the baker would let touch the bread.

It’d be a stretch to try and say that this story was an example of losing innocence. But well, I’m going to try anyways. I don’t think that anywhere in the story either of the characters losing innocence, however I do think that the mother was fighting for her daughter’s innocence. The mother in this story wanted to protect her daughter from the harsh realities of that time. Having dreams and aspirations in that time was basically impossible for a woman. Overcoming the obstacles set by society to keep woman subservient and submissive. The mother’s intention was to have her daughter realize this and work toward being the best that she and be within the circumstances. The mother wants her daughter to turn into a respectable lady even if she cannot rise up to be great, the mother hopes for her daughter to be great in her own right. Th-th-th-that’s all folks!

-Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen

Hello again! Its me, Smitty. It's Tuesday so lets get started!

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a roller coaster ride of a story. First off we have Jane, the heroine of our story. She and her husband have rented out a mansion for 3 months so that she can rest to cure her illness. Inside her room covering the walls is this ghastly yellow wallpaper that drives her to insanity. In class we talked a lot about how the wallpaper was a project of her insanity, and how condescending john is, and how Jane might be suffering through postpartum depression. But I don’t recall discussing the ending of the story where Jane gets possessed by the woman in the wallpaper. When Jane rips he paper off the wall she says, “I wonder if they all come out of the paper as I did?” I was extremely confused at that point- Jane seemed like she was becoming the woman in the wallpaper. And at the very end she says, “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane.” Wait what? So in the end, Jane is possessed by this woman that she sees in the wallpaper, but what does that mean? Maybe she, like the woman, felt trapped and wanted out. Jane relates to this woman in this want of freedom so this possibly is why Jane allows herself to become obsessed by this wallpaper. She is trapped by the bars of society and confined by male dominance and female subservience. So maybe she’s not possessed by this woman, but liberated. The woman behind the wallpaper represents all woman seeking freedom in a man’s world.

* This is just a side note but it was really baffling me. What does it mean to "creep?" In the Story Jane keeps saying that this woman in the wall is always creeping about. Like what does that even mean? But then all of a sudden it hit me. "...we got a new dance so get up on your feet/ it’s real easy to do, and it's called 'The Creep'/ Let your hands flap around like a Marionette/ Pop your knees up and down, sh-sh-shaking your neck." This exert is from the song “Creep” By the Lonely Island ft Nikki Minaj. As soon as I made the connection between the two I knew- that I would never be able to see it differently. The link to the song is below:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0&nohtml5=False" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0&nohtml5=False

-Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen

Bonjour! It is Tuesday again. It’s also spring break and while I could be napping and lazing about, the only thing on my mind was Frankenstein. I know, I know, a teenage girl such as myself should have more things on my mind other than literary classics, but well, whatever. In class on Thursday, in the fishbowl, there were a lot of great commentary about loss of innocence in the novel as well as other things. However, I wanted to elaborate on something that was brought up that I found interesting that was said in class.

There was a lot of talk about how nature has a prominent role in the novel. Whether nature was replacing a mother figure for the monster, or showing characteristics of the primary characters in the novel, it got me think about psychology. More specifically the topic of the nature versus nurture theme, and yes, I know that the “nature” referred to in this debate is alluding to genetics rather than “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations” (cough, thanks google, cough). But still, it got me thinking. In a different discussion this debate was also brought up, but in the fishbowl on Thursday, it seemed funny to me that one of the main topics of discussion was nature when Frankenstein’s monster seems to leans more toward the nurture side of the debate. The monster has no genetics or anything of the sort to gain any knowledge from, so of course he had to learn purely through his environment rather than relying on his non-existent biological ties. The monster was very much a tabula rasa; he had absolutely nothing with which he could pull any information from. So he had to survive by learning how to behave and act through a random family that he stalked for a year.

This wasn’t really an in depth analysis of anything it was just something interesting that was on my mind. Anyways I’ll see y’all next Tuesday!

-Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen

Bonjour, people of this Earth!

It is I, Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen. Today is Tuesday so let’s go on an adventure into the depths of the novel Frankenstein.

Loss of innocence is a reoccurring theme in literature (Ex Machina, Lord Of the flies, etc.). But what does it mean to lose one’s innocence? In literature, it usually means that a character has ended their childhood and becomes an adult. Their ascension into adulthood is signified by an event that forces the character to reexamine their priorities and purpose.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist of the story, decides to play God and creates life. Victor discovers how to reanimate dead flesh, so of course, he does just that. Only when the creature wakes does Victor have regrets. He rejects his own creation and abandons it to whatever cruel fate may come upon it. His monster now must try to survive in a world that abhors him because of how he looks. I think this is where the monster starts to loss its innocence. The monster is comparable to a newborn baby with no knowledge of how the world functions. His creator, the one who was supposed to guide him, has shunned him and left him for dead.

The monster is very lonely, and (unknowingly) meets Victor's younger brother, William. He believes a child would not have had the opportunity to hate that which looks unpleasant—for this is something learned from society. However, William is frightened and threatens him. The creature kills the boy, and the child is the creature's first murder of vengeance—of an innocent child. The creature plants a miniature portrait on Justine who is out searching for William, as she is sleeping in a barn. When she is found, the miniature is used to implicate Justine in the child's murder. Upon her execution, the creature has destroyed yet another innocent victim.

Victor loved all of these people. They knew nothing of the creature—they were innocents. However, at one time Victor was an innocent young man also, but pursued forbidden and dangerous knowledge, that robbed him of his innocence. Victor leaves his innocence behind. The others are innocent victims of Victor's work.

The monster turns vengeful not because it's evil, but because its isolation fills it with overwhelming hate and anger. And what is the monster's vengeance? To make Victor as isolated as it. Add it all up, and it becomes clear that Frankenstein sees isolation from family and society as the worst imaginable fate, and the cause of hatred, violence, and revenge.

Thanks for reading please tell me what you think! Love from Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen