“Inside of my body there are fires”: Fire and Ice Imagery in Anaïs Nin’s “Birth”

Anaïs Nin’s short story “Birth” is a part of a larger work titled Under a Glass Bell, and Other Stories, which, ultimately, relates back to The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin. In this version of Nin’s Diary, in the volume labeled Incest, Nin goes into detail about the horrors of delivering a stillborn child, the father of whom is never clearly stated. In the introduction to Nin in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, it states that Nin intended to “capture the living moments of her emotional reactions to experience” (588), and she is more than successful in doing so within this short piece through language and imagery. More specifically, by utilizing the contrasting images of both fire and ice throughout the story, Nin has successfully captured the contradictory emotions of a woman who both loves and hates the thing she has created.

“Thank heavens, the fog is gone”: Fog as Symbol in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night

In the forward to Long Day’s Journey into Night, Harold Bloom states that the play is considered by many critics to be Eugene O’Neill’s “masterpiece” not only for its honesty as a semi-autobiographical play, but because O’Neill captures the realistic story of an American family and presents their story in a new type of tragedy. In this essay, I want to examine the role of fog within this play not only as an atmospheric device but also as a symbol for the Tyrone family’s “blindness” and Mary’s addiction.

“Rowing in Eden”: Sea and Bird Imagery in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Emily Dickinson is considered today to be one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century despite being portrayed by some critics as an eccentric recluse, a spinster subjugated by unrequited or lost love, and the typical “madwoman in the attic.” These theories do have some basis since it is not untrue that Dickinson did spend most of her life indoors, but in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, the introduction to Dickinson says that “her adult life was marked not so much by longing for lost love as by aesthetic and intellectual commitment to her art” (1038). The negative portrayals of Dickinson most of the time influence how an audience reads her: without a separation of author and speaker. However, despite all of these different theories, I believe that Dickinson did feel trapped, both physically and mentally, and she portrays these feelings through the usage of bird and sea imagery in her poetry.

Tragedy and Theory: Antigone, Macbeth and Hedda Gabler

Three popular theorists when it comes to tragic theory are Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche and each have distinct views on what are the important components of tragedy. Aristotle focuses on plot and the “tragic hero”, emphasizing hamartia and catharsis. Hegel coined the “Hegelian dialectic” that claims the conflict between a thesis and an antithesis creates a synthesis, in other words, there are two forces colliding within a play and neither is completely good or bad. Lastly, Nietzsche used the juxtaposition of the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as a metaphor for the tension of artistic forces within tragedy. The three plays we have read so far, Antigone, Macbeth and Hedda Gabler, could have any of these theories applied to them, but some work better than others. The combinations I think work best are: Antigone - Hegel, Macbeth - Aristotle/Nietzsche, and Hedda Gabler - Nietzsche.

“It doesn’t go with the rest of the things.”: Suicide in Hedda Gabler

There has been debate among critics since the play’s debut about why the title role commits suicide at the end of Hedda Gabler. There are theories that she was attempting to create a “beautiful” death because Lövborg was unable to, or that she finally has a psychotic break, or that she had lost all of her freedom. I would like to argue the latter, that she committed suicide due to a lack of freedom, but also touching on the fact of Hedda’s obvious depression and the warning signs given throughout the play that she was in fact on the path to suicide.

“Unfit for light”: The Puritan Mindset, Anne Bradstreet, and “The Author to Her Book”

Anne Bradstreet is a famous poet from the 17th century noted for interweaving the everyday life of a housewife with moral Puritan values. This mix can be seen in her poems “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” “Meditations Divine and Moral,” and “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666. Copied out of a Loose Paper,” in which Bradstreet portrays herself as devoted wife, mother, and Puritan. In her poem “The Author to Her Book,” Bradstreet uses the extended metaphor of the mother and her child but works it onto a more critical level to slyly comment on the state of women writers at the time.

“Uncursed with Reason”: Symbolism in Charlotte Smith’s “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic”

Charlotte Smith was writing as a part of the early Romanticism movement in literature, which is characterized by the poet’s self-expression of natural emotion and the preference for rural living over urbanized living. It is interesting how Smith chooses to use the sea in many of her poems to set the atmosphere rather than the farm, meadow, or forest of the typical romantic poem. The sea can represent many different things such as subconscious thought, the primal state of being, or emotion and I believe she is utilizing all of these ideas in her poem “On Being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic.” Smith characterizes the “lunatic” by making him a “wretch” (1) of the sea, in other words, the representation of the sea; she has placed the “lunatic” by the sea, rather than in a meadow or other rural area, because like the sea, his mind is wild, untamed, and uncontrollable. The speaker says, “I see [the lunatic] more with envy than with fear” (10) because “He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know / The depth or the duration of his woe” (13 - 14). This implies that the speaker is cursed with reason and the knowledge of their “woe,” which I believe woe here is referring to the speaker’s lifespan, for a rational person realizes their time on Earth is limited and is constantly burdened by that knowledge whereas the “lunatic” is as free-minded and wild as the ocean waves that come and go along the surf. Also, by setting her poem on a “giddy brink” (line 9), the speaker is physically located at the edge of a cliff but is also on the “brink” of either doing or thinking something: is the speaker on the brink of throwing her life to the “sea-born gale[s]” (5) and living freely, or is she on the brink of madness, or worse, suicide?