In many poems, the use of imagery and sound causes the reader to consider them to be “good” or “bad”. Repetition, alliteration, the use of metaphors and images together with rhymes and the text itself work together to create that special feeling or message the poet wants to share. The Romantics believed that poetry should express the poet’s feelings or state of mind and should not be worked with or thought through too much, since the original feeling thus would be lost, but in order to share your feelings or ideas to the public, I believe it is important to present them in as good a form as possible.
If the author wants to create something worth reading, I believe he or she has to focus on both form and content of a poem – they are inseparable. Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” is probably one of the most famous poems which really have no content, but still the form (sound and rhymes) are right: “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimle in the wabe; / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe” (Fromkin
A Comparison of Imprisonment in Yellow Wallpaper, Jane Eyre and Slave Girl
Imprisonment in Yellow Wallpaper, Jane Eyre and Slave Girl
When I think of prisons, the first thing that comes into my mind is of course locking someone up against their will or as a punishment, because someone else has decided that this is for the best or simply wants to get someone out of the way. Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is locked up in the attic and the woman in The Yellow Wall-paper is confined to a summer home by her husband. For both these women, the locking up serves as yet another prison: they are both already prisoners in their own bodies by their mental states. In The Yellow Wall-paper, the main character is placed in a summer home to recover from a nervous condition. Her husband John, a doctor, believes that in order to get well, she has to take a rest cure and refrain from all kinds of physical or mental exertion, and he therefore more or less locks her up in one of the larger rooms of the house where she has nothing to do but stare at the wallpaper and keep a diary. She believes to see a woman trapped behind the wallpaper and strips it off in order to set her free – this I see as how she sees herself in her confinement. Her psychological state as well as the confinement to the room, along with the gender roles and expectations of that time, all work together to make her a prisoner kept making her own decisions. The husband is the provider, the one who knows best and the one who makes the decisions and she has no way of voicing her own. She finally “escapes” her controlling husband and the room by finally descending into insanity. “‘I’ve got out at last’, said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!'” (Gilman, p1669).
Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre has, to use a slightly old-fashioned term, gone mad to such an extent that she is dangerous to both herself and to others. To get her out of the way, Mr Rochester has her locked up and he pretends that she has never existed at all. By treating her like an animal (putting her in a large cage), he creates a real (physical) prison with its locks and bars, and I believe that only makes matters worse, since there certainly was no way that she would ever recover up there.