March 11th - Fairy-Tales and the Idea of Marriage:

Today, we started working on the idea of marriage and the social conventions associated with the idea of marriage. Students will have to answer the question Why Get Married in their second paper. Therefore, I have tried to use the following stories as starting points for reflection:

1) Anne Sexton’s poem, “Cinderella” pokes enormous fun at the traditional fairy tale and wishful happily-ever-after endings in a mix of grotesque story-telling and blunt mockery. At the beginning of the poem, the reader sees a grouping of altogether unlikely ‘rags to riches’ clichés, from the milkman who becomes a realtor to the poverty-stricken woman who wins the lottery, that prepare him to hesitate at the existence of the truly fantastic. A gruesome twist on the classic Cinderella story, including images of pecked-out eyes and lacerated feet, then commandeers the work. Needless to say, it is not the spic and span fairytale that children are raised on. With the tale’s end however, Sexton sarcastically crafts a yet perfect ending. Cinderella marries the Prince, and they do indeed live happily ever after, never encountering age, mistake, or even frowns. Her jaded poem draws serious doubt towards the things of miracles, fantasies, or even true love.

2)“The Men We Carry in Our Minds” seems to me to be a sort of contemplation of the modern man and of the history of the masculine figure as it compares to women. It appears largely to be a white flag to women and a sign of equality in a contemporary world as well. We are all just members of the human race and are mostly only familiar with what we are brought up around, so to the women author Sanders met at his university, men had life easy, enjoying magnificent spoils from sweat-less professions, but to him men were cursed with unending labor and toil. They struck him as worn out shells of what he felt like as a child, and he feared for his own adulthood. Now, however, after experiencing life as both a poor and a privileged man, he knows better than to watch so jealously the opposite sex. Men have born as many burdens as have women, and we all live this life together, regardless of our own, sometimes one-sided perspectives.

3) With Western air and flowing wordage, Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” tells the story of the Marshall of a characteristic southwestern town, Yellow Sky, and of his bride, and his antagonist. It perhaps presents the influence of a woman in the lives of two childish, relatively immature men. For as long as anyone in Yellow Sky can remember, Jack Potter has always kept Scratchy Wilson, a normally kind man but a ferocious drunk, at bay, and some might say that over the years their clash has become a sort of game to Scratchy. The reader sees this in his demeanor and in words such as “play,” which are used to par his actions. However, when Jack Potter brings his wife to live in Yellow Sky he runs into his nemesis, who then ends years of drunken tirades throughout the town due to the fact that Jack is now married. Women appear to be the great catalyst for maturation.