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New England Nun Summary

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Pet (noun): A domestic or tamed animal kept for companionship or pleasure (pet). In “New England Nun,” and 1891 short story, Louisa, the protagonist, keeps two pets around her house for their friendliness and delight, yet the pets have a deeper meaning in her life: they represent it. This is a core theme that Mary Wilkins Freeman portrays in her local color story. The plot follows Louisa Ellis, a gentle and mysterious middle-aged woman. When her companionable and clumsy fiance, Joe Dagget, returns from Australia after securing their fortune, Louisa is left with the task of deciding if she still loves him and if marriage is worth breaking the order of her seemingly perfect life or should she call off her engagement. When Louisa is with Joe she …show more content…

The canary resides all alone in his own little world but always senses when Joe is near and will flutter rampantly. This represents Louisa because she makes sure everything is neat and tidy for when Joe visits. She “flutters” around her house cleaning and making sure everything is neat and orderly. The bizarre behavior in which the canary and Louisa act is explained in the quote: “A little yellow canary that had been asleep in his green cage in the south window woke up and fluttered wildly, beating his yellow wings against the wires. He also did so when Joe entered the room”(Wilkins Freeman 1). Louisa, like the canary, acts anxious, lively, and concerned when Joe enters the room. She constantly feels he will come in and bring a considerable amount of disorder into her uptight and organized lifestyle. His green bars in which his whole world revolves represent the long-lasting and ongoing engagement. The canary always attempts to depart and free himself, but in the fourteen years, it never could bring himself to completing the task. Louisa and the bird feel trapped. At the end of the story, the canary is completely opposite in attitude, similar in ways to Louisa. Like Louisa, the canary acts cool, calm, and relaxed, because there is no looming man that will shove himself in and break order to their lifestyle. Now that Joe is gone, Louisa and the bird still remember the events of the past. Now the bird can sit tight in his cage and never have to think of Joe stepping on his toes

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camps ; he made it through the war. After the war Louie found someone to fall in love with; her name is cynthia. Soon after returning home Louie developed a drinking problem since he was usually going somewhere to talk to groups of people; he used it for his anxiety. Nightmares of the bird haunted Louie in his dreams but that did not stop him from living his life, and showing off his skills.

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The author of Lives of the Nuns name is Shi Baochang and he constructed this article during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE). Shi Baochang was a Buddhist himself, his intention of writing these pieces is to spread the belief of Buddhism throughout the world. Lives of the Nuns is not the only Buddhist piece he has constructed , he has written many more to prevent the belief of Buddhism from going extinct. His theme in his writings is not to just spread the idea of the religion, but also to show the people what Buddhism really is about. Shi Baochang, writing pieces were so influential, they made the people of the empire have more of an open minded thinking of the idea Buddhism and saw it differently.

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Birdie is not an easy read, an unexpected fact, considering the woman who penned it, Tracey Lindberg, is a lawyer and professor by trade. The difficulty in reading the novel comes not only from its harrowing subject matter but also from the way the story is told. It’s non-linear and jumps back and forth from the present to the past. At the start of each chapter are poems, which often transform characters into animals, such as Bernice Meetos/Birdie who longs to return to the tree, Pimatisewin. The story doesn’t entirely belong to Bernice however, as the chapters tell the story of Beatrice from the voice of five different women- her cousin, aunt, mother, landlord and herself.

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Flannery O’Connor’s The King of the Birds is a narrative explaining the narrator’s obsession with different kinds of fowl over time. The reader follows the narrator from her first experience with a chicken, which caught the attention of reporters due to its ability to walk both backward and forward, to her collection of peahens and peacocks. At the mere age of five, the narrator’s chicken was featured in the news and from that moment she began to build her family of fowl. The expansive collection began with chickens, but soon the narrator found a breed of bird that was even more intriguing; peacocks.

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The scene begins to unfolds in their minds. Mr. Wright yanking open the cage door, taking out the bird, and breaking its fragile neck was enough to make Mrs. Wright lash out, and in a heat of passion, kill her husband. As the trifles collect,  the women worry that the men will see their findings, and have what they need to prove Mrs. Wright guilty. Though the men believe her to be the murderer, the women are trying their best to hide the evidence that will prove it.

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1006 Words | 5 Pages

The men of the group, much like John in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” consider themselves more capable than the women and refuse to consider Mrs. Wright as anything other than irrational. The men leave the women to their “trifles” on the first floor, where they discover a broken bird cage, and the bird’s body, broken, carefully wrapped in a small, decorative box. They realize that Mr. Wright had wrung the neck of his wife’s beloved bird and broken its cage. Mrs. Wright, once known for her cheerfulness and beautiful singing, she stopped singing when she encountered Mr. Wright. Just like he did with the bird, Mr. Wright choked the life out of his wife until, finally, Mrs. Wright literally choked the life out of her husband.

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Wright it is easy to tell that she is not at all upset about her husband’s death. When being asked about the situation she “laughed and pleated her skirt” (4). Mrs. Wright is compared to a bird that is found later in the story. The bird was found in a pretty box with marks around its neck. Hale and Peters say that the death of her bird would have been her motive if she actually was her husband’s murderer, but the author utilizes the bird and its broken cage to be a comparison to Mrs. Wright’s life.

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734 Words | 3 Pages

The dead canary and its cage was a pivotal piece of evidence that the women discovered. The dead bird represents the old Mrs. Wright— Minnie Foster and its cage represents how she was

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The canary remained in a birdcage signifying the “cage” that was the house to Minnie because she was a woman whose life was in the control of a man. Being the only thing Minnie felt she had, the canary sang, reflecting Minnie Foster’s role when she sang in the choir, a freedom both her and the bird shared before being

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796 Words | 4 Pages

She sees it as vital information; something that could present them with Mrs. Wright’s state of mind around the time of her death. Mrs. Hale is currently mending the quilt when Mrs. Peters asks where she might “’find a piece of paper, and string.’” This leads Mrs. Peters to discover the empty birdcage inside of the cupboard. Instantly, they both start asking one another questions regarding the cage; they are unable to recall Mrs. Wright ever owning a bird. While talking back and forth, they notice that one of the door’s hinges is broken.

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935 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell a noticeable power struggle between the women and the men occurs. “A Jury of Her Peers” exposes the social injustices that women faced during the turn of the century. In the story Mrs. Wright lashes out against her husband as result of built up anger and societies social pressure. In the essays “from Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’” by Suzy Clarkson Holstein and “from The Case of the Battered Wife: Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’” by Lillian Schanfield embody the theme of social injustices among women. The social gaps between men and women in “A Jury of Her Peers” and “Trifles” helped drive the plot and allowed a unique outcome to be achieved.

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691 Words | 3 Pages

The women began to pity Mrs. Wright as they knew her before she married to Mr. Wright. The females felt pity, where the men just accessed the situation at hand. After the women examine the empty bird cage they remember the way that Mrs. Wright use to sing and compared her to her former self as Minnie Foster. “Trifles,” introduced the masculinity here from the Sheriff’s side instantly putting his instinct into saying that there was a murder that happened at the farmhouse, was caused by Mrs. Wright without any hesitation. He didn’t look into the sadness, or let the depressing home get to him as much as what his intentions and his well-being come into play before his

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747 Words | 3 Pages

They play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell was a drama set on symbolism. The main symbol of this play was a canary, the bird representing Mrs. Wright’s

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838 Words | 4 Pages

By placing the bird so high up, yet incredibly close to the family, it can be taken as a warning. The bird only appears in this single line throughout the excerpt, acting as an observer but also as a predator waiting for a chance to strike, providing an unsettling truth to death being out of our control. Though many efforts may be made to create a sanctuary, there are things out of one's control and when power is exercised, there will be forces fighting back. The opening sections of the novel A Bird in the House demonstrate this clearly by how Margarets Laurence's’ use of literary devices can be interpreted.

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690 Words | 3 Pages

Wright killed the canary and is also motive for Mrs. Wright to seek revenge. The women conclude that Mrs. Wright’s bird was her prized possession, the bird even reminds the women of Mrs. Wright, “‘She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery. How—she—did—change.’”

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