Winesburg Ohio By Sherwood Anderson Analysis

Modernism in literature became popular in the early 1900’s, and this period in time brought forth many new ideas and talented writers. Modernist writers wanted to break free of the rules set in earlier periods of literature, and hoped to make an impact on their readers through their observations of the world. Some authors took a negative approach while writing, because they saw the world as a lonely and hopeless place being overrun by modern technology, and others used the psychoanalytic work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to shape their work. Sherwood Anderson and Susan Glaspell are two writers that can be described as modernist, because of how they chose to write their stories and the themes that they hoped to convey. Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of short stories about the residents of Winesburg. The novel presents

Winesburg, Ohio was written in 1919, and the setting of the town reflects that. The town is very small, and everyone knows each other. That part is not new to the readers at the time, but the scandalous and shocking thoughts and actions of the people in the town may be unknown. Many of the stories include kissing and sex, which was not talked about during that time, and the thought of feeling isolated in such a small town may seem foreign. Glaspell writes as an outsider because she is exploring the new idea of feminism. Women had started to think about their rights during this time period, and Glaspell tries to push her ideas in her piece even though not everyone agrees with what she has to say. Her work also makes the subjugation of women more apparent, and her story even includes a woman killing her husband because of his oppression. Glaspell most likely did not want women to g around killing her husbands, but she wanted them to see that a woman does not need to put up with her husband’s demands and