Oh! Mr. Best You're Very Bad

"Oh! Mr. Best you're very bad" is a poem written by Jane Austen. This poem does not follow a specific type of poetry for the fact that it follows a free verse, black verse, and a lyric poem structure. You may not think that it is possible to follow all of these different types but Jane's tends to do this. I found it weird when I was looking at this poem that it followed a rhyme scheme where not every line rhymed with something, it was different with only two lines per verse rhyming. This poem is also written in a form where there is 11 different verses which consist of 4 lines each, this is what makes it a free verse poem. While I was analysing this long poem I also found that it followed Iambic tetrameter which is where there are two different amount of feet for each verse. This poem I found had the first and third line having four feet, and the second and fourth lines having three feet. I also found that it followed an unstressed stressed pattern.
Now for the story that comes from the poem. This poem is an interesting poem because of it's story. As you read the title it shows you that it will be talking about Mr. Best and it should also tell us how he is very bad. When you read the title you also feel as though it is in a naughty way but it is actually in a way a hate poem towards him. As you begin to read the poem you can see that she is disappointed in a decision that he has made and that he is going for a different female. I felt that this poem had a lot of hatred towards Mr. Best and the way that he has acted toward the poet. I also feel as though in Jane feels that Mr. Best has made the incorrect decision and that he is going down the wrong path. She is showing how she feels and is very angry with him as if someone would be after they have been dumped or call a relationship off. I thought this poem was very interesting because many people could relate to it for the fact that it is a very typical situation that could of occurred. I really liked this poem because it was written in a different manner that I have not studied in previous English classes and feel as though it was interesting to see a very good author write a poem that is also in my category of interest.

The Red Tent - By: Anita Diamant

The Red Tent is a novel written by Anita Diamant and is the novel that I have chosen to read and write my literary essay on. This novel is based approximately 2000 years ago. The Red Tent is a historical fiction based on a biblical story, from the book of Genesis. It is about Dinah who has no voice in the biblical story, but Anita makes Dinah have a voice and uses it. The story is written from a female perspective, from the women all around Dinah as she grows from a child to a grown woman. Personally I thought it was a good book for the fact that it was so different but real at the same time. It was Anita's first time writing a novel and she did a good job, she added a lot of historical facts into the novel without us even noticing.
This novel is more for women than for men for the fact that it is told from the females perspective and has a lot of detail in parts of the novel where males will not be able to handle. Dinah's mother (Leah) and aunt (Rachel) are both midwives who help females who are delivering babies, Dinah eventually also becomes one. This is where a lot of description comes in and some people do not want to read about this. This is where the males stop and the females keep reading. An example from the book is,

"But I had no time to be sorry for myself, because suddenly a strange red bubble emerged from between Leah's legs and then, almost immediately, a flood of bloody water washed down her thighs. Leah tried to stand, terrified, but Inna told her not to take her feet off the bricks... Leah pushed, her face red, her eyes bulging, blue and green, glittering..."

I also really enjoyed this book because it shows the many different ways that women were treated 2000 years back. The "red tent" is the first part that I would like to comment on. The red tent is a tent that the females have to go and stay during their "time of the month" and also while they are carrying their husbands child. No males are allowed to see them during this time which makes for the fact that the males generally have more than one wife and several children. Jacob for one has 4 wives and 13 children.
Females were also treated poorly when it came to how their husbands treated them. Now a days your husband should love you becuase you plan on spending the majority of you life with them but in this novel the husbands just got married so that they could have children. But the children were only desired if they were males because males are the only ones who can actually do work, according to the men of this society. Females where only put on the earth for the purpose of childbearing. It is in a way like "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood for the fact that females were looked upon as nothing but the carrier of babies. Both of these books were interesting and a good read. I feel as though they were both well written and have twists that I don't normally see in my type of novel.

Jane Eyre - Character Analysis

Throughout the novel there are many characters introduced, the main character being Jane Eyre. Jane is the type of person who follows her feelings and stands strong with her beliefs. The way I found that Jane did this was when she had her first taste of love for Mr. Rochester she loved him no matter what he did or what others said about her. Ingram for one was in love with Mr. Rochester and said she was going to marry Mr. Rochester, this did not bother Jane at all because she knew that Mr. Rochester did not love Ingram at all and actually had strong feelings for Jane. Jane's character I would have to say is a very strong character for the fact that she had a very tough childhood and even a hard life to live because of the fact that her relatives despised of her. Jane took in a lot of pain and never really showed it she was one who could hide her feelings and took in a lot, her aunt never treated her fairly and lied to her uncle just so she wouldn't get inheritances.
Bertha Mason is another character that I found very interesting to read about. She is not in the novel very much but does make a large impact on the storyline. Bertha is Mr. Rochester's former wife who turned crazy just after they married several years earlier. Bertha is a very interesting character in my eyes for the fact that she is always locked up in a secret room in the third floor of Thornfield Hall. She is the one who is always making all of the ruckus that gets blamed on Grace Poole. Bertha is a crazy lady and has the tough edge because she is always trying to escape her life as a whole or even just trying to get away from Thornfield so she can start a new life. Bertha eventually makes a dramatic ending to her life by burning down Thornfield and leaving her life to plummet into the flames.
The Last character that I would like to analyse is Mrs. Reed. Mrs Reed is someone who feels that herself and her family deserve more than others in their life. She feels as though her children should be treated as upper class and have more potential in life. I think this because she treats her children with a lot of respect and not many limits, while her niece (Jane) is treated the direct opposite. Jane was always being punished for things that she didn't do and always was being punished by being locked up in the "Red Room". Mrs. Reed really feels that her children should be loved more than any other child. She gets very frustrated with her husband because he feels as though she is treating Jane very rudely and he feels bad for Jane. I feel as though Mrs. Reed is like a lot of parents that I have encountered in my life for the fact that they feel as though their children are always to be in the spotlight and need all the attention possible to get the most out of their time.
Those are some of the characters that I feel had a strong personality or a different type of characteristic that shone through the others in the novel.

Jane Eyre - My Thoughts

I have recently finished the novel "Jane Eyre" written by Charlotte Bronte. This book was one of the longer novels in our reading list for the women in literature group. I enjoyed the book but it was not one of my favourites. It was interesting and had a good story line, I just think that there was too many words to get to the real story.
The best part of the book I would have to say would be in the middle where the climax began to come into play. The part I am talking about is when Mr. Rochester was going to marry Blanche Ingram just to try and make Jane jealous of them. Ingram insists that she loves Mr. Rochester but it turns out she actually only loves the money under his name. I really like this part because it is when Jane shows that she is a strong person no matter how wealthy she is or how pretty she is, she loves Mr. Rochester and goes with her true feelings. She ends up almost marrying Mr. Rochester until they are just about to get wed and the true news comes out about Mr. Rochester. I enjoyed this part because there was a lot of ups and downs in the story line and there was also a lot of connections that could be made. The largest one I would have to say was why there was always so much noise coming from the third floor of the Thornfield house. We realized at this point it was not because of Grace Poole but because of who she was taking care of which was Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester's first wife who had turned crazy shortly after they married 15 years prior.
The second part that I liked about this book was that it was not just a few years of her life it was a whole life story, starting from when Jane was a child to when she was a grown women and beginning a new life with her new husband, Mr .Rochester. I liked how Charlotte Bronte did this because it showed the ways that Jane's character had changed throughout the years and how she also stayed the same in some ways throughout the whole novel.
I also liked the beginning when she was living at Lowood and had made her first friend who was Helen Burns. Charlotte wrote this novel so you could feel what Jane was feeling at that time with the pain and happiness. I liked how you could picture it perfectly in your head because of the amount of description and the amount of feelings coming from Jane's view. I was really into this book at the point when Helen got sick and nobody was allowed to go see her, but that didn't stop Jane. I liked how Jane was such a good friend that she snuck up to Helen's new room and spent Helen's last few hours in her bed. The best way to die would be knowing that someone you cared for spent your last couple of minutes right there with you waiting for the pain to end.
Those are the main parts that I enjoyed and why I enjoyed them.

Handmaid's Tale - Parts XI - XV

I have just finished reading this novel by Margaret Atwood. It was a very interesting book, I would have to say. It was very difficult to figure out what time period she was writing it in and what period it was supposed to be taking place in, because there was some moments that seemed to be happening in our time. Such as the time where Offred has a flashback to a memory from when she was a child and remembered seeing Eva Braun on TV and not knowing who she was, while I was reading this part I right away could tell who she was picturing. This novel was actually written in the mid 1980's, and is supposed to be taking place in the near future, so around the 1990's - 2000's.

While reading this book I could relate many of the events and laws to now-a-days events and laws. For one would have to be that the Commander states that fact that everyone used to read books and magazines such as Vogue, which is a magazine that we still have. Also they used to talk about having abortions and going to strip club type things which is very common in todays time. All of the common jobs are no longer jobs because females are not allowed to have jobs except for being the carrier of The Commander's child. The women's clothing are falling to pieces because there are no more seamstresses to make new ones or even to just fix up their old costumes. There are many connections you can make to the past.

I would have to say this is a very interesting book. I liked how I could picture a lot of the happenings because a lot of it was connected to the American history. I would have to say it was a good read and showed a large amount of feminism throughout the whole novel.

Handmaid's Tale - Parts VI - X

I have just finished reading parts VI-X of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tail" and in this section I found many more ways that the women are ranked unequally with the males. In this part of the book is when Offred begins to have secret meetings with her Commander, which is against the rules because there is supposed to be a Guardian with her when ever she is with the Commander. This part of the book is when she begins to start to rebel against the rules. She breaks the rules by going down the the commander's room and plays scrabble with him. One of the large rules she is breaking is that she is seeing all of the books on display and is using large words. The Commander also gives her books and magazines to read on her free time, but she does not accept them because she would have no place to put them without them being found. The Commander also asks her something that they are never supposed to ask. He asks her to kiss him when she leaves from their first meeting.

Another main event that occurs in these few chapters is the ceremony of the birth of Ofwarrens child. It is a large ceremony because every single handmaid is supposed to be there to watch the excitement of the occasion. The commanders never go to these ceremonies and just sit upstairs in their rooms waiting to receive the good news. There is relief when Ofwarren gives birth to a lovely baby girl who they call a "keeper". There is a lot of fear that the baby will be unborn or a unhuman. If it is unborn that means that the baby is no longer living when it is received, while an unhuman baby is when the baby is either missing a toe or has some sort of deformity. If there is one of these things wrong then the Handmaid will be pronounced an unwomen and will have to leave immediately.

In these parts I have found many connections to the history of the world. The first main one that I found was from one of Offred's flash backs to when she was a child about the age of 6. It was the time of Hitler, in her flashback she remembers watching TV and on it was a female who turns out to of been Hitler's Wife. Margaret Atwood connects Hitler to the people of Gilead and how they don't accept a certain type of people. Hitler didn't accept Jews and kept them in camps where they would not be fed and would sooner or later die. While on the Gilead's sides they don't accept any babies that are slightly different in ways such as webbed feet, cleft pallet, missing toes, or any other type of deformation that could occur on a unborn child.

Something else I spotted was how their town is actually just the town that used to be Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they are on the campus of Harvard University. The gymnasium floor that she had a flashback too was the gym of the university. Also the soccer and football fields they had to march around where what used to be the university's football field. The Handmaid's are not allowed to leave the town which is actually just the old campus of the university. These are all connections that I spotted while reading this third of the book.

Handmaid's Tale - Parts I - V

Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" is the first novel that I am studying for the topic of Women in literature. This novel is filled with female characters and is also written by Margaret Atwood who is a Female Canadian author. So far in this novel I have found that there are a lot of symbolic references to the Bible. First off, this book uses names such as Angels, Guardians of the faith, Commanders of the faith, and the Eyes of God, for all of the male positions in the town. There are also many references to the bible throughout the first third of the book (parts I-V). Such as when the commander reads bed time stories to the main character Offred, he always reads stories out of the bible. There is also feminism in this novel because of the womens names, for example they are all called either Offred, Ofglen, or Ofwarren which is just saying who they belong to (of Glen). The females in this book belong to their Commander for his sexual pleasure and are thought as though that is their only true purpose in life, to bare the Commander's children. If a pregnancy fails it is always the handmaids fault and never the males because in this community a male is never sterile but it is the women's fault instead. They are also never allowed to walk around town alone, they have to be in pairs at all times. The females have strict rules on how they have to present themselves. They are not allowed to show their hair, reveal any bit of their sexual attraction, they aren't even allowed to read store signs, and they are never to look an Angel or Guardian in the eyes.

"The Handmaid's Tale" main character Offred is a handmaid in the republic of Gilead. (A handmaid is a female servant, who once a month has sexual intercourse with their Commander hoping to get pregnant.) Offred has many flashbacks of her teenage years, in this book they get triggered by events in the present time of the novel. The first one shows us that when she was a teenager she lived in something that was a lot like a prison where they had to walk around the soccer fields all day and slept on a gymnasium floor. This is when she first meets her Commander's wife, Serina Joy. There is also a flash back where it brings her back to when she was just a teenager and her daughter was taken from her in the super market. This is where most of her pain and suffering comes from but when ever she tries to explain the incident she explains it as though it is very foggy in her memory.

So far in this book there is a lot of feminist perspectives on how the republic of Gilead is run and also all of the relations to the Bible that Margaret Atwood interprets into this book.