ENCW 202 Spring 2020
Posted in Loneliness on Jan 31st, 2020
Julia Armfield’s “The Collectibles” is an obvious homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and having just finished reading Frankenstein for a separate class, I was able to notice numerous similarities between the two texts apart from the main parallel of creation. On the first day of the class, we were asked to come up with a […]
Posted in Desire, Loneliness on Jan 30th, 2020
The aspect of “Mothers” that interested me the most was how this woman ended up taking care of a child. It begins with the narrator’s abusive girlfriend presenting her with a baby. Throughout reading this, I almost suspected a couple of times that the child was imagined in order for the narrator to find her way […]
Posted in Consent, Desire, Loneliness on Jan 30th, 2020
Bound by an outer shell of a paperback book, Mothers from Carmen Machado’s “Her Body And Other Parties” lets us into the mind of a woman who rolls with the punches. Locked in an abusive relationship, she remains nameless to the reader but we see her so clearly. Mara, a child who cries non-stop and stresses […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 30th, 2020
In “Mothers” by Carmen Maria Machado, the fantastic element comes from the obvious biological inability for two women to have a child together. The result of this element results in a story about the psychological weight of giving up an imagined future with someone. The narrator is so attached to this idea of a life with […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 30th, 2020
“One arm” written by Yasunari Kawabata is about a man who borrows an arm from a young woman and slowly grows more attached to it. The man in the story begins to talk to the arm, and it responds back. Eventually not being able to resist the urge to take his right arm off and […]
Posted in Motherhood on Jan 30th, 2020
In the beginning of “Mothers,” a baby is given to the protagonist by (what we find out to be her abusive ex-girlfriend) Bad. At first, the author toys with the idea of the protagonist being a male. The protagonist is given the baby and told it is hers. “What do you mean she is mine?” […]
Posted in Desire, Loneliness on Jan 29th, 2020
At first, “Mothers” was a mildly puzzling read. Who was Bad, who was our narrator, and, most importantly, who in the world is named Bad of all things? The name was a bit of a hint, which I only realized upon reaching the end. Our narrator, a woman living alone since her separation with Bad, is given […]
Posted in Obsession, Transformations on Jan 28th, 2020
I had the pleasure of reading Han Kang’s The Vegetarian last year, and looking back, I would say it does a much better job of depicting the fantastic than “The Fruit of My Woman” does. Unlike “The Fruit of My Woman,” there is no supernatural change in The Vegetarian. The main character, Yeong-hye, decides one […]
The “Husband Stitch” is an eerie and uncomfortable tale. Carmen Maria Machado’s story, overall, is about a woman who wears a green ribbon all her life, and throughout the story, the husband is attempting to untie the ribbon sneakily and without her consent. However, in the final scene, she allows him to untie the ribbon, which […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 28th, 2020
Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” uses the vagueness of a female character to emanate the themes of male dominance and submission men crave and expect in women. In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. […]
Posted in Autonomy on Jan 28th, 2020
Perhaps the raw sexuality presented in “The Husband Stitch” might to any other gender seem as if it were an example of the fantastic in its depiction of the narrator’s lust and determination, her unfathomable desire for pleasure. Perhaps to a man, the story might seem exaggerated, false, fiction, and though the story describes it one way, it […]
Posted in Obsession on Jan 28th, 2020
The “Husband Stitch” begins as a cautionary tale, evolves into an urban myth, and ends as a horror story. First, however, the writing style chosen by the author is interesting. Carmen Maria Machado begins the story with what is reminiscent of stage directions. She continues this throughout the story. Furthermore, in keeping with the story’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 27th, 2020
In Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” she has the typical girl mind and doesn’t think that this guy likes her back. She has this thought until this boy she likes has started talking to her. In the boy’s actions he was showing that he did like her and has been nervous to talk to […]
Carmen Maria Machado uses comedy and horror to create awareness of how women’s bodies are used for the pleasure of men while they disregard women’s physical and emotional needs. The story opens with the narrator giving the reader parenthetical directions for how to read the story out loud. These instructions allow the reader to visualize the […]
Posted in Desperation, Loneliness, Longing for Answers on Jan 27th, 2020
In “Inventory,” we encounter a woman reminiscing over her past sexual experiences and telling us about the outbreak of a virus. By the end of the story, we learn that she has been isolated on an island the entire time waiting for death. Now, in movies and even books, we’ve witnessed the tale of “the […]
Posted in Loneliness on Jan 27th, 2020
Carmen Maria Machado’s story “Inventory” easily could have been turned into a longer piece of apocalyptic fiction, telling the story of the narrator’s life as she tries to survive on her own. Instead, Machado chose to write this story as a list of the people with whom the narrator has had romantic or sexual relationships. […]
Posted in Desperation on Jan 27th, 2020
Posted in Obsession on Jan 23rd, 2020
Steven Millhauser’s “Dangerous Laughter” uses human reactions such as laughter and crying as a metaphor for the dangers that come with using drugs. It is clear from the beginning that the “laughter” that the protagonist and other girls are partaking in was dangerous, as the protagonist writes that “the game began innocently and spread like […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 23rd, 2020
In reading “Dangerous Laughter,” I felt that I had sort of been cheated. Instead of two distinct stories, I had been given the same story with different circumstance between “Dangerous Laughter” and “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman.” The basic plot of the two stories is this: Our narrator is an unnamed adult reflecting on their […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 23rd, 2020
Early on in “The room in the attic” Millhauser gives us the parameters by which to measure David Dave’s slow descent into madness. Before he meets Isabelle, Wolf tells him about his view on life. Wolf tells us that what separates humans and animals is that animals only dream when they’re sleeping. I think this was […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 23rd, 2020
Steven Millhauser incorporates horror into the fantastic in his stories. The point of view in this story is in the first person, which makes the readers feel like they are in this situation as well with the narrator and the town. “Dangerous Laughter,” the adolescents in the town becomes obsessed with laughter. The story begins […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 23rd, 2020
The story “Dangerous Laughter” starts by following the point of view of one teenager in a town describing the activities that the rest of the youth in the town partake in. In a sense, the story was about the teenagers as a whole and the extent at which they would go to amuse themselves or […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 23rd, 2020
“Dangerous Laughter” reminded me of how something good can become too much when madness is thrown into the mix. The story begins when a group of teens starts a laughing activity for fun. They soon, however, took a darker turn. While the creepy vibe hangs over the story from the beginning, it […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 22nd, 2020
Throughout “Dangerous Laughter,” there was an overwhelming and notable dread looming around the laugh parties. Something about them and the treatment of laughter as an intoxicant, a way to lose oneself for a moment, is eerie. The narrator and those around them are drawn to the laughter. Restlessness overcomes the narrator when they aren’t laughing. […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 22nd, 2020
The rollercoaster of a story “Dangerous Laughter” is, in essence, a story about obsession in the way that the narrator is obsessed with Elaine Coleman, as David is with Isabel, and the way the cat is with chasing the mouse, and the mouse is with running from the cat. It is a horror story about […]