ENCW 202 Spring 2020
Posted in Art, Desire, Desperation, Fantastic, Obsession on Apr 10th, 2020
“Change in Fashion”’s imagery reminds me of The Handmaid’s Tale; color-coordinated by social class, the female body is hidden by long sleeves and “wings” to hide their faces when out of the house. This short story went on to tell us how the female body slipped deeper into the shadows yet became increasingly more provocative. […]
Posted in Autonomy, Defiance, Desire, Disappearance, Fantastic, Isolation, Obsession on Mar 29th, 2020
As I was preparing to write this post, I became curious about fashion trends throughout history that we, as modern people, might consider fantastic if there was no evidence to support their existence. One example is lotus shoes, which can only be worn by women with bound feet; foot binding was an ancient tradition for […]
Posted in Captivity, Desperation, dystopia, Fantastic, Isolation, Loneliness, Longing for Answers, Mystery, Obsession on Mar 19th, 2020
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” We’ve all heard of cabin fever. Well, welcome to self-quarantine during the Coronavirus, with social distancing and young folks who are being advised to stay far away from the Boomers. So far my room is clean; we created an at-home office for me in the old guest room; […]
Posted in Captivity, Desperation, Obsession on Mar 5th, 2020
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” elements of the Fantastic exist right away. With the homely details of Pelayo and Elisenda’s life with Fantastic elements such as an “angel” being sent to heal a sick child. From the beginning of the story, Garcia Marquez’s style comes through in his unusual […]
Posted in Desire, Disappearance, Loneliness, Obsession on Feb 24th, 2020
These two stories by Carmen Maria Machado were paired together for a very specific reason; they have the same message. While “Real Women Have Bodies” is more about women losing themselves and fading away into nothingness (with only their souls remaining), “Eight Bites” is about one woman in particular who’s unhappy with her body and […]
Posted in Desire, Motherhood, Obsession, Transformations on Feb 21st, 2020
For the most part, “Eight Bites” is not a very fantastical story. Until we learn the consequences of the narrator’s life-changing surgery, it feels as if this story could be set in our own world; plenty of people undergo surgeries to reduce their weight or suppress their appetite, and it’s not completely implausible that a person could only survive […]
Posted in Desperation, Obsession, Senses and Words on Feb 17th, 2020
Steven Millhauser’s “History of a Disturbance” has a sense of unease and tension from the beginning. Though nothing fantastic happens directly (everything strange seems to be in the narrator’s head), Millhauser’s use of language, syntax, and point-of-view provide readers with a sense of something that just isn’t quite right. The story begins in the second-person: […]
Posted in Animals, Desire, Mystery, Obsession on Feb 6th, 2020
To have a fan base is fun in all; we can recall the time we went to our favorite concert and screamed “I LOVE YOU!” into a sea of people in hope that the band would hear you. While reading Julia Armfield’s “Plug Your Women’s Ears with Wax” in Salt Slow, I got the sense of the Fantastic […]
Julia Armfield’s “Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax” turns the idea of the obsessive teenaged fangirl on its head; instead of lusting after boy bands, the girls in this story obsessively and savagely follow an all-female band. By doing so, Armfield essentially gives power to the women in her story, letting them take full control […]
Posted in Desperation, Loneliness, Longing for Answers, Obsession on Feb 3rd, 2020
Salt Slow, in its entirety, can be summed up as the body betraying the narrator. First the transformation in “Mantis,” then people’s Sleeps leaving their bodies in “The Great Awake,” and finally, in “The Collectibles,” a woman collects men’s body parts to supposedly build a better boy. There are concepts in this story that we […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]