ipl-logo

A Sense Of Self In Johnny Nolan's Francie

571 Words3 Pages

A sense of self is something Francie Nolan lacks in Brooklyn, New York. It is not because of a lack of love or female influence; she is impacted by the desires of females who have no opportunities in life because they are female. As Francie is about to graduate her teacher Miss Gardner advises her to burn her words about “poverty starvation and drunkenness” as they are “ugly subjects.” Her teacher wants her to write about the “''the true nobility of man'' and stick within the code of conduct. She goes on to explain that one does not write about the unspeakable aspects of society (Smith 315). The ideology of the teacher contradicts what Francie’s illiterate grandmother Mary Rommely instills in her daughters and her granddaughters. As an illiterate …show more content…

She wants success for her children and the way to achieve success in American is to know how to read and write. She also attributes knowledge to reading a page from the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. Mary instructs her own daughter to save money for property by nailing a tin can to the floor which in eventually is a piece of property, a cemetery plot for Johnny Nolan. Her grandmother has hope for her children and this hope is transferred to her grandchildren.
Katie Nolan, Francie's mother, is consistently filled with dread. She works all the time to support the family and her alcoholic husband. She realizes that she has settled by marrying Johnny Nolan and dreams of a day when he is no longer is in the picture. She wishes her husband dead ''He's worthless, worthless. And God forgive me for ever finding it out'' (Smith 205) and her contempt for life has a direct impact on her relationship with her daughter Francie. The emotional relationship is passive aggressive on the part of Katie as she consistently states that she loves her son more than her daughter, ''She does not love me the way the boy loves me . . . She does not understand me'' (Smith 205)

Show More
Related

  • The Yellow Wallpaper 'And Sonny's Blues'

    535 Words  | 3 Pages

    Just as the yellow wallpaper symbolizes gender inequality, escaping from the this cage of discrimination and oppression on women springs the rising of feminism. At the end of another story, the narrator is able to grasp an understanding of Sonny’s values and struggles, along with a salvation of his own. For all this time a seemingly rebellious and depressive figure of Sonny is illustrated, a soul of freedom and his values are conveyed in the music. Contrastingly, despite of a stable life of being a middle-class high school teacher, the narrator is trapped in Harlem both physically and mentally. Unlike Sonny, escaping from the neighbourhood of “boiling sea” that’s filled with people of rage and depression rarely seems an idea that occurs to the narrator ’s mind.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Dorothy Allison's Context

    531 Words  | 3 Pages

    She ends her essay by reminding her readers that this past incident still affects her present and feeds her fears of being misjudged by her lover: “I burned with old shame and then stubbornly shook it off” (134). Here, it becomes obvious to the audience that being judged due to the inadequate understanding of the context of her social class (poverty) brought Allison a profound

    Read More

  • Serial Killers Committed By Nancy Hazle

    1368 Words  | 6 Pages

    She longed for the idea of a perfect marriage. Her first marriage failed after “both parties began to escape their demons through drinking binges and extramarital affairs” (Jones, 2007, p. 1). This marriage luckily ended in divorce. Her next four husbands did not help with the strain. She felt unsatisfied with Samuel Doss because “he would not let her watch her favorite television show or turn on a fan during hot summer nights” according to Jones.

    Read More

  • The Help Rhetorical Analysis Essay

    1025 Words  | 5 Pages

    Kathryn Stockett successfully uses rhetorical devices to get the reader to feel and understand the perspectives of the protagonists. Stockett uses pathos, ethos, and logos in her book, since the book about social injustice. The topics in the book range from inequality of the sexes to social classes and racism, Stockett is successful in getting the reader to reflect while reading the book and the themes of the book have a clear presence. We see Stockett use ethos and pathos in the very first chapters when we learn that Hilly doesn't like Minny and Minny doesn't want to say why at first, but the incident with Ms. Holbrook was affecting her chances of getting a job because of the influence Hilly has over this suburban society. In some instances where Stockett uses ethos, pathos is also included in her writing.

    Read More

  • Racism In Claudia Rankine's Poem Citizen

    965 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the first section, the narrator describes a time when she did not stand up for herself. When the man complains that his dean is making him hire someone of color when there are so many other good writers out there,

    Read More

  • Annie Dillard Free To The People Analysis

    173 Words  | 1 Pages

    The two main subjects of Annie Dillard’s essay are one: the author’s coming to terms with the intersection of race and opportunity and two: the author’s disappointment with fictional literature. In the first part of Dillard 's, work she talks about reading non- fictional books in a Negro library. The library is empty; she rarely sees any white people and the black people come from a working class. The first part of her essay has to do with race relations and commonality. Her maid lives in the Negro section of town along with Henry Watson.

    Read More

  • Magical Realism In Elsewhere Zevin

    1418 Words  | 6 Pages

    Then she becomes angry once she realizes she is dead. She crashes her grandma’s car trying to kill herself thinking that will make everything better. After this, she enters depression. She spends all of her time and money at the Observation Decks watching her family. Then, she begins bargaining.

    Read More

  • Social Conflict In Louisa May Alcott's An Old Fashioned Girl

    964 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Louisa May Alcotts novel “An Old Fashioned Girl” the main character, Polly Milton, finds herself struggling against a man versus society conflict, as she confronts the rich first class society that surrounds her. The fourteen year old country girl who ventures into the city to visit her good friend, is constantly being told she is old fashioned, poor, and too simple for the city. The basis of the conflict is that all the people Polly encounters during her time in the city, expect her to look and behave like the rest. When Polly cannot do this, people begin to tease and mock her all because she has no wealth.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Grant Wiggins And Jefferson

    134 Words  | 1 Pages

    The women support each other and give each other the courage to continue on despite the hostile circumstances that surround them. Henri Pichot The owner of the plantation that once employed Miss Emma and Tante Lou as cook and housekeeper. Dr. Joseph He's the school superintendent and complains about the hassle of checking the plantation school's progress once a year.

    Read More

  • How Did Abigail Adams Contribute To Women's Rights

    720 Words  | 3 Pages

    She lived the busy life of taking care of the farm with little help and teaching all four her her children formal

    Read More

  • Richard Bullock And Agosin Summary

    345 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mother chose to marry Father right after graduating. The last hope was Richard, and Grandma pounced on the opportunity. Richard’s purpose in the article is to show that his grandma taught him to love literature which resulted in him being able to excel in reading. His article was talking

    Read More

  • A Successful Role Model In Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

    1294 Words  | 6 Pages

    As Sigmund Freud once said, “the only person with whom you have to compare yourself is you in the past. ” In this essay, I will qualify the claim that Janie, the protagonist from Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a powerful role model for young readers because she pursues her own happiness despite obstacles. Janie does pursue her own happiness through her relationship with Joe Starks and Tea cake, even though they both come to a crashing end. The obstacles she has to overcome however, are created by herself. Janie creates her own adversity, and is then forced to overcome it to achieve what she desires.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Street By Ann Petry

    524 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the quarter towards midway of The Street, Ann Petry describes how African American’s lived in poverty as well as faced racism. Petry portrays Lutie not “[seeing] anything at all but 116th Street and a job that paid barely enough for food and rent and a handful of clothes” (Petry 147). Petry is showing her readers that Lutie is not getting paid a fair amount in order to pay for her living conditions as well as her son Bub. She as well creates a feeling of poverty that lives amongst 116th Street which creates a more sentimental feeling to her readers. Petry as well shows that in 117th Street, “Lutie looked at each store, closely reacting to it as violently as though she had never seen it before” (Petry 152).

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Feminism In The Handmaid's Tale By Virginia Woolf

    1141 Words  | 5 Pages

    From the outset, literature and all forms of art have been used to express their author’s feelings, opinions, ideas, and believes. Accordingly, many authors have resorted to their writing to express their feminist ideas, but first we must define what feminism is. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, feminism is “the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state”. As early as the fifteenth century is possible to find feminist writings. Centuries later, and although she never referred to herself as one, the famous English writer Virginia Woolf became one of the greatest feminist writers of the twentieth

    Read More

  • Jane Eyre Psychoanalytic Analysis

    1485 Words  | 6 Pages

    Jane Eyre, published in 1847, by focusing on its protagonist’s, Jane’s personality, dependency and self governance. The aim of this study is to look into Jane’s development and analyze her identity with the help of a theoretical framework drawn from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology, and within the context of the Victorian era. The novel focuses on Jane’s experiences and psychological growth from youth to adulthood. Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts or writings.

    Read More

More about A Sense Of Self In Johnny Nolan's Francie

Open Document