Day 12 Blog

Day 12 Blog
The Need for Human Connections to Sustain a Community
In Wharton’s, “Roman Fever”, we deal with two women, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, who are on a trip to Rome with their daughters, Barbara and Jenna. The two older women have been “intimate since childhood.” The two grew up living across from each other on “East Seventy-third street.” Each woman is different. Mrs. Ansley was “exquisitely lovely…and far more beautiful than her daughter, Barbara.” Mrs. Slade was “awfully brilliant, but not as brilliant as she thinks…an extremely dashing girl.” The women were similar because “both ladies lost their husbands.” With her husband gone, Mrs. Slade “felt her unemployment more than poor Grace ever would.” The two sit in Rome outside discussing how times have changed between generations, “To our grandmothers, Roman fever; to our mothers, sentimental dangers…to our daughters, no more dangers.” Mrs. Slade had developed a jealousy towards Mrs. Ansley, and she tells her I “envy you.” Mrs. Slade then brings a topic up that has obviously been bugging her for a very long time. She asked Mrs. Ansley about her “Great-aunt Harriet” who sent her younger sister out at night for a flower because they loved the same man. The younger “sister caught the fever and died.” This leads Mrs. Slade into talking about “The colosseum” where “lovers met…who couldn’t meet elsewhere.” Confused, Mrs. Ansley tries to follow along with Mrs. Slade. Mrs. Slade brings up how Mrs. Ansley went to the colosseum “to meet the man I was engaged to-I can repeat every word of the letter that took you there.” Mrs. Ansley is very confused because she burned that letter almost immediately, but Mrs. Slade can repeat the letter because she was the one that wrote it. Both women know “it by heart.” Mrs. Slade is very angered by all of this, and that after so long her friend finally admits to it. She finds out that Mrs. Ansley responded to the letter and that Delphin actually had met her at the colosseum just as everything was arranged in the letter. Mrs. Slade is shocked that the two actually met, and she knows that Mrs. Ansley does not feel guilt by any of this but rather some sort of feelings. Mrs. Slade thought that Mrs. Ansley had no feelings because soon after the meeting between the two, Mrs. Ansley’s mother sent her off to be married. To try and show Mrs. Ansley up, Mrs. Slade says “After all, I had everything; I had him for twenty-five years. And you had nothing but that one letter that he didn’t write.” But, Mrs. Ansley responds saying, “I had Barbara” meaning that Mrs. Slade’s husband fathered Barbara that night the two met. I feel that Mrs. Slade brought this upon herself. She was the one that antagonized and wrote the letter. It all makes sense now why Mrs. Ansley was sent off so soon after the meeting with this man. She had become pregnant and her mother did not want her to be shunned because she was pregnant out of wedlock. I would classify the relationship between Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade as fake. It is filled with jealousy and envy and there is nothing truthful about it. A deep dark secret has been hidden for so long. Once this secret is exposed, I believe it is the end of their relationship. Even though the two continued a fake relationship built on lies for so long, I believe this is the end because this is too big of a secret revealed to simply ignore.
“Roman Fever” reminds me of the movie “Mean Girls.” In this movie, we deal with catty girls (possibly why Katie is spelled Cady in the movie-sounds similar to catty) who backstab and have secrets from each other just like in “Roman Fever.” Basically, this whole movie is about how girls can be mean and rude, and Mrs. Slade says in “Roman Fever”, “girls are ferocious.”
In Bishop’s, “One Art”, the poet speaks about losing things. These things that are lost start off as insignificant things but turn into objects that are much more important, such as “you”. The poet speaks of losing “door keys…places, and names…my mother’s watch…two cities…a continent…you.” It is evident that the progression of things lost holds much more significant value to the poet. The poet tries to write of losing things and make it seem as though she is not saddened by the loss. However, to me, I think that she is covering up her feelings. She is hurt about losing things especially this person, “you”, that meant a lot to her. In her poem she repeats the line “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” I believe that she does this because she is trying to convince herself that everybody loses things, and they eventually get over it. She keeps saying this to help her get over her loss. It is evident that the poet is deeply hurt by this loss of “you” because in the final stanza she repeats her line “the art of losing’s not too hard to master”, but she adds on to this sentence with “though it may look like (write it!) like disaster.” This sentence painted the image in my mind that after she lost “you”, she was a complete mess, a disaster. This person held her together and obviously meant a lot to her. However, once this person was gone, she completely fell apart into a disaster.
In Frost’s, “Mending Wall”, we learn of two neighbors who are separated by a wall. Once a year, the two “meet to walk the line and see the wall between us once again.” It is the narrator who “let my neighbor know” of the time when the wall is supposed to be fixed. Over the course of the year “gaps” appear in the wall from weather and the “work of hunters.” In this “spring mending time”, the wall becomes fixed and the two men go about their business. The narrator does not understand why the neighbor wants a wall. He says, “He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines.” This means that the narrator thinks that there is no reason to have a wall between the two houses. His trees stay on his side, and my trees stay on mine. This confuses me though because it is the narrator that lets the neighbor know the day that both will mend the wall. Does anybody have any answers to why the narrator seems to contradict himself? I think it is because he knows that this wall is what keeps his relationship with his neighbor civil. In the rest of the poem, the narrator tries to convince the neighbor that no wall is needed, but he just responds by saying that “’good fences make good neighbors.’” This wall is symbolic. This wall is similar to how people build walls between themselves in relationship, only this is a physical wall. This physical wall is a way of keeping peace between the neighbors and dividing what is theirs. By keeping everything separate, the two neighbors do not have to fight about what is theirs and trying to keep their privacy. Rather the two can be in agreement that this wall divides them. With this division they can be friendly and compatible neighbors. In my opinion, God (represented through nature) does not love a wall. It is over the course of the year that nature destroys this wall. Little pieces fall and holes develop in this wall, and I believe that this is God’s way of sending a message to take down the wall. Walls are what hold us back from a true friendship. In “Mending Wall”, the wall keeps falling down because God does not want it there; however, this wall has worked for so long between these two neighbors that they keep repairing it. These neighbors believe that the wall is what keeps them friends, so in this poem, good fences make good neighbors.