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Murder or “Murder?”: An Exploration of Foreshadowing and Ambiguity in Passing by Nella Larsen
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In Nella Larsen’s brief but drama-filled novel, Passing, we witness the development of a complicated relationship between the main characters Irene and Clare. This development occurs over the course of multiple encounters, reencounters, and surprise visits between these two women. Within each of the two characters’ interactions, we see a…
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An Exploration of Self Image in Maud Martha
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Maud Martha, a novel by Gwendolyn Brooks, tells the story of the book’s namesake and her life growing up and existing as a Black woman. Through a series of vignettes, the novel poses questions about beauty and self-worth and challenges conceptions of class and race. The novel depicts Maud Martha’s…
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“O What” Do We Make of this Time “Between the Wars”
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“O What Is That Sound” by W.H. Auden and “Between the Wars” by Billy Bragg each display a perspective on the post and the pre-war era of the 1930s. These texts present a worthwhile pairing because they each work to share the viewpoint of an individual living through a period…
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Temptation and Desire: a Death Sentence for Women?
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Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” and Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover,” both portray idyllic female subjects described by a third-person speaker. Each poem incorporates themes of temptation, lust, a woman’s position in society, and male domination. A striking yet perplexing similarity between these two works is that both of the…
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“On Receiving News of the War,” Could There Ever Be “Peace?”
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The poems “Peace” by Rupert Brooke and “On Receiving News of the War” by Isaac Rosenberg take diverging approaches to discussing the developing conflict of the time that was WWI. Brooke’s outlook is influenced by his undeniably nationalistic perspective and his naivete. Through his poem “Peace,” Brooke encapsulates an unafflicted…
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How Young is Too Young?: A Comparative Analysis of “We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth and “The Little Black Boy” by William Blake
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Themes of childhood innocence and a childlike perspective on the world are explored by both William Wordsworth and William Blake in their poetry, particularly in the poems “We Are Seven” by Wordsworth and “The Little Black Boy” by Blake. Each of these works examines a different frame of reference from…
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Conflicting Ideas of Knighthood in Chretien de Troye and Marie de France
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In the Arthurian legends written from the perspectives of Chretien de Troye, author of Lancelot, and Marie de France, author of Lanval, their demonstrations of knighthood both mirror and contradict our understandings of Chivalry based on Ramon Llull’s The Book of the Order of Chivalry. In turn, these authors present…
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A Comparative Analysis of December 5, 1933 and Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons
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In December 5, 1933, painted in 1933, by Edna Reindel, and the book Tender Buttons, written in 1914, by Gertrude Stein, both artists use various objects to represent different meanings. These works portray objects in a way that establishes a new understanding of what they are and strays away from…
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