Social Traditions in Medea, The Piano, and The Age of Innocence Essay

Social Traditions in Medea, The Piano, and The Age of InnocenceTraditions demonstrate a set of social norms that have been followed and adapted to for an elongated get along of time. In each of the plots, Medea, The Piano, and The Age of Innocence, the standard set by society was broken and the consequences imposed took form in varying degrees and shapes of violence. Whether it was outright murder as in Medea, or a more subtle but intense compete as in The Age of Innocence, these consequences serve as the communitys opinion of this dishonor of its expectations for its members. All societies have many traditions set up, and each of the characters in the books either plays the role of someone who helps to uphold these traditions by following them and imposing consequences on those who dont, or someone who disregards tradition and attempts to point out its pitfalls and shortcomings in modern society. The first role, the person who reinforces tradition, is generally someone who ref uses to think outside the box, or does not equal the product of going against the tide. This person is comfortable with the way that society has set itself up as far as social norms and expectations. Edith Whartons character of Newland Archer describes may Wellands innocence as a helpless and timorous girlhood...she dropped back into the usual, as a too adventurous child takes refuge in its mothers arms. (Wharton 123) May Welland and her family argon quite content living in spite of appearance the boundaries that New York society has erected for them, and they fear the changes and consequences of acting otherwise. The adventurous spirit of Newland Archer is dangerous to their precious social norms and extemporaneous rules for how to conduct oneself in society. Howev... ... when his son learns a story of his relations with Ellen and speaks to him about it many years after (Wharton 41). The lesson that he learns is that society is very concerned with the affairs of its memb ers and even his wife had heard the rumors about the two cousins. While May was busy upholding her traditional role as faithful wife, she also was acting within social norms and ignoring his infatuation with her cousin Ellen, and allowing a facade of a strong marriage to continue. The violence presented in this book, while not as obvious as that in The Piano or Medea, is no less intense. Mays innocent look but underlying manipulation of Archers feelings towards her and his feelings of obligation demonstrate a great struggle between the innocent May Welland who looks blankly at blankness and the fiery beauty of Ellen, and both of their desires for Archer.

The Violation of William Blakes Songs of Innocence Essay examples --

The Violation of Blakes Songs of Innocence Abstract William Blakes Songs of Innocence contains a group of poetical works that the artist conceptualized as entering into a dialogue with all(prenominal) other and with the works in his companion work, Songs of Experience. He also saw each of the poems in Innocence as operating as part of an artistic whole creation that was encompassed by the poems and images on the plates he used to print these works. piece of music Blake exercised a fanatical level of control over his publications during his lifetime, after his death his poems became popular and were encountered without the contextual material that he intended to accompany them. William Blake was probably much concerned than any other major Romantic author with the process of publication and its implications for the interpretation of his artistic creations. He paid a price for this degree of control over the process of printing, however Blake lived in poverty and artistic obsc urity throughout his entire life. Later, when his poems began to be distributed among a wider audience, they were frequently shorn of their airplane pilot contexts. For William Blake, there has been a trade-off between the size of the audience he has reached and the degree of control he exerted over the publication process. Blake was not satisfied notwithstanding to write poems and send them off to a publisher instead, he designed illustrations to accompany his poems, engraved the poem-illustration works onto copper plates, printed the plates onto paper, and (when color was desired) colored the pages by hand, thence bound the printed pages into volumes for sale. Blake was assisted in much of this work by his wife, Catherine, who had been illiterate when he ma... ...990. Hilton, Nelson. William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience in The Blackwell Companion to Romanticism. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford Blackwell, 1998. Online. Internet. 25 February 2000. Available http//virtual. park.uga.edu/wblake/SONGS/ pose/songs.html Hirsch, E. D., Jr. Innocence and Experience An Introduction to Blake. Yale University Press New Haven and London, 1964. Keynes, Sir Geoffrey. Introduction to William Blakes Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1967. Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake A Critical mutation of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1988. Stauffer, Andrew M. The first known publication of Blakes poetry in America in Notes and Queries v43, n1 (March, 1996) 41-43.