It's often hard to really know someone. You might know people who seem cheerful and energetic all the time. Now and then you also see organized and hardworking people. When you describe them to someone else, you'd probably try to shove the whole person into a few adjectives and wedge them into a sentence. It might not be wrong to do so, but it gets people quite often misunderstood and misrepresented. The process is simple. We repeatedly get a certain impression from a group of people and expect someone from that group to be that way. Intended or not, we get used to fitting certain people into the supposed frames. Welcome to the world of prejudice! For those who are seen through the biased lens, prejudice is oppression. Simply being who you are becomes a painful task.
In The Rug by Edna O'Brien and Prue by Alice Munro, we meet two main characters. The narrator's mother in The Rug is a hardworking person; visitors are often surprised by how the interior of her house is so clean and nicely decorated compared to the neglected exterior. She does most of the work in the house and the farm and seems to take pride in doing so. Prue from Prue is quite a likable lady who talks to people cheerfully, telling them anecdotes with hints of humor. She has a lover called Gordon who isn't so devoted to her, but she laughs the matter off anyway — a positive way of living life. Prue has a strange habit of taking small things from her lover's house and keeping them in an old tobacco tin, but it cannot be much of a problem, can it?
The characters from both short stories are, in fact, unhappy and oppressed. The woman from The Rug works hard to keep the house and the farm going while her husband stays idle and unhelpful. She has long accepted the fact that "she had been born to do the work," and does not really complain about her husband's irresponsible behavior. While the neighbors might have viewed her merely as a diligent woman, her desire to get her effort recognized is conspicuous in her thoughts about the rug. When she gets the rug unexpectedly, she wonders if she has been remembered by her relatives in America (the land of hope, she seems to think). Then she thinks that some neighbor or distant relation has finally thought of showing appreciation for her. These thoughts probably surface because she has so long been underappreciated by her husband — the one person in the world who should support her. When she realizes that the black sheepskin rug was not for her, she weeps because all her hopes of being acknowledged were severely trampled. She then tightens the knot of her apron strings, which shows her return to the passive, unrecognized but hardworking housewife.
Prue is light-hearted and probably doesn't have that much of a heavy sense of responsibility as the narrator's mother in The Rug. The neighbors like her since they think "it is a relief to meet somebody who doesn't take herself too seriously...and [is] civilized." But her light-heartedness on her own matters only contributes to her dissatisfaction in life. She seems to take the problem of Gordon's love unseriously — it almost seems as if she's cool and unaffected by the matter (that's what the neighbors think, and is also what makes them like her). However, her habit of stealing some of Gordon's things tells us a lot about what she really feels about the unstable relationship. While Prue thinks she should be tolerant of her lover's attitude to live up to everyone's expectations, she still fears that Gordon might leave her for good. Prue doesn't like her name because it seems like the name of an immature schoolgirl. She tries to escape the traditional idea of prudence by appearing light-hearted, but it backfires on her since she is unable to speak her true mind. She's caught in that frame of bias, unable to escape, and forgets that it's there just like she forgets about the small things in her old tobacco tin.
In The Rug by Edna O'Brien and Prue by Alice Munro, we meet two main characters. The narrator's mother in The Rug is a hardworking person; visitors are often surprised by how the interior of her house is so clean and nicely decorated compared to the neglected exterior. She does most of the work in the house and the farm and seems to take pride in doing so. Prue from Prue is quite a likable lady who talks to people cheerfully, telling them anecdotes with hints of humor. She has a lover called Gordon who isn't so devoted to her, but she laughs the matter off anyway — a positive way of living life. Prue has a strange habit of taking small things from her lover's house and keeping them in an old tobacco tin, but it cannot be much of a problem, can it?
The characters from both short stories are, in fact, unhappy and oppressed. The woman from The Rug works hard to keep the house and the farm going while her husband stays idle and unhelpful. She has long accepted the fact that "she had been born to do the work," and does not really complain about her husband's irresponsible behavior. While the neighbors might have viewed her merely as a diligent woman, her desire to get her effort recognized is conspicuous in her thoughts about the rug. When she gets the rug unexpectedly, she wonders if she has been remembered by her relatives in America (the land of hope, she seems to think). Then she thinks that some neighbor or distant relation has finally thought of showing appreciation for her. These thoughts probably surface because she has so long been underappreciated by her husband — the one person in the world who should support her. When she realizes that the black sheepskin rug was not for her, she weeps because all her hopes of being acknowledged were severely trampled. She then tightens the knot of her apron strings, which shows her return to the passive, unrecognized but hardworking housewife.
Prue is light-hearted and probably doesn't have that much of a heavy sense of responsibility as the narrator's mother in The Rug. The neighbors like her since they think "it is a relief to meet somebody who doesn't take herself too seriously...and [is] civilized." But her light-heartedness on her own matters only contributes to her dissatisfaction in life. She seems to take the problem of Gordon's love unseriously — it almost seems as if she's cool and unaffected by the matter (that's what the neighbors think, and is also what makes them like her). However, her habit of stealing some of Gordon's things tells us a lot about what she really feels about the unstable relationship. While Prue thinks she should be tolerant of her lover's attitude to live up to everyone's expectations, she still fears that Gordon might leave her for good. Prue doesn't like her name because it seems like the name of an immature schoolgirl. She tries to escape the traditional idea of prudence by appearing light-hearted, but it backfires on her since she is unable to speak her true mind. She's caught in that frame of bias, unable to escape, and forgets that it's there just like she forgets about the small things in her old tobacco tin.
Lives of two helpless individuals. It was a good read that I could sympathize a lot. Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteGlad it helped!
DeleteGood post and well written, and glad your peers found it helpful. My only minor suggestion is to cut down on the traditional summary and move quickly towards your more intimate thoughts on the work.
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