March 30, 2003

The best news!!! My mom finally gave in, and I get my own domain name! So...in about a week or two, angelicdisaster.net will be up! *yays* Until then...I'm mostly going to be working on the tCoS, OotF, and Te sites....so no more updates for a while.

However...some other cool news...some of my graphics are going to Art Districts Friday. ^.^

Rufus is better chocolate covered!

Love and relationships are an integral part of any culture, and they’re are almost always shaped by it. If culture is the norms, values, knowledge, artifacts, language and symbols of a people, then certainly all relationships must follow these sets of rules. Sometimes, though, people disobey the norms and follow their heart, not culture. This disobedience can be something as uneventful as ignoring what other people have to say, or flat our murder because of a horrible relationship.

One such example is portrayed in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. An unseen woman, the character Mrs. Wright, stands accused of her husband’s murder. That in itself is a symbol of not conforming to culture. In America’s history, women were treated as less than equals. They couldn’t vote, own property, or even divorce their husbands. Because of this, women were considered the weaker sex, and for a woman to turn on her husband- that was simply unheard of. Minnie Wright defied cultural norms to end a stifling marriage.

However, there was a reason to end such a relationship. It is perceived that Mrs. Wright, when she was Miss Foster, was a very fashionable social butterfly. She sang in the church choir, and was a cheerful person to be around. Everything changed when she married John Wright. The woman became withdrawn, submissive and obedient to her husband, just like any good housewife was expected. The reader can guess that went on for a while, because by the time the play takes place, Mrs. Wright had neglected herself and her home, as seen by the county attorney’s comment of “Dirty towels!…Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?”(943). The evidence points to a repression of creativity and freedom. The last straw came with the death of Mrs. Wright’s pet canary. Its neck was wrung, with everything pointing to Mr. Wright. The house had “never seemed a cheerful place” because of John Wright’s presence (944).

Because of Minnie Wright’s defiance of cultural norms, she was taken to jail, where someone would attempt to convict her of the crime she committed against injustice and repression.

In a similar way, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, two other characters in Trifles, defied cultural laws. Mrs. Peters, the wife of the sheriff, knew that it was wrong to withhold evidence in a criminal investigation. Mrs. Hale knew that as well, but there was a bond that ran deeper than human laws that came into play. The two woman decided that they cared more about real justice, which was the revenge exacted on Mr. Wright for the repression of Minnie, and the death of the one thing that brought her happiness. Mrs. Peters’ herself had gone through a similar situation, when as a child, her kitten was killed before her eyes. She admitted, “I would have- hurt him”(948). In the end, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, despite misgivings, continued with withhold the evidence that would convict Minnie Wright.

William Stafford’s Ask Me also portrays defiance of culture, especially in the case of relationships. The narrator seemed to be a hard man, perhaps with an unhappy childhood. It didn’t look as though he had any type of deep relationship, leading from the unhappy childhood to an unhappy adult life. However, when the winter of his life was upon him, he relayed how relationships really did effect him. “Some have tried to help/or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.” It is suggested that it didn’t matter what relationships he had, that he was always himself.

Both main characters, Minnie in Trifles and the narrator in Ask Me defied culture, but also shared a similar trait. They seemed frail in Minnie’s case, or hard in the narrator’s case, but as the play and poem went out, it became clear that there was more to these characters than first met the eye. Both had within them an inner strength, much like a river. The line “You and I can turn and look/ at the silent river and wait. We know that the current is there, hidden; and there/ are comings and goings from miles away/ that holds the stillness exactly before us,” from Ask Me symbolizes both characters. There was more below the surface of both of them. Minnie Wright carried an inner flame that could not be totally extinguished, which led to the murder of her husband, and the narrator, though seemingly distant, was very strong, both physically and willfully.

Love and relationships play a large role in our culture, arguably the most important aspect of society. Every norm, value, piece of knowledge, artifact, language, and symbol in a culture has something to do with relationships in some way or another, so when a person defies these, they can be seen as nothing more than cold cynics, as the narrator, or crazed killers, as Mrs. Wright was thought of as. However, there is more to people like these, as seen by Trifles and Ask Me. There is always something more to characters, and their defiance becomes a part of the culture they refuse to embrace.