Patrick Donohue
Dr. Ellis
Understanding Literature
18 September 2013
Misunderstood Beauty
Charlotte
Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark,”
and William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” all include a protagonist
trying to change nature. In “The Yellow
Wallpaper,” the main protagonist is placed in a room on her own to sleep and
rest for the summer months, the captivity drives her mad and to the point of insanity. In “The Birthmark,” a scientist convinces his
wife that an unsightly birthmark must be removed. Becoming self-conscious she demands he do
everything in his power to remove it. In “I
Wandered Lovely as a Cloud”, the speaker does not completely understand the beauty of a field and lake setting. In all these works beauty is
misunderstood and reality begins to unfold as they strive to perfect nature.
Gilman’s
“The Yellow Wallpaper” a woman is cordoned off into an upper-level room in a
older home being rented for the summer.
The woman is of unsteady health and is being cared for by her husband
and sister-in-law. Her ongoing
description of the wallpaper throughout the short story gives insight into her state
of mind. In the beginning she believe
that the wallpaper is grotesque but as time moves along she finds it more and
more appealing. Her being stuck in this
room drives her insane. If her husband
were to listen to her and not force these rash behaviors she may have been
saved. Her husband saw flaw in her and
decided he needed to remove her from society but in actuality it was society holding
her together. She states “But I am here,
no person touches this paper but Me-not alive”
(Gilman 397).
Throughout
the Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” the same idea is present, the idea
to alter nature to what we perceive to be beauty. The man’s necessity to change his wife to
what he perceives is beauty ends up destroying her for the rest of the world. “No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly
perfect from the hand of nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate
whether to term a defect of beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of
earthly imperfection” (Hawthorne 467).
The ultimate death of the woman shows that through the correction of
nature only death may follow. In society
today, altering Mother Nature still brings with it death and destruction.
In the poem
“I Wandered Lonely as a Child” the speaker of the poem describes a setting in which
they come across a lake with a meadow of daffodils adjacent to it. He does not take into the account of the
shear beauty that he is seeing. Unable
to see this natural setting in front of him the poem states, “I gazed-and
gazed-but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:” (Wordsworth
635). The field is there in all its
beauty but he is unable to see it for what it really is.
This past
Monday, I participated in the first of several times I will partake in Zen
Meditation. Walking into the Fava Chapel
only once before I knew the only the size of the room, nothing more of the practice. As I was told Zen meditation is not about
learning anything from the daily quiet but to take away stress from
oneself. It is meant to be a ritual in
which you do not thin anything. Your
mind is clear from your earthly struggles and in many ways try to find your
inner peace. This inner peace can also
be assimilated to finding one’s own beauty, trying not to change it but find it
within you.
Nature can
sometimes be hard to find and takes time to be able to see it. Gilman, Hawthorne, and Wordsworth all mistake
true beauty and are unable to see nature for what is truly is, perfect. As learned through this process, the changing
of nature cannot happen without sacrifice.
Finding one’s inner beauty is just as if not more important than
perfecting the outer one, as I learned this past Monday at Zen meditation.
Works Cited
Wordsworth, William. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Poetry: An Introduction.
Michael Meyer. Boston/New York :Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2013. 635.
Print
Rubenstein, Roberta, and
Charles R. Larson, eds. Words of Fiction. Upper Saddle River,
Nj:
Prentice Hall, 1993. Print.
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