The difference between Matthew and Susan is that Matthew does not feel guilty for wanting something just for himself. Susan becomes so miserable and anxious at the idea of her 'secret' being revealed, because she needs something outside of the constricted borders of her life, that she commits suicide at the end of the story rather than tell her secret. This shows how for many modern women: "mothering has gone from an art to a cult, with devotees driving themselves to ever more baroque extremes to appease the goddess of perfect motherhood" (Shulevitz 2005). Not wanting to be a mother every moment of the day is considered more shocking and anxiety-provoking than cheating with a 'Michael Plant' on one's husband. This is why it is easier for Susan to create...
In Susan, it is easy to see the shadow of many women who turn violent because they cannot live up to a false cultural ideal -- women who take the lives of themselves, or even their children in a postpartum-induced psychosis, because they cannot live up to an impossible cultural idea.
Technology in Today's World A recent car commercial featured a twenty-something woman who expressed pity that her parents had only nineteen Facebook friends, while she herself had several hundred. The humor in the commercial lies in its irony. The young woman is in a room alone with her computer and some stuffed animals on the shelves behind her while her parents, not lonely at all, are shown biking with their peers.
Reductive Entrapment: Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" In the essay "When We Dead Awaken" by Adrienne Rich, the author frankly alludes to the artistic captivity that male writers place women in, arguing that women have always been trapped and explored by poets [footnoteRef:1]and will no doubt, continue to suffer this experience. While some might argue that women are acting as the muse to the poet, and the male poet is placing women
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