Freedom

The authors in this section write about the difficulties of attaining freedom in early America.  Bradstreet displays that social freedom doesn't come easy for women through her poems.  In her poem "Prologue" she expresses how men are superior to women: "Men can do best, and Women know it well" (40).  Bradstreet displays the notion of freedom through her ability to express herself in her poems, and her ability to freely love her husband.  She gains her so-called freedom by writing, but unfortunately women in the Puritan age were limited to what they could write about.  Also, her freedom to write was restricted by critics who looked down upon her poems.  I didn't really see how her poem "Prologue" and her poem "The Author to her Book" differed.  In my opinion, both poems expressed her feeling of low self-esteem, and how men were seen as superior to women.  Whenever the Puritan age is mentioned I always think about Hester Pyrnne in  The Scarlet Letter. 

In Irving's "Rip Van Winkle", social freedom was difficult for anyone to obtain; The colonists were under the rule of King George III.  Rip Van Winkle's freedom is not only limited by the king, but by his overbearing wife.  He displays a notion of freedom when he escapes his abusive wife to go hunting deep into the woods.  He gains his freedom when he drinks a potion that puts him to sleep for twenty years.  Upon awakening, he discovers that the Revolutionary War has ended and the colonists are free.  I wonder if Irving is mildly poking fun at the theme of "A man's journey" by having Winkle sleep for twenty years as his journey.  "Rip Van Winkle" falls under the same category of a hero on a journey, like Homer's journey in the Odyssey.

In Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," social freedom is difficult for the narrator to obtain.  Since she is considered "ill," her husband limits her activities and drugs her with medicine every hour.  Her notion of freedom comes about when she starts to study the hideous yellow wallpaper on the wall in her bedroom.  The further she studies the wallpaper, the more intrigued she becomes with figuring out its pattern.  As time passes, she begins to see herself trapped within the yellow wallpaper, desperate to escape its bars.  She gains her freedom when she rips the paper off of the wall, freeing herself, as well as the woman in the wall.  I wonder what happens to her husband at the end of the story when he wakes up after fainting.  This short story reminds me of Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" when the main character is slowly growing insane due to being trapped in his house.