Friday, March 23, 2012
A Thanksgiving Story
I have my favorite articles, (Hints to Young Wives, and Soliloquy of a Housemaid), but after seeing that everyone liked Thanksgiving Story, I reread it in case I missed something, and I still am not a huge fan of it. Yes it's heartbreaking, but to me, I didn't care for it because the little girls were discussing their father, and were afraid to let their mother hear lest they hurt her feelings. WELL, it is in my opinion that regardless of how the mother feels, she should be emotionally supportive of her daughters, and help them grieve about their father. She should have heard them, repressed her feelings, and spoke to them about him, instead of cowering in the next room and allowing her daughters to feel guilty about wanting to talk about their father. maybe I'm reading these from the wrong perspective, I do appreciate the emotions in this passage, I just don't agree with how it played out. I feel that Fanny Fern jumps from one side of the track to the other. She is big on doling out advice on how things should be done, yet her own life doesn't exactly mirror what she preaches. My advice to Ms. Fern is, stick to what you know, and let the rest of us decide what type of people to be.
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"My advice to Ms. Fern is, stick to what you know, and let the rest of us decide what type of people to be. "
ReplyDeleteBut she's an advice columnist! That's what she's supposed to do! And you're being a little harsh here, don't you think? I'm not a fan of Thanksgiving Story either, because it does feel emotionally manipulative, but I think its thesis is valid: that no matter what you do, a loved one's absence still hurts, and sometimes strength requires tears. What does the woman do for the rest of the day but repress her emotions and put everything she has into her work "for the children"?
I can honestly say that I didn't enjoy reading "Thanksgiving Story." Its sentimentalism annoyed me. I do understand what it's like to live in a family whose father passed, and naturally I empathize deeply. However, I think the point of this column should have been expanded to the burden children became in the nineteenth century that was built upon a purely patriarchal in which a widow was rendered helpless in caring financially for her children.
ReplyDeleteIt seems this woman isn't allowed to be a widow, but a widow with children. Where is her sense of womanhood in this column?