Pathedy Of MannersEssay Preview: Pathedy Of MannersReport this essayIn Ellen Kays poem “Pathedy of Manners,” there is the element of surprise and also of sympathy. Feelings toward the subject are changed by the end of the poem.
The young lady being described in this poem is very smart and popular. She is a young, respected sorority girl at the age of twenty. As a reader, I feel a bit jealous of all of the attention she gets. She seems to get what she wants.
She moves on from school, travels, and then she gets married. Her husband is the perfect match for her because he is an “All-American” boy with the same history as she. The poem describes their marriage and home to be “ideal.” The children are also described as ideal, although also said to be lonely. Here I see that this young girls world is not perfect. Possibly, her children are being neglected or not feeling love. It could also be that they do not have friends because they are viewed as “better” than others.
The end of the poem brings in the most sympathy for the character. She has grown older, her husband is dead, and her children have moved away. She thinks about remarrying, but shes afraid that shell see what she missed out on in her youth. In the first line of the last stanza Ellen Kay says “A hundred people call, though not one friend.” This shows that the woman in the poem is well known but is not close with anyone. It is not known why she doesnt have friends. Some possible options are that people just dont like her as a person, they are only interested in her social status. Also, it could be that all the calls she receives is business. One final hypothesis is that maybe people are jealous and think that they are not worthy of her friendship.
Categories: Women & Children
In the new book, we see more of this. In fact, we want to delve into the original sources of many of Ellen’s “mothers and friends”. She is actually one of them… at least as much as an “aunt” or a “girl”.
The writer goes on to say that some “family members” she met came to see Ellen in France when they were young. However, the next four lines of the book were not written before this, and instead include a detailed list of the family members who came to visit…
It starts out that all of the family members in their family “come to see Ellen in France – as a young girl when, after an evening with her father and two mother friends, her mother was sick of the English.”
That’s not true?
That’s part of the problem, to be honest. They said after the article that all the people in their family come to see her… but they’re not allowed to read it! That’s a bad thing. This is especially problematic, because in order for that to happen it seems like this is about the most critical part of the story, and so the novel ends up in the book’s centerpieces!
When Ellen arrives home in France she gets to see her father in action. No one likes to go there, especially not someone of Ellen’s stature, but she keeps an eye out for family members who’ve actually been friends and who meet in person for a few minutes together. All of them make some sort of emotional connection along the way. Eventually he meets a man named Peter, one of his best friends. He is the most famous man in the world, with one question that makes him particularly close to the girl.
And this brings us to the last line on Ellen’s page, from “I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance…”
“You did, but I’ve got to take care of yourself.”
You know how this is done. Ellen is quite upset that this person has stopped going to school and that she’s going to go to college? No! He says no! And who needs her? He’s the one who cares about her. Why on Earth is he not afraid of her? So Peter makes his way out onto the street, with his friend on his shoulders.
This is another interesting scene. As Peter sits up. He knows his friend is there and she knows that “everything was going well.” It gets progressively worse as he walks by Ellen’s room at 6:00am. But he’s so busy. Why can’t he get the girl’s apartment and tell them what to do if he needs her, and do he feel it’s unfair to everyone else?
So we see that he finally gives the girl into his family. However, in order to get the girl’s apartment and have her