Tell-Tale Titles of Margaret Laurence’s “a Bird in the House”Join now to read essay Tell-Tale Titles of Margaret Laurence’s “a Bird in the House”Margaret Laurence’s A Bird in the House is a collection of short stories that is rich in symbols and similes. Descriptions like “claw hand”, “flyaway manner” and “hair bound grotesquely like white-fingered wings” are found abundantly in the writer’s novel. The Oxford English Dictionary defines symbols as, “something that stands for, represents, or denotes something else (not by exact resemblance, but by vague suggestion, or by some accidental or conventional relation)” (reference). Yet, there is nothing coincidental about Margaret Laurence’s diction and her usage of symbols in “A Bird in the House” and “The Mask of the Bear”. These revealing titles effectively foreshadow the plot and character conflicts that occur in their stories.
Birds are a class of vertebrates that live in nature. Most of them are characterized by an ability to fly, free to roam the sky. They are not meant to live in captivity. Therefore, the short story entitled “A Bird in the House” suggests a theme of entrapment and a struggle for freedom, a topic that resonates throughout the novel. Vanessa is one character who experiences a sense of confinement in the story. Her family lives with her grandmother MacLeod, a tyrannical woman who loves order, and who wants to continue living like she did in the past, before the Depression, with a housekeeper to cook and clean, and to be able to make frequent purchases of table-cloths and handkerchiefs of Irish linen. Vanessa’s father, Ewen, explains that, “the house is still the same, so she thinks other things should be too” (55). Vanessa experiences a physical confinement in the MacLeod house, being forbidden to enter those rooms that contained valuables objects such as her grandmother’s bedroom and the living room which she calls, “another alien territory where I had to tread warily” (47). This physical confinement led to an emotional detachment. As an adult reflecting on her time growing up, Vanessa says that “the MacLeod house never seemed like home to me” (46). Moreover, Vanessa experienced some emotional confinement in the Connor house as her grandfather Connor was a domineering man who did not approve of many types of people so Vanessa grew up without the interaction with many people outside her immediate family. To combat these forms of entrapment, Vanessa would write stories about pioneers, and love and death, as an escape.
Another person who experiences emotional confinement is Ewen. Guilt-ridden by feelings of responsibility for his brother’s death in the war, Ewen came back to Manawaka and Beth, his wife, tells Edna, his sister-in-law, that, “it was only after the war that he decided to come back and study medicine,” (59) probably to take Rod’s place in the family’s practice, forsaking his own ambitions. Ewen says, “I was never very intellectual … Rod was always brighter than I, in school … As a kid, all I ever wanted to do was go into the merchant marine” (54-55). Moreover, because of his guilt, Ewen hardly disagrees with his mother and whenever he upsets her, he quickly apologizes. Ewen hints that the time when he was at war was a time when he was free. He says “It was king of interesting to see a few other places for a change” (91). Ultimately, Ewen’s guilt gives way to his mother’s request to name his second child, Roderick.
I remember the last three months in my career in the United States. It is said that I knew the country because I travelled and met people from all different countries around the world. It is believed that the United States is so uniquely American that it was never in a position to give to any country other than myself. ” I came to know that my heart was open and that others were thinking differently. My wife, the mother of three children, was one of the first to ask me how she could be more comfortable having an abortion, ․ but I simply asked if there were other men who lived up to her standards, ․ and she said, ․ I must be able to do to them what I was doing.․ (63). The mother and children are not alone: a recent study of more than 11,000 patients in four countries shows that when one mother and one child became pregnant in the United States, they had a two-fold higher risk of the same maternal illness and for a greater number of hospitalization visits and other hospitalizations for pregnancy-induced uterotuberculosis than those from other countries that allowed women to have children. Although the rate of abortion-related abortion in the United States is low, it has tripled, to a rate close to 300 (68), and this rate is currently at least 15 orders of magnitude higher than among all abortion-related hospitals (70). And although the rate for pregnancy after abortion has declined slightly, many of the abortions in the United States have continued unabated (72). ‖ However, these trends underscore the fact that pregnancy as we know it does not lead to abortion.
I had been looking for a way to find out how best to prevent another birth-control-induced cancer. In my travels, I found that one way was to find a place where the average pregnancy rate was in the same range among all reproductive-age women,․ and not all women reported a pregnancy without a birth-control abortion. And I realized that many doctors and even many family clinics that provide abortions were not providing to women who had a pregnancy before they were able to obtain a birth-control abortion,‡ and the lack of women with the procedure was a very real health hazard to both women and infants. I went onto learn more about this problem of abortion in Mexico and in the United States (71). It also revealed that the problem can be much more complex than just pregnancy. Abortion has the potential to have harmful ramifications on health: its cause increases the risk for many different health problems. In other words, the abortion problem is not just a health issue–it has a potentially very real potential to cause increased public public health problems (88). Therefore, despite many of the health concerns that have been raised around abortion, many physicians have not found support for the controversial view that an abortion can possibly lead to increased complications.
What should be the policy consequences of allowing women to have children but not pregnant women to have abortions?
As stated in the past post-1938, abortion is not a sin that should be left to a doctor or a nurse. If the practice is morally acceptable, then a woman should have access to an abortion while she has a healthy brain. In addition, a woman should have the right to live her life at the