It Was Self-Defense! Professor Ramos Blog

It Was Self-Defense! Aileen Wuornos story is no fairytale, it is filled with misfortune, tragedy, and terror. Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan. Wuornos parents, Diane and Leo were divorced before Aileen was born and both abandoned her and her brother Keith to Diane’s parents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. Wuornos Grandfather abused both Aileen and Keith physically, verbally, and sexually, while the grandmother pretended to be oblivious to what was happening. When Wuornos was thirteen years old, she started to engage in sexual activities with the boys at school for cigarettes, drugs, and food. Wuornos began her life of prostitution when she was sixteen and she lived by herself. Her brother Keith died of lung cancer when she was twenty and Aileen decided to migrate to Florida. In Florida she became a highway prostitute where she met her girlfriend Tyria Moore at a gay bar in Daytona Beach. Wuornos was a highway prostitute, she would walk down the street and when a guy picked her up, she would tell them my car broke down or I have two kids that I need to get to. She would say to them that she has no money and wondered if they were willing to help her out and in exchange, she would have intercourse or other things with them. On December 13, 1989 was the kick off of Wuornos’ murders when Richard Mallory raped and tried to murder Wuornos. Wuornos escaped and shot Mallory three times with a 0.22 caliber handgun. From there she ended up killing six or seven men. Aileen Wuornos was arrested on January 6, 1991 on an old traffic warrant. Police couldn’t charge Aileen with the murders because there were, no witnesses, and no murder weapon. The police found Moore and convinced her to get Wuornos to confess. â€Å"On January 16, Wuornos confessed to six of the killings but claimed that they were in self-defense† (Phelps, 6). In January 1992 she was sentenced to death and on October 9, 2002 she died of lethal injection. What caused her to murder those men? Based off research the three main reasons are that she never had a good male role model in her life, when she was raped as an adult that furthered her hatred towards men, and she had to provide money for her girlfriend Tyria Moore. Ever since Wuornos was born she has never had a good male role model in her life. Her father was incarcerated right when Wuornos born for kidnapping and raping a seven-year old girl. He committed suicide in prison by hanging himself on January 30, 1969. Throughout her life the â€Å"man† that took care of Wuornos and her brother was her alcoholic Grandfather Lauri Wuornos. Aileen grew up thinking that she had four siblings, but three of them were actually her uncles, and aunts. Since Aileen and Keith were not Lauri’s children, he was more abusive towards them. He would constantly physically abuse them. Call them names such as worthless, evil, and unwanted children. Sometimes he would make Aileen strip off her clothes before beating her. â€Å"At about age fourteen, Wuornos was raped by a family friend and became pregnant. Her grandfather forced her to give up the child for adoption† (Encyclopedia, 2). Aileen even tried to tell her Grandfather what happened and he beat her for it. In Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s â€Å"Monster Culture (Seven Theses)† he tries to explain how each monster fits into his seven theses’. For Aileen she fits into â€Å"Thesis three: The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis†, meaning that a monster is created, born, or raised in a different way. Aileen Wuornos was not raised in the same way most people are. She was raised in an abusive home by her grandparents who she thought were her real parents until the age of eleven. Since she was born and raised differently, that caused problems for her that not everyone goes through. On December 13, 1989 when she met Richard Mallory, that night changed Wuornos life forever. Wuornos claimed that Mallory raped her and that she used self-defense and shot him three times. Because of that night that was the precipitating cause where she could no longer take men anymore and felt powerless to them. Mallory was actually a convicted rapist and even his wife said â€Å"He was so sweet †¦ and then ten minutes later he would scare the heck out of you† (Pearson, 19) and that even his wife knew of his unpredictable violent actions. Since the incident with Mallory, Wuornos convinced herself that every man that picked her up was going to rape her. Psychologists believe that she made up the excuse of self-defense. For example, â€Å"in one instance she indicated that the murders were the result of anger when her companions refused to have sex with her (Court TV, 1999). In another instance, Aileen reported that she would fight with her victims about sex and that when they became abusive, demanding that she have intercourse with them, she endeavored to protect herself from being raped (Ahern, 2001)† (Arrigo and Griffin, 56). So, this leads to the question were any of those men really trying to rape her? Or did she feel scared that something would happen and took action? Tyria Moore was an important person in Aileen Wuornos life. It first started off with them meeting in a gay bar in Daytona Beach, Florida that then escalated to them becoming lovers to them moving in together. They were together for almost four years and lived off the earnings that Wuornos made as a prostitute. Moore knew about the murder of Mallory and was suspicious about others, but she was scared and unsure of what to do. In the movie â€Å"Monster† directed by Patty Jenkins, Moore’s character â€Å"Shelby Wall† was more of a fictional character and didn’t actually properly represent her. Shelby Wall became greedy with money and wanted Wuornos to continue to prostitute while Moore never wanted that because she believed it was too dangerous. The truth about the movie is that Wuornos loved Moore, wanted to provide for her, and was always afraid that Moore would leave her. That was the root cause of why Wuornos continued to kill those men, so that she cou ld provide for Tyria Moore. Do you believe that those men Wuornos killed actually tried to hurt her? Or did she misread the situation she was in? From the research that I have read I believe that some of the men she killed such as Mallory actually did rape her. That was her breaking point, she couldn’t handle being inferior to men anymore so she somewhat lost her mind and killed every man she thought would rape her. I believe there were situations that she misread for men trying to help her such as Charles Humphreys who was a former state child abuse investigator/chief of police and also known as a family man. He was known as a guy to always try to help people in need especially women. I do feel some empathy for the things that Wuornos went through and that how she was brought up and went through life was hapless. That she was doomed from the beginning, but I also feel sorry for the families who lost someone who was actually innocent in the situation if any were. Arrigo, Bruce A., and Ayanna Griffin. â€Å"Serial Murder and the Case of Aileen Wuornos: Attachment Theory, Psychopathy, and Predatory Aggression.† Behavioral Sciences the Law, vol. 22, no. 3, May 2004, pp.375-393. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/bsl.583. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. â€Å"Monster Culture (Seven Theses).† University of Minnesota Press. 1996. Print. â€Å"Monster†. Directed by Patty Jenkins. Denver and Delilah Films. 17 December, 2003. Pearson, Kyra. â€Å"The Trouble with Aileen Wuornos, Feminism’s ‘First Serial Killer.’† Communication Critical/cultural Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, Sept. 2007, pp. 256-275. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/1420701472791. Wuornos, Aileen Carol [Aileen Carol Pittman] (1956 ). World of Criminal Justice, Gale, edited by Shirelle Phelps, Gale, 1st edition, 2002. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/worldcrims/wuornos_aileen_carol_aileen_carol_pittman_1956/0?institutionId=5312. Accessed 05 Aug. 2019. Wuornos, Aileen. Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment in the United States, Louis J. Palmer, McFarland, 2nd edition, 2008. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcfcpus/wuornos_aileen/0?institutionId=5312. Accessed 05 Aug. 2019.

Kate Chopins The Awakening of Edna Pontellier

Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening' of Edna Pontellier â€Å"She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength.  She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.† Kate Chopin’s The Awakening  (1899) is the story of one woman’s realization of the world and potential within her. In her journey, Edna Pontellier is awoken to three important pieces of her own being. First, she awakens to her artistic and creative potential. This minor but important awakening gives rise to Edna Pontellier’s most obvious and demanding awakening, one which resonates throughout the book: the sexual. However, though her sexual awakening may seem to be the most important issue in the novel, Chopin slips in a final awakening at the end, one that is hinted at early on but not resolved until the last minute: Edna’s awakening to her true humanity and role as a mother. These three awakenings, artistic, sexual, and motherhood, are what Chopin includes in her novel to define womanhood; or, more specifically, independent womanhood. Awakening of Artistic Self-Expression and Individualism What seems to begin Edna’s awakening is the rediscovery of her artistic inclinations and talents. Art, in The Awakening, becomes a symbol of  freedom and of failure. While attempting to become an artist, Edna reaches the first peak of her awakening. She begins to view the world in artistic terms. When Mademoiselle Reisz asks Edna why she loves Robert, Edna responds, â€Å"Why? Because his hair is brown and grows away from his temples; because he opens and shuts his eyes, and his nose is a little out of drawing.† Edna is beginning to notice intricacies and details that she would have ignored previously, details that only an artist would focus and dwell on, and fall in love with. Further, art is a way for Edna to assert herself.  She sees it as a form of self-expression and individualism. Edna’s own awakening is hinted at when the narrator writes, â€Å"Edna spent an hour or two in looking over her own sketches. She could see their shortcomings and defects, which were glaring in her eyes.† The discovery of defects in her previous works, and the desire to make them better demonstrate Edna’s reformation. Art is being used to explain Edna’s change, to hint to the reader that Edna’s soul and character are also changing and reforming, that she is finding defects within herself. Art, as Mademoiselle Reisz defines it, is also a test of individuality. But, like the bird with its broken wings struggling along the shore, Edna perhaps fails this final test, never blossoming into her true potential because she is distracted and confused along the way. Awakening of Sexual Freedom and Independence A great deal of this confusion is owed to the second awakening in Edna’s character, the sexual awakening. This awakening is, without doubt, the most considered and examined aspect of the novel. As Edna Pontellier begins to realize that she is an individual, capable of making individual choices without being another’s possession, she begins to explore what these choices might bring her. Her first sexual awakening comes in the form of Robert Lebrun. Edna and Robert are attracted to one another from the first meeting, though they do not realize it. They unwittingly flirt with each other, so that only the narrator and reader understand what is going on. For instance, in the chapter where Robert and Edna speak of buried treasure and pirates: â€Å"And in a day we should be rich!† she laughed. â€Å"I’d give it  all to you, the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig up. I think you would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn’t a thing to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the golden specks fly.† â€Å"We’d share it and scatter it together,† he said. His face flushed. The two do not understand the significance of their conversation, but in reality, the words speak of desire and sexual metaphor. American literary scholar Jane P. Tompkins wrote in Feminist Studies: â€Å"Robert and Edna do not realize, as the reader does, that their conversation is an expression of their unacknowledged passion for one another.† Edna awakens to this passion wholeheartedly. After Robert leaves, and before the two have the opportunity to truly explore their desires, Edna has an affair with Alcee Arobin.   Though it is never directly spelled out, Chopin uses language to convey the message that Edna has stepped over the line, and damned her marriage. For instance, at the end of Chapter 31, the narrator writes, â€Å"He did not answer, except to continue to caress her. He did not say good night until she had become supple to his gentle, seductive entreaties.† However, it is not only in situations with men that Edna’s passion is flared. In fact, the â€Å"symbol for sexual desire itself,† as George Spangler puts it, is the sea. It is appropriate that the most concentrated and artistically depicted symbol for desire comes, not in the form of a man, who may be viewed as a possessor, but in the sea, something which Edna herself, once afraid of swimming, conquers. The narrator writes, â€Å"the voice of [the] sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.† This is perhaps the most sensual and passionate chapter of the book, devoted entirely to depictions of the sea and to Edna’s sexual awakening. It is pointed out here that â€Å"The beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.† Still, as Donald Ringe notes in his essay, the book is too often seen in terms of the question of sexual freedom.† The true awakening in the novel, and in Edna Pontellier, is the awakening of self. Throughout the novel, she is on a transcendental journey of self-discovery. She is learning what it means to be an individual, a woman, and a mother. Indeed, Chopin amplifies the significance of this journey by mentioning that Edna Pontellier â€Å"sat in the library after dinner and read Emerson until she grew sleepy. She realized that she had neglected her reading, and determined to start anew upon a course of improving studies, now that her time was completely her own to do with as she liked.† That Edna is reading Ralph Waldo Emerson is significant, especially at this point in the novel, when she is starting a new life of her own. This new life is signaled by a â€Å"sleep-waking† metaphor, one which, as Ringe points out, â€Å"is an important romantic image for the emergence of the self or soul into a new life.† A seemingly excessive amount of the novel is devoted to Edna sleeping, but when one takes into account that, for each time Edna falls asleep, she must also awaken, one begins to realize that this is just another way of Chopin demonstrating Edna’s personal awakening. Awakening of Womanhood and Motherhood Another transcendentalist link to awakening can be found with the inclusion of Emerson’s theory of correspondence, which has to do with life’s â€Å"double world, one within and one without.† Much of Edna is contradictory, including her attitudes toward her husband, her children, her friends, and even the men with whom she has affairs. These contradictions are encompassed within the idea that Edna was â€Å"beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.† So, Edna’s true awakening is to the understanding of herself as a human being. But the awakening goes further still. She also becomes aware, at the end, of her role as a woman and mother. At one point, early in the novel and before this awakening, Edna tells Madame Ratignolle, â€Å"I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me. Writer William Reedy describes Edna Pontellier’s character and conflict in the literary journal, Reedys Mirror, that â€Å"Woman’s truest duties are those of wife and mother, but those duties do not demand that she shall sacrifice her individuality.† The last awakening, to this realization that womanhood and motherhood can be a part of the individual, comes at the very end of the book. Professor Emily Toth writes in an article in the journal American Literature that â€Å"Chopin makes the ending attractive, maternal, sensuous.† Edna meets with Madame Ratignolle again, to see her while she is in labor. At this point, Ratignolle cries out to Edna, â€Å"Think of the children, Edna. Oh, think of the children! Remember them!† It is for the children, then, that Edna takes her life. Conclusion Though the signs are confusing, they are throughout the book; with a broken-winged bird symbolizing Edna’s failure and the sea concurrently symbolizing freedom and escape, Edna’s suicide is, in fact, a way of her maintaining her independence while also putting her children first.  It is ironic that the point in her life when she realizes a mother’s duty is at the moment of her death. She does sacrifice herself, as she claims she never would, by giving up the chance at all she could have in order to protect her children’s future and well-being. Spangler explains this when he says, â€Å"primary was her fear of a succession of lovers and the effect such a future would have on her children: ‘to-day it is Arobin; tomorrow it will be someone else. It makes no difference to me, it doesn’t matter about Leonce Pontellier- but Raoul and Etienne!’†Ã‚  Edna gives up the newly found passion and understanding, her art, and her life to protect her family. The Awakening is a complex and beautiful novel, filled with contradictions and sensations. Edna Pontellier journeys through life, awakening to the transcendental beliefs of individuality and connections with nature. She discovers sensual joy and power in the sea, beauty in art, and independence in sexuality. However, though some critics claim the ending to be the novel’s downfall and what keeps it from top status in American literary canon, the fact is that it wraps up the novel in as beautiful a way as it was told all along. The novel ends in confusion and wonder, as it is told. Edna spends her life, since the awakening, questioning the world around her and within her, so why not remain questioning to the end?  Spangler writes in his essay, â€Å"Mrs. Chopin asks her reader to believe in an Edna, who is completely defeated by the loss of Robert, to believe in the paradox of a woman who has awakened to passional life and yet, quietly, almost thoughtlessly, chooses death.† But Edna Pontellier is not defeated by Robert. She is the one making choices, as she has determined to do all along. Her death was not thoughtless; in fact, it seems almost preplanned, a â€Å"coming home† to the sea. Edna strips off her clothes and becomes one with the very source of nature that helped to awaken her to her own power and individualism in the first place. Further still, that she goes quietly is not an admission of defeat, but a testament to Edna’s ability to end her life the way she lived it. Each decision that Edna Pontellier makes throughout the novel is done quietly, suddenly. The dinner party, the move from her home to the â€Å"Pigeon House.† There is never any ruckus or chorus, just simple, impassioned change. Thus, the novel’s conclusion is a statement to the enduring power of womanhood and individualism. Chopin is affirming that, even in death, perhaps only in death, one can become and remain truly awakened. Resources and Further Reading Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, Dover Publications,1993.Ringe, Donald A. â€Å"Romantic Imagery in Kate Chopins The Awakening,† American Literature, vol. 43, no. 4, Duke University Press, 1972, pp. 580-88.Spangler, George M. Kate Chopins The Awakening: A Partial Dissent, Novel 3, Spring 1970, pp. 249-55.Thompkins, Jane P. The Awakening: An Evaluation, Feminist Studies 3, Spring-Summer 1976, pp. 22-9.Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: Morrow, 1990.