Women Labor: Mother - Essay Example

?Steven Wongsoredjo Richard Ferrie EWRT 1B (9:30) June 27, Mutter, Mother, ??,Matka, ?????? Back in two decades, three decades, four decades, five decades, six decades ago. We spent great moments in a comfortable place where we could eat without having to pay for anything from our pockets. The surroundings were fashioned to protect us from evil, and this always contributed positively to our growth. Our health status was always at its best, though we did not have to use our credit cards for the health insurance. For us to enjoy such a lovely lifestyle, a great woman spent a hard time maintaining our diets and assisting us in our undertakings. She had to forget about her leisure time and leisure activities such as sports, which were meant to make her fit and healthy, she overlooked them for nine months. She would sacrifice anything in her life to make our lives more fulfilled. During hard moments, she remained strong irrespective of how hard the situation was. She gave everything, which included her energy, tears, time, and life just to mention but a few, to bring us into the world. This woman is known as Mother. Women labor is a lengthy and complicated process, that involves a lot of pain and efforts. The birth process can be natural, which involves a lot of pain. Nevertheless, there are some cases when women have to give birth through surgery. Whether natural or through surgery, the process is extremely dangerous and painful for the mothers. The process of giving birth does not only require mental preparation, but it poses a threat to the mothers physicallity as well as to her health condition. The labour process involves several aspects and processes. There are three stages of giving birth, which include dilatation of cervix, descent of the infants into the world, and the birth of placenta. In the final stage, the doctor cuts the placenta, an action that can lead to hemorrhaging or ultimate death of the woman. The pain of giving birth varies from woman to woman, but it is extremely painful for most women. A mother is ready to keep hurting herself due to the great love for their babies. To most mothers, the wellbeing of the child is more important than their life. This is the logical reason why mothers form a very important part of their children’s live. They do not find it a big deal when they have to sacrifice and commit themselves to pregnancy. It means that Mothers do not think they will be burdened by having children. When the children are in trouble, mother should and always help them. Mothers want their children to be always satisfied, she at all times wants the best for her children. There are many types of mothers in this world, but one thing that is common in all is the wish to make sacrifices and choices that ensure comfortability of their children. These facts are evident in the three novels that I read during my last quarter in De Anza College 2012.After reading “Hamlet”, “The Assistant”, and “Beloved” , it was clear how mothers in these novel make choices that burden their lives. The mothers names are Gertrude in the novel “Hamlet”, Ida Morris in the novel “The Assistant”, and Sethe in the novel “Beloved”. In some cases in these novels, the mothers make choices that may have negative impacts on their lives. They make difficult choices that requires them to sacrifice their time, body, and identity in the society so that their children can have a better life. These mothers frequently give their opinions on issues related to their children lives, which stimulate conflicts between them. Finally, the three women are willing to make the decisions that could be fatal for the sake of their children. In this first case, these mothers make choices that can help their children to achieve the best in life. Concerning this case, my perspective is that Sethe from Beloved has a biggest burden than the other two mothers from Hamlet, and The Assistant. Sethe has to make choices that could be harmful to her for the sake of her children. In fact from decades ago black people did not have any privileged position in the society. Most of the time, they had unwaged jobs. The jobs were in most cases dehumanizing. They were treated like animals and their white masters could do anything to them. These historical events repeat themselves in the Sethe’s live since she is black. She lived under her hostile master, every day was a threat for her family, her life and that of her children. “Sethe and Paul D climbed the white stairs. Overwhelmed as much... of giving her sex A stair step before him was Baby suggs” (Morisson 24) is one of the examples in the novel “Beloved” that indicate that Sethe was not just a worker, but she had to give sex service. In this scene, it shows that she made the choice to keep silent, to prevent her master from bothering her children. She wants to keep the master’s attention on her. This leads to her being burdened with the many roles she has to play including sacrificing her body, and emotions to keep her children safe. She does not want the master do bad things to them. The consequence is that she has to carry the burden solely. As I analyze deeper, I think that Gertrude of “Hamlet” is second in the level of burden she has to carry among the three women. In this case, the scenario is a bit different from Sethe’s circumstances. Gertrude is supposed to marry her brother after the death of Hamlet’s father. Without a king, she realizes that she cannot be a great leader for her country. This Kingdom needs an experienced leader, so Gertrude had to marry Claudius in order to keep the Kingdom strong and ensure that it progressed. At that time, Hamlet is still young, and needs more education. This will make his son grow without having to stress himself on issues of leading the Kingdom. She wants Hamlet to have a good time in the society, until the time comes for him to become the king for Denmark. More over, Hamlet is affected mentaly by the death of his father. Gertrude marries the new man in order to relief Hamlet since he would get a new father. Her desire to see her son happy is evident when she says, “Take thy fair hour, Laertes... but now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son” (Shakespeare 12). This choice is a burden for Gertrude. It affects her not only physically but also mentally. In moral perspective, we understand that marrying from the same blood is called incest. In Hamlet’s story, Gertrude is a queen of Denmark thus her actions are highly scrutinized by people. People’s perception on her is similar to how people view artists today. Society will observe any movement of popular people and give their opinion, which could be deceiving. This happens in this novel, Gertrude has to keep the burden to herself since she fears the bad views people have on her. She involves herself in incest, nevertheless she does it for the purpose of keeping his son happy. Her marriage would relief her son since the responsibility of running the Kingdom will be taken over by the new King. I believe that some of people talk behind her back or gossip about her. Mother who is ranked last in the level of burden is Ida Morris from “The Assistant”. I think she makes the least effort to make Helen, her daughter happy. Her efforts are different from those of Sethe and Gertrude. Sethe and Gertrude sacrifice both mentally and physically to keep their children in a good condition. However, Ida still sacrifice for Helen’s life. She takes an important role in keeping the store running, so that she can be able to offer Helen financial support. Ida is a Jew mother who owns a small store with her husband, she has to keep their store going. At some time when Bober Morris was sick, she had to force herself to open the store. She only has few loyal customers. She can’t keep her store closed for many days since she might lose some of the customers, who might decide to to move to the new German’s grocery store in the town. She has to retain her customers to keep getting the income. This woman has to take all the family’s responsibilities including taking care the sick Bob Morris, and working in the store, though Helen takes initiative to help her. She needs this income for Helen’s financial support. “Morris lay in bed with a thickly bandaged head, Ida tended the store fitfully... her head hurt with all her worries” (Malamud 28). This scene shows that Helen does not put great attention into this issue. She takes a leisure time at home while her mother sacrifices her time and is confused on whether to open her poor store while Bob Morris is sick. She makes choices that burden her day for Helen’s sake. It is because opening this store enables her to receive some income that she can give to Helen to have food and life supplies for days. In my opinion, all of these mothers, that is, Gertrude, Ida Morris, and Sethe have similarities since they intend to give their children a good life. They think that sacrificing mentaly, and physically is normal for them as mothers. They feel that it is their responsbility to keep their children happy. All of them are willing to give something from their lives for the sake of their children. This instance is somehow comparable to my life. My mother is a career woman who is seldomly in house for a day. Her schedules are always tight because she has to manage her boutique industry. When I was a kid, I had a bad injury on my right foot while playing soccer. I could not take care of myself because it was really hard to walk with my injured foot. She took a break from her job for a month to help me. She made a choice to stay at home and sacrificed her income, and chances in her job for my health. At some moment in our lives, we as children have different opinions that frequently stimulates conflicts between us and our mothers. A mother is the most passionate person and is always trying to make some positive impact in the lives of their children. Nevertheless, these efforts are not always taken positively by the children. We often fight with them because of the inputs. This issue is stressful to the mothers, but they still retain a great passion to take care of us. A mother still maintains her big smile even when we disappoint her. For instance, in the “Hamlet”, Gertrude is the mother who holds the highest burden on making this choice. The option is about giving Hamlet an environment to help him forget about his father and start think about the future. “ Seek for thy noble father in dust. Thou know’st tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity” (Shakespeare 12). Gertrude uses these words to advise Hamlet to forget about his father’s death. This is a positive opinion for him. Hamlet does not have the spirit to live after his father’s death. However, Hamlet shows a negative response to her mother’s opinion. He thinks that marrying his uncle is a bad thing, and considers her mother’s efforts to be a disgrace. This makes Gertrude frequently sad when she looks at Hamlet who does not show any respect for her views or comments. This happening in the Hamlet story is ironic since Gertrude puts all these efforts for the sake of her son who does not appreciate. The same thing happens in “The Assistant”. I place Helen’s mother Ida Morris as the second person who carries a bigger burden than Sethe, but smaller than Gertrude. Ida Morris frequently advise Helen to lead a dignified life and follow the right direction in her life. On the contrary, she gets a disheartening reponse from her daughter. I think it is logical that Ida Morris wants Helen to have a better life. Ida assumes that Helen’s life is going to be unhealthy. Helen is a young girl, in her mid 20’s. In this stage of life, she should start to think about her future life. The future for this woman means having a great education from wonderful university, and naturally finding a great potential guy who can be a great husband for her future. “ Why should he?- Magna cum laude, Columbia, second year at law school.. with a year’s evening college credit mostly in lit” (Malamud 14). This is one of “a special sentence” that always come from Ida Morris throughout “The Assistant” story. She gives this opinion in regard to Helen’s future. All of those aspects are mandatory to have a great future for a woman. Nevertheless, Helen does not value this, and she is not in favor of her mother’s opinion. She tries to run away whenever her mother starts to discuss about her future life. She thinks that she can take care of herself, however when I think of her mother perspective, I undestand how Helen’s life was. Ida Morris’ afraid that she will not get a great husband, and Helen’s education background will not help her survive. In fact, there are no problems when single guys get older, they start to view younger girls as “friends of life”. In contrast, when women start getting older, guys start finding them less attractive. This is a problem because they may not meet any life partner. By reflecting on this issue, Ida Morris makes a choice to comment on Helen’s life. She is concerned about Helen’s future, but she receives a disappointing response from Helen. Helen does not care about her opinion. It makes Ida Morris more worried as days pass. The person that have a least burden on making the choice of giving their children advise is Sethe from Beloved. Most of the time, this family lives under great pressure. This is because they live a life of slavery, which is full of uncertainties. Masters can do everything with their lives. They can even kill their servants anytime they want, or sell one of them. Masters can separate mothers from their children, so mother are more concerned about preventing such happenings. They are able to control their family by providing advise on life, which is a very crucial thing for them. They are always paranoid because they are ever thinking on how to save the lives of their loved ones in all days of their life. This issue affects Sethe’s family as well as her personality negatively. They do not have great abilities and courage, or even a say in the society. They have to acquire personalities such as being more quiet, and shy people. However, mothers who give birth to daughter can control their daughter’s life. She braves to do it because she views their daughters as part of their own flesh. Even though, they have to withstand bad impacts from their slavery lives. Sethe makes a choice to control her daughter. She decides to comment on the simple things that they can wrap up together. She is concerned about Denver’s appearances when she says “May be we should unbraid it? Asked Sethe. Uh uh. Tommorow. Denver crouched forward... Tommorow, never it hurts, Denver said” (Morisson 72). As I analyze from here, it is clear that most children have a typical attitude of opposing their mother’s opinion. For instance, in the simple case like Sethe’s story above. She just wants Denver to look more beautiful by combing her hair. Nevertheless, Denver does not want to follow the simple instructions from Sethe. She thus prefers to do it tommorow. Unintentionally, this simple dialogue stimulates a small conflict between them. There is a meaning behind all the annoying comments from mothers. Mothers always hope and want the best for us. In the reality, we always think that mothers are very hard on us, and that they create big issues from simple ones. We frequently fail to appreciate the great input from our mother, instead we view all of these things as a threat in our daily lives. Most of us feel that her opinions make our heads hoy, and all her words are meant to spoil our days. Nevertheless, when we reflect deeper we realize their words have a greater meaning in our lives. In fact, they always want the best things to happen to us. I had one experience that is similar to this story. Back before I joined high school, my mother was extremely careful about my education. I remember when she once said “ Steven, there are many important things that will happen in your life, if you can get one of the top university in the USA, you should prepare your basic in Mathematics, and English before you go to the USA”. At that time, I did not give a positive response to this important message. I thought that studying was just like wasting time. I did not think that university would impact my life much. I got into a conflict with her because of our differing ideas. Later after I arrived in the USA, I realized that “what goes around comes around”. My negative response to my mother opinion about education started causing bad impact in my life when I first stepped in the USA. I started feeling the need to transfer to one of the top universities. In order to achieve this dream, I was required to get outstanding grades on all of my majors, and general education classes. With all the college courses that I was undertaking, I had to struggle very hard to get good grades in my English Writting classes, and Calculus. At this moment, I remembered the disagreement with my mother and her opinion that I was required to prepare my basics on Mathematic, and English skills. I realized that my mother’s comment had an important meaning in my future as well as in my education. We break our mother’s heart so many times and dissapoint her by our bad attitudes. We disregard our mother’s opinions and messages concerning us. This often stimulates conflicts in our relationships with our mothers and it makes them sad. In our life, we think that we know the best paths to follow. However, we fail to realize that not all of them are right, and most of the time our mother’s wish is to direct us on the right path to follow. Children hurt their mothers severally, however mother always want to make sacrifices for our sake. She makes her choice to sacrifice all of her life for us. Mothers have to take hard and challenging options for the sakes of our life, even though they may have to die. In this case, Gertrude has the highest price to pay since she had to sacrifice her life for the sake of her son Hamlet. At that time, King Claudius set the trap for Hamlet. The king had two faces since he seemed to support Hamlet though he was a stepson. Nevetheless, all of the steps that Hamlet makes during the final battle between him and Polonius’ son affect Hamlet negatively. Gertrude smells a rat when she realizes the change in King Claudius behaviours towards Hamlet during the match. Gertrude gets the idea that King Claudius had poisoned one of the cups containing wine, to kill Hamlet. During the second round, Hamlet wins the game, and when the King wants to celebrate, Hamlet’s mother quickly drinks the wine meant for Hamlet, and she dies immediately. “ Queen. I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me. [Drinks], King.[Aside] it is poisoned cup; it is too late... Hamlet. I dare not drink yet, madam” (Shakespeare 140). This passage shows how Gertrude sacrificed her life for the sake of her son Hamlet. In all of the story line, Hamlet frequently rebels against her mother instructions, and he often makes her mother sad. He changes his behaviours to act like a crazy person. This was meant to imply that he did not approve of his mother’s decision of marrying his uncle. Hamlet’s attitude dissapoint his mother. It makes his mother’s life a burden. This issue does not let the love of Gertrude for Hamlet lessen. She knew that King Claudius put something in the wine that Hamlet was supposed to drink later, thus she drinks it for him, and she dies on his behalf. The woman that I rank second is Sethe. As I already discussed above, Sethe has two kids called Beloved and Denver. As a black family, their lives are full of threats and uncertainties. It is not just from their masters, but it also from the society. They live with other slaves who have a hard life just like them. Under these circumstances, the society is the most dangerous enemy of their life. However, they are ready to do everything to make their lives happier. in the story, Sethe has to always make the choice of defending her children. She must always be there to shield her children. This leads to her getting into many troubles because she is a woman who would get killed when trying to defend her children. Sethe’s behaviour is normal, mother should make this hard choice. She wants Denver to have a long life. It just like the Gertrude who decides to drink the poisonous wine. “ Sethe was flattered by Beloved’s open, quiet devotion... of having raised a ridiculously dependent child” (Morisson 68). This is one of the passage on how Sethe takes care of her children. Sethe’s protective behavour towards her daughters make them dependent on her. Sethe is always on the first line to give everything, her body, effort, and life for all of her daughters. Even though, in the story she doesn’t die of slavery, but I greatly envy and appreciate her efforts by being a shield for her daughters throughout. In my opinion, Ida Morris has the lowest burden in making hard or fatal choices. There are no life threatening threats in her life, and the story is just about Ida Morris’ role of taking care of her family’s daily needs. Even though, they have a normal life different from Sethe’s and Gertrude’s, her story provides a deeper understanding on mother’s personality. After reading “The Assistant”, I get the idea that Ida loves her daughter, but not as much as Sethe and Gertrude loved their children. By reading this novel I understand that different mothers have a different level of willingness to sacrifice for their children. Ida Morris does not show like she would die for her children. She cares about Helen’s future, but I think she is not ready to die for her. It is implied in the passage,“ Virginity she had parted with without sorrow... Nat Pearl handsome, cleft chinned, gifted, ambitious”(Malamud 14). This passage shows that Helen was hurt by Nat Pearl who does not seem love her, Helen is just the sex partner for him. However, Helen’s mother forces her to be with Nat Pearl. She thuss sacrifice her daughter’s happiness because of a man who is not ready to have a serious relationship. This simple issue shows that Helen can sacrifice her daughter’s love, and I do not think that she would be ready to give up her life for Helen’s sake. By reading these three books, I now understand that a mother is the most passionate person. They do not care how many times we dissapoint them especially if there is a chance that they will make a difference in our lives. My cousin had a life threatening experience. He was 23 years old, and both his kidneys were having problems and he eventually suffered kidney failure. The doctor suggested that he needed a kidney transplant. Organ transplant is quite a dreadful and terrorizing experience. For a transplant to be successful, the donor and recipient must show genetic compatibility. The process requires a lot of carefulness. After all of the tests, his mother’s kidney was the one that matched with his body. Finally, my auntie gave away one of her kidney. It showed her willingness to “die” for so as to save my cousin’s life. This is a sacrifice of mother to keep her son alive. There are many issues in this world that will burden us, but always remember that there is a woman who will always stand beside us. This women is your mother. She frequently has to make some choices that may burden her life. In these three books The Assistant, Hamlet, and Beloved the mothers in these books make hard choices, they sacrifice by giving out their body, time, and identity so that their children can have a better life. Most of the time, they are concerned about the future and wellbeing of their sons and daughters. They like giving opinions on issues affecting their children, which often stimulate conflict between mothers and their children. Furthermore, the desire to make their daughter, and son have a great life is depicted by their willingness to die for them. These three novels give a deeper undestanding of how mothers sacrifice for their kids, and it shows how passionate they are towards their children. It is mandatory for them to always make sacrifices for their children. This shows the great love that mothers have for their children. Now hit the forward button one decade, two decades, three decades, four decades, six decades. It is today, we have to start to reflect what our mothers have done to us. I believe that they always sacrifice for our life. Let’s go back to our house and see our mother. We have to kiss her, and say thank you. Read More