Brooklyn Nine-Nine Takes the Stigma out of Sexual Orientation - Melissa Reese
SALISBURY UNIVERSITY Undergraduate Academic Journal Inaugural Issue – Volume 1 – Fall 2019 Salisbury University Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (OURCA) Cover Art: Cult, 48” x 60” oil, glitter, and assorted jewels on canvas 2019, by student artist Arielle Tesoriero “Cult” contains elements referencing Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel The Awakening. This is one of my favorite novels. “A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: ‘Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!’ He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.” Edna Pontellier, the main character of The Awakening, is a wife and a mother. She is described as not being particularly attractive, a bad parental figure, and an unaccomplished painter. This resonates with me as I feel I have similarities with Edna, (although I am not a mother), so in “Cult” I represent not only myself, but Edna. The first lines of the novel open with a parrot and a mocking bird, which represent Edna’s entrapment in society. She is an outcast, as women were expected to follow the four rules of “the cult of domesticity” or “the cult of true womanhood,” which were piety, purity, domesticity and submission. Throughout the novel, Edna defies these rules by acknowledging her sexual desires and establishing her own identity apart from her husband, her children, or anyone else.
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