“It always will be, to me,” assented her friend Mrs. Ansley, with so slight a stress on the “me” that Mrs. Slade, though she noticed it, wondered if it were not merely accidental, like the random underlinings of old-fashioned letter-writers. “Grace Ansley was always old-fashioned,” she thought. Mrs. Slade waited nervously for another word or movement. None came, and at length she broke out: “I horrify you.” Mrs. Ansley’s hands dropped to her knees. The face they uncovered was streaked with tears. “I wasn’t thinking of you. I was thinking—it was the only letter I ever had from him!” These two quotations, both from Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” portray the theme of denial that is prominent in the story. The first quote is spoken at the beginning of the story, as Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade are enjoying a view of Rome together from a restaurant terrace. The second quote takes place shortly after Mrs. Ansley learns that Mrs. Slade tried to undermine their friendship the l
A new title that I would give to Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” is “The Unwanted and Excluded”. I believe that this phrase is a sufficient title for the story because it accurately describes Twyla and Roberta’s lifelong journey that we observe. St. Bonny’s, where the pair live as children, essentially represents the theme of social alienation that is repeated throughout the story. Simply being at St. Bonny’s is a reminder to the girls that they are unwanted. Furthermore, Twyla and Roberta are outcasts within St. Bonny’s, an institution that is meant for "outcasts". The extreme exclusion that Twyla and Roberta experience in their childhood is a factor of the title “The Unwanted and Excluded”. The theme of exclusion follows Twyla and Roberta into their adult lives, as the girls find themselves on opposing sides of a protest over school integration much later in the story. Roberta says “they want to take my kids and send them out of the neighborhood.” She is objecting to school