Question

The short stories “A Respectable Woman” and “Was It a Dream?” both suggest a connection between love and secrecy. Use evidence from both texts to analyze how love relates to secrecy.

Answer 1

The relationship between love and secrecy in the short stories involves characters experiencing guilt, undergoing mysterious transformations, and society's expectations leading to suppressed desires. Love is often portrayed alongside hidden emotions and actions that characters grapple with internally or in defiance of societal norms.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question asks for an analysis of how love relates to secrecy in the short stories “A Respectable Woman” and “Was It a Dream?”, and includes related excerpts. From the provided passages, we can discern that both stories explore the complexities of love, often intertwined with secrecy and a sense of guilt or awakening. For instance, Aylmer’s guilty feeling suggests that sometimes love includes concealing truths or aspects of ourselves, which we only acknowledge in the privacy of our subconscious. Similarly, Trina’s ambiguous feelings toward McTeague seem to draw on the notion of a “mysterious disturbance”, which underscores the secrecy and suddenness with which love can transform an individual’s self-awareness and decisions.

Moreover, the secrecy in love can also pertain to societal expectations and roles, as implied in the reference to “The Story of an Hour,” where women's desires are suppressed, implying a private longing that is at odds with public demeanor. The betrayal theme mentioned suggests secrets in relationships, while the allusion to characters possibly wearing “masks” reflects hidden identities or feelings in love. Lastly, the mention of characters enacting secret plans further illustrates how secrecy can be central to narrative tensions and personal relationships, particularly where love compels individuals to act clandestinely.

Answer 2

Both stories represent the ironic endings of love and the suspense and the narration of love.

Explanation:

• In both of these stories, the female characters will hide their secrets from their lovers. In the story of "respectable women", the female is attracted to her husband and she was thinking about how to tell her husband. She stopped thinking about that thought.
• In “Was It a Dream" story the female will cheat on her lover before she was dying. In both of the stories, they will undermine loving relationships.