Question

Read the epitaphs of Mr. and Mrs. Purkapile from the Spoon River Anthology and answer the question that follows.

Mrs. Purkapile

HE ran away and was gone for a year.
When he came home he told me the silly story
Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
And kept in chains so he could not write me.
I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well
What he was doing, and that he met
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then
When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.
But a promise is a promise
And marriage is marriage,
And out of respect for my own character
I refused to be drawn into a divorce
By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired
Of his marital vow and duty.

Mr. Purkapile

SHE loved me.
Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape
From the day she first saw me.
But then after we were married I thought
She might prove her mortality and let me out,
Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign.
Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.
But she never complained. She said all would be well
That I would return. And I did return.
I told her that while taking a row in a boat
I had been captured near Van Buren Street
By pirates on Lake Michigan,
And kept in chains, so I could not write her.
She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel,
Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage
Was a divine dispensation
And could not be dissolved,
Except by death.
I was right.

Recall Benjamin Franklin said, "Good wives usually make good husbands" and "The likeliest Way, either to obtain a good Husband, or to keep one so, is to be Good yourself."

What would Benjamin Franklin say about the Purkapile's marriage?

Answer in at least three complete sentences using supporting details from the reading in this module

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation:

Mr. Purkapile lied and abandoned his wife. With trusting that she would leave him, but she stayed with him because she didn't want to be a divorcee, even after he lied saying that he was captured by privateers. You can only get as good as you are. is what Benjamin Franklin is saying.

Answer 2

In this quotation Franklin is summarizing his beliefs about marriage, which several scholars have argued he bases on his own close reading of several Biblical Proverbs.

1.Benjamin Franklin said, "Good wives usually make good husbands" and "The likeliest Way, either to obtain a good Husband, or to keep one so, is to be Good yourself".

2.Benjamin Franklin would not be cheerful about the Purkapile's marriage in light of the fact that the spouse cherished the wife however the wife didn't generally adore her significant other. And because the husband loved the wife but the wife didn't really love her husband.

3.She would concur with Benjamin Franklin in light of the fact that at the time she saw her life as not her own, however an augmentation of her husband's.

4. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.