It was rather sweet of him to hold her umbrella, although it had stopped raining a while ago.
For a moment, she considered telling him this, least his arm get tired, but decided against it. It was cold out, and she had purchased this dress specifically for this date with no concern for the weather. How disappointed she had been when he came to pick her up and it was pouring rain. Hours spend curling her hair appeared to have been wasted in vain. But, he had graciously held the umbrella as she got into the car, and when they arrived at the restaurant.
At dinner, she was pleased to notice she looked the best out of any of the other women in the room. Dressed in heavy coats and thick stockings, they had looked more suited to be going skiing than on a romantic date. Bare-legged and deliciously swathed in silk, warmed by the wine and her handsome prince across from her, she had anxiously chattered her way through three courses, dessert and coffee.
And now, as they walked through the park, she clutched his arm closer, snuggling into him. How romantic, how perfect this night had been!
He had noticed it had stopped raining.
What he didn’t know was how he had been able to get through this night. He had tried to keep up with the usual conventions of being a gentleman, opening doors and paying the check, those sort of things. The conversation at dinner had been stifled, he thought, or perhaps that was because of the wine. And now, the glossy surface of the river and harsh lighting of the streetlamps only made the night feel even more apocalyptic, like he was treading the line between heaven and hell.
He felt her tighten her grasp.
And from somewhere far off, he heard the lyrics to the song that had been playing in his head all day. This is the moment that you know that you told her that you loved her, but you don’t. You touch her skin, and then you think. She is beautiful, but she don’t mean a thing to me.
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When discussing the visual arts - such as paintings and photographs - the lack of concrete words that have been put down on paper to describe what is occurring in the frame often make for interesting interpretations by the viewer. We often lack the knowledge of the specific painter or photographer, the historical or social context in which the art was created or captured, or the personal emotions that went into the creation. Certainly, artists incorporate elements of their own lives or feelings into their works, but when a spectator views a painting or photograph – which is quite a different experience than reading words on a paper – it is up to the viewer to decide what the narrative is.
Formalism and structuralism work in much the same way. Disregarding the facts of who (author), when (historical context), and why (personal feelings), critics who use formalism and structuralism attempt to look at just the work itself and what is trying to get across. They look at symbols, signs, syntax, sentence construction, and style in order to mold an interpretation. They even ignore their own feelings on the work - quite an opposite of reader-response theory! I honestly found it hard to separate my feelings from this assignment. Truthfully, I choose the painting and constructed the narrative in the way that I did for purely personal reasons. I can see myself and a situation I am currently in within the narrative that I wrote above. I understand that formalism and structuralism attempt to separate these personal interpretations to a more solidified interpretation of the work as a whole, and I think I have tried to include some of the elements of these theories in my narrative.
First, I sat and thought about the painting for a while, really looking at what is depicted. I found the picture through a simple Google search, and I have yet to find the name of the artist, so my interpretation is truly one without the knowledge of the author or context. Second, the somewhat cliché, romanticized images of a man and woman walking through the park, hand-in-hand in the rain instantly conjured up the idea of the archetype of the love story. Fyre states in The Archetypes of Literature that it is “pre-literary categories such as ritual, myth and folk tale… [that we] find… reappearing in the greatest classics – in fact there seems to be a general tendency on the part of great classics to revert to them” (1309). What better archetype than the love story between a man and a woman? History has certainly seem an infinite number of stories on this relationship, from Adam and Eve, to Cleopatra and Anthony, to Romeo and Juliet. And third, I looked at the painting itself. I thought that the colors used in the painting, the clashing of the harsh yellow from the lights and mellow blues of the river, symbolized a sort of balance between happiness and despair. Additionally, the use of scattered, almost Impressionist-style brushstrokes conveyed to me a sense of emotional upheaval and panic, which then turned me back to looking at the figure of the man and woman. Their surroundings seem to speak for their emotions and relationship, and so that formed the basis of my interpretation.
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