Erasmus Montanus
...re 500 reports of rape in 2004 against 435 in 1997. That is a 15 per cent ascent over merely seven years. I hope that the legal system is not afraid of punishing hard within the existing frames. The frames are according to, e.g., the maximum penalty for homicide very accurate, or at least I think they are. But if the ascent of perverts attacking innocent women continues harsher penalties could be the only solution. ESSAY ABOUT THE TEXT The short story has the strange title, The Itch. An itch is a spot you just have to scratch and this meaning conveys a lot of symbolism to the text. Is she referring to the marital bliss or the scars of the violation in her past? It could very well be both. In a way the violation could be like an itch, which you can feel all the time and do not want to scratch. She is mentally scarred for lives, and her issues rears its ugly head now and again, like an itch. She also names the term “ the seven-year-itch”, which is a marital crisis said to occur after seven years. If she intends to lead our minds in this symbolic direction, the main subject is marriage and how the relationship between man and woman changes over the years. The short story, The Itch, has a Jane Doe narrator. It is quite clear, that the past of this woman has not been kind to her. Many statements in the text indicate that she has been violated when she was younger, maybe even as a kid. Men had maybe beaten her, because she remembers the smell of her own blood, and they have clearly savaged her so badly that she now is sterile. That is why she does not care whether he withdrew or not, because she cannot get pregnant. It is not rare after violations that the female abdomen is damaged for life. The men that attacked her have also used objects to violate her with, and these objects have ruined her chance of ever feeling the maternal instinct and the blessing of carrying a child. She is scarred (sterile) on the inside, so for Al’s sake she wants to look perfect on the outside. She loves Al, and she wants to pour her heart out to him, but she knows that he wants children and that that is the only thing she cannot provide. She cries. In the bed where he proposes and claims that he wants him to be the mother of his children, she knew that she should tell him the secret. Now nearly seven years later, I still think she hasn’t told him. That is why he every night as clockwork moves in on her to have sex. He is probably still hoping for a pregnancy. When our main character and Alan first met love was in the air. Their romance was fresh and ardent. Our woman believed that she was on the path to a normal life, that she still, in spite of her physical and mentally handicap, could be happy with a man. At first she gets relapses, for example on the beach, where we as spectators through her eyes almost relives her rape. But she fights for her right to be happy and later it is almost perfect when they are cuddling under the sheets. But of course it is too good to be true. He mentions marriage and children. All her life she have struggled to leave ...