The Balance of Life

From the 19th century through today girls have struggled between being “ladylike” and showing their true emotions. As seen in the clip the 3rd grader, Anna, is no different from Gerty in this way, but the way they deal with these two extremes do differ.

Anna talks about balance in life, whether it is in school or yoga, balance is a necessity in her life because it helps her stay centered. Balance is something that Gerty has not yet discovered for herself, which causes her to go from two extremes depending on her circumstance. Gerty’s emotions about the abuse that she experienced when living with Nan Grant have been suppressed since she left and she has been encouraged to automatically leave that life and become a lady. This new train of thought slowly comes to her, but True sees glimpses of her old self come back, scaring him of who she is deep down. True says that, “it had never occurred to him to dread any difficulty in the management of the child” (116). Unlike Anna, Gerty does not have tools like yoga to help her express her hurt and anger towards Nan Grant. She lashes out her feelings by saying mean things about Nan Grant that are inappropriate, but that is the only way she is able to get her frustration out. I believe that this day in age girls are encouraged more to talk about their feelings and are given more outlets to discuss problems in order to work through them, which was definitely not available to Gerty.

Anna also talks about how you should want people to like you for who you are, which is another aspect of Gerty’s life that she struggles with. When first meeting Willie, Gerty tries to hide her face from him, but Willie took “her hands directly down from her face and holding them tight in his own, he fixed his eyes upon her…” (112). Willie did not make fun of her as she expected, which was a first in her life since she had been told she was ugly from the time she can remember. She was taught to not like herself, which is easy for girls to do this day in age as well, due to the constant pressure for girls to look a certain way and weight a certain amount. Even though Wilie accepts Gerty, she still feels insecure with herself, which is depicted when they are looking in the window at the rich family’s house. “She did not like the idea of being started at and talked about” (130) because people had done that her whole life. Scarred by the words of other people, Gerty is in constant shame of her looks and of who she is as a person.

I believe that if Gerty was on Amy Pholer’s TV show she would have been real with how she felt, but I do not think she would have had the maturity that Anna had. While Anna told us she does the lion pose when something is troubling her, I feel as if Gerty would throw one of her “tantrums” (145) instead.