TER 6 PLAN LAURA'S CHOICE

LAURA ‘S CHOICE
This might appear at first sight to be a fairly old text but it’s subject is quite eternal.
Indeed the author Frederic Brown highlighted the situation of a couple on the verge of breakdown as we will see in a first part.
How modern is that! When a marriage out of 3 ends up in divorce.
But a deeper inquiry into the text unveils a far more interesting feature. The author subtly enough has decided to question the whole gender issue by asking first what makes a man a man and a woman a woman . But I couldn’t help noticing that the author was a man .And yet ironically enough he shows quite a negative light on the male character. So, via this text , isn’t he wondering about his own position and more broadly speaking about the future fate of man. Let’s find out in a second part .
So quite an interesting task at hand here that we might start right now.

1)THE FACTS
a)Sum up the text.

b)The craft of the author :
At that stage we have to underline the craft of the author.
As a matter of fact, he did not give us a straight forward story of a couple going their separate ways.
On the contrary he managed to build up the suspense up to the end making the twist in the end so much funnier.
What is most clever is the way he chose to write a first person narrative giving us only the thoughts of the husband, exposing his hopes and his vision of his wife and of the other girl. He thus creates a one sided vision of the story which makes the revelation in the end even more comical. Indeed It is first a complete reversal from what we were to expect and that is one of the tricks used by great authors to arouse laughter.
But also he shatters the very character of the husband as well. If laura’s choice was to go with the wife it implies first that the husband’s love dreams with her were a complete fantasy and second that the husband has been blind all along. Not only was he stupid enough to believe that laura was in love with him but also to the fact that his wife was having an affair and even more ridiculous with a woman.
Of course this last stroke makes us doubt about the positive things he said previously about himself.
Moreover we are compelled to read the text under another light .As a consequence we realize that eveything he was saying about his wife being better at everything than him was indeed true and far more than we had previously thought. It follows that Laura’s choice seems logical in view of the ridicule of the husband.
But was the author just talking about an isolated case or was he rather addressing the whole male race?Let’s find out in our next part.

2)THE MODERN MAN

a)The personality of the husband(cf lesson) What is far the most important aspect in my view is his short-sightedness. He was unable to foresee what was coming that is that his wife was going to leave him and for a woman no less.
b)The personality of the wife

c)the personality of laura :
She seems to stand for the wife ‘s exact opposite .The husband underlines that as opposed to his wife, laura is soft and tender and that most of all she needs to be protected and comforted. And that’s exactly what the man needs and craves for: someone who still needs him , someone to give him the impression that he still has a function in this society.
d)Here he might be expressing the author’s own concern about the function of the whole male gender.
Indeed man’s position in society has dramatically shifted .He used to be considered as the stronger, the most powerful in every field, the breadwinner, the leader of the country and of his own family, the guiding light for his children and his wife, a position that was justified by his physical strength as well as by his intellect
Nowadays we all know that women have proved to a great extent that they are on an equal footing with men .
In this text, they are even said to be better both physically and intellectually. Indeed we might add that the two characters in this text embody both gender.

Therefore I believe the author by means of this text is warning the whole male gender .As a matter of fact he is just voicing his concern about the future role of man as far as his position in society is concerned. As the husband ,he is worried about men’s blindness in front of the growing female power.

e)This drastic take over is even more dramatic as it is complete. Indeed there was one last function that seemed impossible to take away from men: love and its sexual counterpart. And yet even this last power is taken away from him as here laura’s choice is to go with a woman .thus the man ends up being nothing but a nuisance, a bygone tyrant who is trying to cling to the last bits of his former glory but who is bound to disappear and become an endangered species. This last remark might sound excessive and that’s why it might be wise at that stage to express my personal opinion on such matters.

3)MY OPINION :
a) What a woman does (cf lesson on women)

b)What the man does : still at the head of the society/it is still very difficult for a woman to have the same kind of salary and the same job/Men are still in control of most of the power in our society even if it is true that women are taking a larger share of it everyday.

c)So it is not a question of who is the best but we have to be careful as to ensure that women are treated fairly and that both men and women have a balanced relationship. I reckon it would be advisable to consider more the individual than the gender in this relationship.

CONCLUSION
To conclude what might appear at first sight as a very simple text, is indeed a profound analysis of the forces at work in our society. The relationship between men and women is changing and men might feel threatened by it.It might explain as well the growing number of divorces which might be due to the stronger claims made by women to have the same rights as men. With science evolving as well this text might even lead us to wonder if one day men will not find a new function by giving birth to children in their turn.