Honors Theses
Date of Award
2011
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
This collection of short stories represents my best WTiting in college. The collection, in theory, began in Paris in the winter of 2009 and continued to travel to Montana, Texas and the French Riviera. It has finally come to an end in Oxford, Mississippi. “Just Going,” follows a woman through a relationship with the man hired to be Santa at the retirement home where she works. “The Kindness of Foxes” is a short, short story about a short, short moment at Rowan Oak at the start of winter. The questions of masculinity and the gendered assumptions of father to son relationships is questioned in “Sons of Abraham,” when a father absent mindedly neglects his youngest son for his eldest. The intricacies and failures of marriage are explored in “Blue Lights.” And the failures of family in “Ducks Imprint the First Thing They See” with the death of a father and the unraveling of the daughters left behind. The title story of this collection, “Canary in a Cage,” follows a young woman as she absconds to the French Riviera in an effort to move on, or at least away, from home and finds momentary comfort in a weekend with a charming British couple. The stories end in Montana with a middle aged man in a strained marriage, who struggles with his feelings with his wife’s visiting niece in “The Dust You Are.”
Recommended Citation
Wegmann, Jennifer Leah, "Canary in a Cage and other stories" (2011). Honors Theses. 2453.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/2453
Accessibility Status
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