SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION ANALYSIS FREE

Leland wanted Viv to be present in his life even when he didn't necessarily need her around because he respected and valued her opinions and ideas. Leland wanted Viv even when Viv wished Leland would leave her alone. She would love him and care for him whenever he needed her, but when he didn't need her he wouldn't want anything to do with her. Hank needed her to make him feel good about himself. Viv felt as though she was living her life through the needs of others and not by the wants of others. The story of Viv in Sometimes a Great Notion is a great example of why we should stop degrading women.

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION ANALYSIS FREE

When Viv makes the decision to be a women, free of the degrading Stamper family, in a final act of defiance she cuts her hair short proving that she wishes to go about things her own way. Viv liked it short, but in trying to please her husband she kept it long for him. In a final attempt at freedom Viv leaves the Stamper family to move back to where she lived as a kid, where she lived by her own rules.įrom the story we learn that Hank always liked Viv's hair long.

But as the novel progresses Leland becomes more and more like a Stamper in his treatment of women and Viv loses faith in being respected in the Stamper household. Viv struggles with her loyalty to Hank but eventually her desire to be accepted as a woman gets the best of her and she spends the night with Leland who treats her according to what she wants. Throughout the book Leland is able to get Viv to like him, however Viv knows that to sleep with him would be very, very wrong. When introduced to the story, Leland Stamper, Hank's half brother and a upstate university type, shows us that he believes that both men and women are equal and thus he treats Viv with more respect than the rest of the Stamper men give her. He believes that Viv is just a person who is supposed to take care of him, as a loving wife. Hank Stamper, her husband who is a rugged, dim-witted, logger, treats her as if she were a maid and pays no attention to her wants or needs. We are able to see this clearly with a contrast between how two different men treat her. Throughout the novel we see that Viv continues to be unappreciated and undervalued in the house because she is a woman. Soon, however, after marrying Hank, she learns that Hank treats her in a way that makes her only feel as if she is needed and not wanted. When they first met he treated her well, he wanted her. When she first met Hank Stamper we see that she wishes to rebel from marrying a normal man which is why she married Hank. Throughout the course of the book w e learn that when she was younger, Viv used to be a free spirited young girl who believed in her own dreams and played by her own rules. One of the characters and narrators largely involved in the story is Viv, the wife of one of the logging men, Hank Stamper. In the novel Sometimes a Great Notion we follow the story of the Stamper family and their logging business amidst a union crisis.

Sometimes a great notion analysis