To Rhoda’s amazement she later finds out that Gertrude arm had actually been injured
After that event Rhoda found it extremely hard to talk to Gertrude as the guilt started to rear its ugly head, furthermore more than ever after Gertrude comes to Rhoda and shows her the Withered Arm, She’s says “It looks almost like finger marks’ my husband says it is as if some witch, or the devil himself, had taken hold of me, and blasted the flesh” Rhoda then suddenly feels the guilt emerge all over her body “Rhoda shivered. That’s’ fancy, she said hurriedly” The author uses the word shivered to show the degree of guilt that Rhoda was feeling at the time and the word hurriedly as she wanted to change the subject quickly to at avoid further guilt. Over a period of time Gertrude’s arm gets worse and she becomes obsessed by it. She spends a great deal of time experimenting upon her ailment with every remedy she comes across. This injury made her become so obsessed. To make this worse for her horror Farmer Lodge begins to go off her because of this fault in her arm. This shows the selfishness of Farmer Lodge and this shows there was no real love involved in this relationship since I believe real love is not only just though peoples looks. With all this horror with her relationship with Farmer Lodge Gertrude becomes so disturbed and depressed that she goes so far as to see a strange man, known as Conjuror Trendle that is believed to have powers to cure strange illnesses. He informs her that only way to end this illness is to touch a hanged body neck with her withered arm. She in fact went and did just this.
As the story unfolds you are then let on to know that the body was actually the body of Rhoda’s son, which had been wrongfully hanged for a crime which he didn’t commit. Subsequently there’s a shock, Gertrude’s blood had been turned too much after touching the neck of the dead son of Rhoda, to this serious degree that it caused her to die.
In the next question I will be examining the questions presented to me of Love and Jealousy, I will be examining all the aspects of jealousy and love featured in the story. I will write about the background of jealousy and love, and how some of these feelings had arisen.
At the start of the novel Withered Arm, we are told of Rhoda’s affair with Farmer Lodge.
Soon after Rhoda and Farmer Lodge affair ends, it is clear that Rhoda had not been able to move on and is still left with feelings for him, powerful feelings. The love for him had been soured through rejection and it had become a fixation as she couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Farmer Lodge didn’t want her anymore, she is reaching for something that is unattainable.
Where as Farmer lodge had been able to move on and find him-self a new woman called Gertrude. Rhoda started to show a vast deal of jealousy. It reaches the extremity that this obsession for the love of Farmer Lodge where she uses her own son to inform her of Farmer Lodge’s new women, As soon as she hears that Farmer Lodges new love is a young and very beautiful women Rhoda becomes exceedingly bitter and twisted. Deep down inside her she knows she is no real competition for Gertrude, She knew her best days of youth were far spent and suppressed. Farmer Lodges new wife had been playing on Rhoda’s mind so much that it had caused her to form a night-mare, this vision was of Gertrude being in her room, and the jealousy of Gertrude’s exquisiteness had been too much for her to take and caused her to fling this image of Gertrude off her bed. She later discovered that Gertrude’s arm had been badly injured. Rhoda had been so obsessed with hatred that the obsession had caused her to injure the arm of Gertrude. This is why jealousy and love can become powerful emotions it can make you carry out actions you wouldn’t do normally.
These emotions of hate had all arisen due to the love she felt for this man but could not have. Love is so powerful that basically you would go to the end of the world for them and jealousy can be destructive, and the two combined can bring about almost anything. Rhoda may have done this act to make Gertrude less desirable to her husband and perhaps and make her self more in the running for Farmer Lodge’s love.
It is not clear whether there was actually love involved; when Farmer Lodge married Gertrude. There is doubt that love is really the reason why they were attracted to each other to form this bond; Farmer Lodge may had married Gertrude for her prettiness and on the other hand Gertrude may have married him for his wealth.
Gertrude is the one the key characters in Withered Arm; she brings a lot of jealousy, and shows an excellent example on how love and jealousy and can change people and make them perform actions that wouldn’t generally do. Gertrude was once married to Farmer Lodge, when this relationship ended it was clear that she wasn’t over him.
