In a topic-driven, well-developed paragraph, create a character sketch of Ada in Cold Mountain. According to Charles Frazier, who is Ada? Describe her using evidence from the text to substantiate your claim.
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Callie Brothers
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Character Sketch: Ada
October 2, 2015
Ada Monroe, the female protagonist. As the novel starts, it is written from her story line. Ada and her father moved from Charleston to Cold Mountain. She has been there a total of six years, living her life in alienation and lonesome havoc. Ada is a very smart young lady. “…and at Monroe’s insistence had been very educated beyond the point considered wise for females.” (30) Ada is a very strong willed woman, yet tremendously weak. She wants to succeed, but yet she wished she had died before her father, although that isn’t the way nature works, parents die, then their children.
Ada has a very open heart. Charleston branded her with the idea of being better, but Ada was smarter than that. It was the idea that she wasn’t looking to move away, it was that she wanted to fit in, to be part of that mountain in which her father made her call home.
Ada and Ruby have an interesting relationship. Ada sees the kindness in Ruby, even if she states the fact that everyone will empty their own nightjars. Ruby longed for equality and so did Ada. Ruby wanted to fit with the idea that she wasn’t below anyone, Ada wanted to fit with the idea that she wasn’t above anyone, no matter how educated she was.
Indeed, Ada was a lady of longing for a place. Was it Black Cove? Could this place really be what she was meant to do, although she had no earthly idea of what she was to do with it? Ada was a woman without self-pity. She hated the idea of someone cooking for her, or taking care of her like Esco and Sally did. Ada Monroe is a woman of education, yet a woman longing with desire to be a part of the place she called home, Black Cove.
Sadie Wyant
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ENGL 3353
2 October 2015
Ada Monroe
In Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain, Ada Monroe is a woman raised in Charleston who, now alone, cannot adequately fend for herself. Her father insisted that she be educated, according to her, “beyond the point considered wise for females” (5 pages in to the ground beneath her hands). She is skilled in many things, though none of them deemed useful to her. She can express her own opinion on politics and literature, and can speak some French, Latin, and Greek. She also is able to do needlework and play the piano. Ada also can, and enjoys to, paint and sketch. All of these things, however, are not useful considering Ada lives on a farm alone since her father’s death. She has gotten to the point where she only looks for ways to pass the day, whether it is pleasantly or profitably, or not. She explains that “her will to do was near gone” (1/3 into the ground beneath her hands). She is not able to fend for herself, and cannot even find eggs in her yard to eat. She could almost be considered pitiful or pathetic. However, though she is incompetent at providing for herself, her education has given her a sense of sophistication and intellectual independence. She sees no need to be married, and when the thought arises that marriage could be one of her options of sustaining herself, she quickly dismisses it. She says, “the thought of returning to Charleston as some desperate predatory spinster was appalling to her…All she could foresee was eventually finding herself saying to someone that she loved him, when what she would mean was that he happened to have turned up at a particularly needy time” (3/4 through the ground beneath her hands). Ada has rejected marriage proposals before, and claims to have done so because the men did not meet her standards of intellectual capacity. Even though Ada has Ruby come to her and begin to teach her how the world works, she is still alone, and is stuck in the soft, unworked mindset that her father allowed her to be in.
Amanda McMahon
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ENGL 3533
2 October 2015
Character Sketch: Ada
In Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain, Ada Monroe is well educated, isolated character who grows as a result of the people in her life. Ada finds herself moving from Charleston to Cold Mountain on the whim of her father, whom she "would follow to Liberia if he asked me to do so" (41). Ada's character is revealed through how she relates herself to those around her. While still new to Cold Mountain, Ada and Monroe visit the area's residents and Ada is wary of them at first because "their Charleston friends had expressed the opinion that the mountain region was a heathenish part of creation... where man, woman, and child grew gaunt and brutal, addicted to acts of raw violence with not even a nod in the direction of self-restraint" (42). After a few awkward run-ins, however, the mountain natives become Ada's friends and she grows in character as a result. Ada is a young woman "educated beyond the point considered wise for females" (22) and others believed that this "had shaped her into a type of monster, a creature not entirely fit for the society of men and women" (50). This point is proven through Ada's few awkward encounters at the beginning of the novel with the Swangers and with Ruby. Ada second guesses her actions when around others, like when Ruby says that both of them will empty their own night jar and "Ada started to laugh but then realized this was not meant to be funny" (52). Through this same encounter, the author reveals that Ada still considers herself a bit above the other people on the mountain Ruby's demand of equality "seemed from Ada's point of view an odd one" (52). The author also shows that Ada is superstitious. Esco persuades Ada to lean backwards over the well with a mirror so that she can view her future. While Esco doesn't really believe in this ritual himself, Ada believes that she sees a vision of a figure walked either toward or away from her. Ada clings to this vision and eventually sees it come to fruition as Ruby as a "figure come walking up the road" (51). Even through the first few chapters of Cold Mountain, Ada's character grows significantly due to the people she encounters.
Ada Monroe, a protagonist in the Charles Frazier novel Cold Mountain, displays a desire for independence but no real competency to even learn how to survive on her own. Ada is out of place in her new life because she dresses and behaves as if she still living in Charleston. Even when she lived in Charleston, she was often excluded because she was so much more educated than her contemporaries, as well as her brash manner. This is evident by the opinions held of her: "As a result of such behavior, it became not an uncommon opinion among their acquaintances to think that Monroe had shaped her into a type of monster, a creature not entirely for the society of men and women" (65). Ada has never been interested in courting, despite not being capable of the independence required to live alone. For all of her education and abilities, she is a woman of leisure in a land where no one has that luxury. It is difficult for her to even survive: "She had discovered herself to be frighteningly ill-prepared in the craft of subsistence, living alone on a farm that her father had run rather as an idea than a livelihood" (31). Regardless of how generally strange she may be, Ada has been sheltered and petted too much by her father and is now struggling to learn how to survive with the help of a girl who has always thought only of survival. Ada must have known that she would likely not marry, since she rejects all of her potential suitors, and her father could not possibly outlive her in his condition, so she should have prepared herself more for the lifestyle of an independent woman. Instead, she stubbornly passes the days by gathering whatever vegetables she can find and the few eggs her chickens lay around the yard despite having the opportunity to stay with a family that could have helped her learn these survival skills. Ada is eccentric and complicated, yet somehow still resilient.
ReplyDeleteKelsey Wheatle
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ENGL 3353
25 October 2015
Ada Character Sketch
According to Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, Ada Monroe, the protagonist in the story is a educated, mannered, well-dressed, and dependent character whose sheltered life leads her to find joy and pain. Throughout the beginning of the novel, it is evident that Ada's education has sheltered her from the real world. An example of this is Ada's conversation with Ruby when she says, "I can talk about farming in Latin. I can read French. I can lace up a corset, God knows. I can name the principal rivers in Europe, just don't ask me to name one stream in this country! I can embroider but I can't darn! I can arrange cut flowers but I can't grow them!"(77). Ada's education and her in ability to adapt to manual labor made her a unsuitable woman in the Cold Mountain community. However, when Ruby comes along, Ada realizes that she desires independence, but she in clueless on how to gain it. Soon, her interest in herself turns into interest in the community, and her farm on Cold Mountain. Although Ada does gain some independence throughout the novel, she was never alone because she was able to depend on her dad, the farm, Ruby, Inman, and her daughter. Frazier makes Ada into a character who grows to find a new security throughout the novel.