In a male-dominated society, this was unheard of. Through these books, she expressed her ideas, which women came to listen to. Mary Wollstonecraft is remembered chiefly for her book “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792), a polemic treatise that deemed marriage “legal prostitution” (“Mary” par 2). Mary’s book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, was a type of guide for women who were thought lowly of by their husbands or were abused. Mary was also a contributing editor and founder of the Analytical Review, a radical London newspaper (“Mary” par 2).
Module A: Comparison of Texts Individuals challenge the values that permeate time, in a manner that is relevant to their society. This rebellion is evident in William Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew and Gil Junger’s film 10 Things I Hate About You whereby Katherina and Kat initially disregard the social expectations for women of their context. The composers portray this comparably, using textual integrity so the women’s misunderstood, shrew-like behavior is suited to their culture and society. This in turn, provokes both characters to experience a transformation of self and their values. In The Taming of The Shrew, Katherina challenges the values and themes of courtship and marriage, dismissing the female etiquette when meeting her suitor.
Fitzgerald openly shows his opinion that women generally have low moral qualities, and demonstrates this by the actions and speech illustrated by the three main female characters in the novel; Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson. His portrayal of them appears to expose a disturbing, misogynistic view of women in the 1920’s. Others would say this is not the case and his approach to how he presents the women has a much deeper meaning therefore implying that Fitzgerald could in fact be a feminist. In my essay I will discuss how I feel that Fitzgerald’s experiences with women are mirrored throughout the novel and undoubtedly display his general ‘underlying hatred’ for the female kind in the Jazz Age through his constant implications of the negative characteristics women possess. Like the central character of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination; he once called it "a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life."
She focuses of the improvements to language equality, for example the introduction of the term ‘Ms’ for a woman who does not wish her marital status to pre-determine her as men have with ‘Mr’, and the changes to gender neutral profession names such as ‘firefighter’ instead of ‘fireman.’ However the English language is still subconsciously sexist. Sarah Mills, author of Language and Sexism, brings to attention the lexical gaps between male and female terms, for example there a large lexical gap for insulting male terms, whereas there are many for females. If a woman is promiscuous she can be negatively referred to as a slut, whore, skank, slag, hoe, tart, sket or harlot. However, there are not nearly as many insulting terms for a promiscuous man, and those that there are seem playful and even positive, such as man whore, pimp, player. Lexical asymmetry can also be related to this problem, for example the connotations for an unmarried man, a bachelor, are usually positive, associated with a man living a carefree and independent life, however the connotations for an unmarried woman, a spinster, are usually negative, implying that the woman has been unable to find a partner.
Gibson Girl. (2010). In Encyclopedia of American Studies. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/jhueas/gibson_girl Hanson, C. (2011, November 26). Suffragette stockings reflect women's fight for the right to vote [Newsgroup message].
The industrial revolution, particularly in England at this point (where the revolution first gained momentum), served to weaken the position of women in society in a number of ways, for even the women not immediately drafted for labor in the factories, would be inevitably repressed by the institutionalized and newly refined forms of degradation, that came along with the “rationalization” of society (the “civilization” of middle-class women, she argues, degrades them much more than laboring women). That the state of women in 1790 is the product of circumstance and imperfect education, rather than nature, is what Wollstonecraft attempts to prove (and successfully so). Wollstonecraft begins her argument with one simple, logical premise: That the intentional and artificial elevation of one man over others breeds malaise and corruption in such individuals, and
In both poems gender conflict is demonstrated between through the emotion of betrayal in a relationship. For example in Les Grands Seignurs she talks about “little woman” which could show the great depth of thought about how she feels towards men. The word “a toy, a plaything” suggests that’s once she got married she has became powerless and feels like she is a toy, this shows her betrayal as when you get married you expect the marriage to be fantastic and not to feel like a toy. In contrast, Medusa also demonstrates this when she says “wasn’t I beautiful?” this Is effective as I can infer that she feels insecure about her looks. It also suggests that she misses her past through the use of a rhetorical question which makes the reader feel sympathy for her.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/390215455?accountid=32521 Gray, C. (1995, Nineteenth-century women of free thought. Free Inquiry, 15, 32-32. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/230133893?accountid=32521 Deats, R. (1998). The universal declaration of human Rights/the women's movement. Fellowship, 64(11-12), 3-3.
Print. Davis, Rynetta Sherri. “Beyond Labor and Marriage: The Political Work of Black Women’s Inter- And Intra-Racial Friendship In American Literary History, 1857-1911.” 68.4 (2007): 1457. MLA International Bibliography. Web.
That is, what must be taken into consideration is that literature in ancient Greece was an indulgence of the aristocratic male and thus a history of the role of women in Ancient Greece depicted in Hellenistic literature is largely subjective. The overwhelmingly chauvinistic tone of The Eumenides reveals that the women of Ancient Greece were victims of the dominant patriarchal perception imbedded in classical Greek tragedy. Apollo’s claim that the mother “is just a nurse to the seed” (Aeschylus 260) completely demeans the position of women in ancient Greek society. This colossal suppression of women is a rather common element of Hellenistic literature as is illustrated in the Classical Greek tragedy Hyppolytus by Euripides where the protagonist Hyppolytus rhetorical question “Oh Zeus, whatever possessed you to put an ambiguous misfortune among men by bringing women to the light of day?” (Euripides 616). In this tragedy Euripides also explores the misogynistic ideal of not needing women to conceive sons, suggesting that women in Ancient Greece were regarded as inferior and insignificant.