Analyzing the gender roles of ‘Beauty’ and ‘Beast’ in Madame de Beaumont’s fairytale entitled “Beauty and the Beast” illustrates why I view women as the civilizing agent in their relationship with men. Madame de Beaumont, through her story “Beauty and the Beast,” showed her view of sexism and the typical gender role of both males and females at that time. She used ‘Beauty’ to describe ideal women while she used her sisters to show the cynicism in women. On the other hand, she used ‘Beast’ alone to show two personalities that men may have had. As seen in the plot, one may observe subservience in ‘Beauty’, dominance in ‘Beast’, and arrogance in Beauty’s sisters.
She explores the use of the female predator and the prejudice surrounding this. The Male Protagonist – men become the ‘other’ in the text. Explores the macho stereotype men have had to fit – Wolf-Alice helps to reveal the count’s true self through caring for him. Explores male violence towards women – rape, sado-masochism, power relationships. Explores sexual aggression and illicit desires.
burned in agony" (150) as her love runs to his reward of innocence, she chooses the door in which the tiger will appear, only because this jealous princess would not want her lover to be happy with another woman and have him kept to herself, dead or alive. So in this land of the semi-barbaric king, of simple choices that lead to either life or death, what happened to the lover—life or death? His life was at stake, and yet he vested absolute certainty in the princess. He trusted her to decide which was best for him, and she picked death. She did it for herself, largely, so
Such myths, Beauvoir explains, are derived trough literature and Social beliefs. The construct of the “essence of women” have been grossly misconstrued by a male dominated world. In her essay, she strongly argues about the two-sided opposition of the “self” and “other” through an existentialist perspective, which is through the experience of the human condition. She boldly announces that the male has appointed himself as “self” and the female as “other” in order to gain dominion and authority to call the female inferior, passive, or weak. I will take an in depth look at the contradictions and myths that men have created of women as outlined by Beauvoir.
Both Isabella and Lucrece are characters built around an idea of chastity. How far do ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ question the notion of chastity and its definition of women? Both central female figures in ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, Isabella and Lucrece respectively, are mainly defined by their chastity as it not only consumes their choices in regards to their own fate but it also empowers them as they can influence other male characters . Chastity in preservation and loss, therefore, is presented as an influential political and social force by Shakespeare both in performance and poetry and women become defined by this power they hold. Chastity, for both Isabella and Lucrece, is considered the primary concern of their character and Isabella, particularly, has an aversion to losing this chaste title, and this is epitomised by her claim that “more than our brother is our chastity”(II.iv.184).
The film dramatizes these issues so that even if we do not get complete answers to our questions, we do believe that the characters were also tormented by these questions and acted from deep-seated fears, obsessions, desires, and anger. All of this unfolds in a context that analyzes how we identify gender and how we differentiate between the masculine and the feminine. The central character is Teena Brandon, who dresses as a male and uses the name Brandon Teena. On one level, Teena becomes Brandon by dressing as a male, but there is much more to her impersonation than this. She also consciously acts as she believes a boy would act and does a good job of finding the right attitude, the right gesture, the right stance to convince others that she is a male.
Pope's gender ideologies deflate the power, intelligence and beauty of women while supporting man's violence and belittling of women. The symbolism of the lock of hair can be viewed with two different types of gender criticism, one that defies the patriarchy and one that feeds into the power of the patriarch. In Ellen Pollak's essay, "Rereading The Rape of the Lock: Pope and the Paradox of Female Power," Pollak maintains that the lock of hair is a phallic symbol and therefore it is cut off to reduce Belinda to femininity. The symbolic loss of the Belle's much-coveted virginity is realized in the form of a castration or literal cutting off of that body part of her associated most strongly with those 'masculine' attributes of the coquette - her power, skill, and pride (Singh 472). Julie Kristeva, author of "Women's Time" while not accepting Pollak's theory of castration believes that castration is unique only to men: "castration results in the creation of a sense of separation which is symbolized by the penis"(Singh 472).
For this analysis I have chosen Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct and I wanted to talk about the similarities and differences of the two, focusing on the powerful female character, the male protagonist and the female gaze. First of all, what we do observe in both movies is that the female characters, Alex Forrest and Catherine Tramell, are strong women and are the ones who lead the action. Although traditionally men hold power, in these two films the roles change. Everything happens in a particular way because the women want to or because their actions trigger certain events. As Sherwin observes in her article Deconstructing the Male: Masochism, Female Spectatorship, and the Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence, and Basic Instinct Dan, the male character from Fatal Attraction is unable to fight against Alex and all his intents fail.
Helene Cioux: The Laugh of the Medusa The Laugh of the Medusa is about how women shouldn’t be afraid to express themselves through literature. The article is written from a feminist’s point of view. According to the article, women are afraid to write in a world that is controlled by men. I chose a paragraph from the article to summarize: “Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs.
Woman are always portrayed as sex objects, waiting to be taken advantage of by men. This is extremely harmful to a woman because it makes her seem weak. However, the issue of body image and gender roles are not only a problem for females. Males also have a certain set standard of how they should look, and the characteristics they should embody. Schooler notes that “Men‘s strength and prowess are emphasized in the [media]” (Schooler, 745).