Hwawon Bae AP English 3 – 2nd period 12/10/09 IWA #2 Mary Oliver is a poet who is an “indefatigable guide to the natural world.” “Owls” shows us Oliver’s detailed perspective and emotional feeling on the big eyed, flying creatures; her love and respect towards them. Oliver’s style in writing conveys the complexity of her response to nature. Mary Oliver greatly exaggerates reverence to owls. Although they are simply animals, birds to be more specific, she refers to them like they are gods and very elevated. Oliver uses words like glory and delicate to show her thoughts on the owl.
During our class seminar, we mainly discussed the roles of women in society and daily life, in addition to Henrik Ibsen’s life in retrospect and why he wrote A Doll’s House. During the 19th Century, women were seen as weak and feeble, juxtaposed to men. Women had very sacrificial roles that were unequal to the roles of men. They had to support their husband and properly raise their children. At that time, only men controlled the money, ran the businesses, made the laws, and set up moral standards.
These stories, "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen and "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin both depict women who carry a lot of emotion from the beginning to the end of the story. They all react to a time when women in their day should not act in the way that they reacted. The carry the stigma that women is to be obedient to their husbands, or their father if they were unmarried. Nora and Mrs. Mallard reacted to their separate situations in a rational, but independent choice; even if society seemed to disapprove of the way they lived their lives. In the story, “A Doll’s House”, we have Nora living with a secret and trying not to let her husband, Torvald Helmer know.
It brings about the question, what was the intention of the creator of Smurfette? The article states how women are primarily identified by their “femininity” in the movie. It also talks about the wide variety of male smurfs in a McDonald’s kids meal, but only one female smurf: Smurfette. The little diversity in her personality does not uphold the personality of all women, but just the generic female that a typical gender discriminating individual may think of. The article’s outlook on Smurfette as “banal and insidious” gives a new perspective on the kid friendly movie, and delves deeper into exactly what the underlying meaning is.
“He played with me the way that I played with my dolls” (Ibsen 747-748). Nora informs her husband Torvald how her father used to treat her in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House. The idea of women being used as a men’s toys is a common theme in both A Doll House and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Both Nora Helmer and Edna Pontellier, the heroines of these works, are constantly being controlled by the men in their life which leads them to committing their drastic final actions. Nora’s abandonment and Edna’s suicide are the only way that these women are able to assert control over their own lives and take a step out of social norms.
Parents have the power to not make their children eat junk food and to decrease the chances of their child ending up with a long term illness. Children though have a much bigger power in getting what they want and that is called pester power. They constantly bother and annoy their parents and make a big scene in front of the public to simply buy a box of cereal with Dora on it because they saw it on television. So instead of listening to their child screaming they just buy it
Shakespeare appears to portray women realistically according to the Elizabethan era of his time because at the time when this play was written, the ideal woman was subservient and dependent on men. In Hamlet, Ophelia is shown to be a tool for the men around her, senselessly taking orders. Her manipulators range from her lover, Hamlet, to his father, Polonius. Gertrude, the queen, is portrayed as a voluptuous and docile female. It is the job of a feminist critic to study the way women are portrayed in text and identify the stereotypes associated with women, gender roles of women and how women differ from men.
The presence of guilt has clearly and undeniably manifested itself into the nature of family relationships within both plays. In A Doll's House, Nora's guilt in regards to the crime she committed has accumulated so much so that she is almost 'afraid' of displeasing Torvald over even the smallest of issues. Ibsen has made this evident with the continual reinforcement of the theme of secrecy, which indicates the extent of things Nora keeps hidden from her husband in order to be free of his criticisms. One notable example is the motif of macaroons, in which Nora eats them on various instances but 'stuffs' them away as soon as Torvald arrives. Ibsen further hints towards secrecy within the household when Nora plays hide and seek with her children just before Krogstad, the truthbearer of the play, pays a visit.
Social roles are evident in the story from the author’s detailed depiction of each character, as well as defining the role gender plays in their society. As one can see, girls are made to battle for approval through their appearance, and men hold power over choosing which girl to marry. It is a controversial fairy tale that has been scrutinized by modern day society for its teaching of poor values to children, but nevertheless, it is a perfect story to study from a sociological perspective. The Cinderella story begins with a daughter (Cinderella) sitting by her mother’s bedside as she lays sick and dying. Right before the mother dies she says to Cinderella, “Dear child, be good and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you.” Every day after her mother died Cinderella went out to her mother’s grave and wept, and she remained good.
The sacrificial role of women in ‘A Doll’s House’ Ibsen’s play, ‘A Doll’s House’ reflects typical 19th century Norwegian gender roles where men worked and generated income while the women stayed at home caring for the children. Nora, the female protagonist ‘danc[es] and dress[es]-up and recit[es]’ to please and entertain her husband and is expected to act as Torvald’s spiritual advisor and support him. Not all women in society actually fulfilled this role in their household, as the ones from lower social classes and poorer backgrounds had to find work and help their husbands instead. However an underlying role of women at the time that is often disregarded and that applied to, and affected all women in Norwegian society (no matter what their social background) was the sacrificial role they often carried out. This fact is even stated by Nora, the play’s main character, towards the end of the play in Act 3 when she points out to her husband, Torvald, that ‘hundreds of thousand’s of women have’ sacrificed their values, objectives and integrity in order to help their husbands achieve their dreams and perfect life while the men couldn’t even risk their honour to save them.