In The Taming of The Shrew, Katherina challenges the values and themes of courtship and marriage, dismissing the female etiquette when meeting her suitor. In the Elizabethan Era in which the play is set, a woman allowed herself to be wooed and won over by men who courted her. Katherina flouts this moral behavior in the scene whereby she meets Petruchio. Rather than responding to his request to marriage in the acceptable way of being passive and congenial, Katherina retaliates in a juxtaposing manner. Her boisterousness and hostility is epitomised in the stage direction [She strikes him].
In their day and age these characters would be judged by many factors including social and cultural backgrounds, crimes committed and personal traits. Both of these writers seem to conjure their audience into a state where it compels them to relate to certain characters. Lady Macbeth certainly loses or suppresses her feelings of cowardice. Throughout her appalling invocation to the spirits of evil to “unsex her”, proving her ambition to attain her goal. In Jacobean times women were seen as inferior and even in the Victoria era, thus she required external forces to crush her conscience to allow her to fulfil her ambition.
Edna’s character abandons her role as a mother and wife; she breaks moral values and standards because of the intimate love affair she shares with Robert, therefore leading to the struggles she faces in the novel where she failed. Moral characters say more about a person than the background of an individual and play an important role in one’s life. When disregarded it can bring shame and conflict to a family differentiating a person to be good or bad. The concept of good and evil differs from one person to another, but certainly, a married woman who loves another man apart from her husband and acts upon that love is sinful. When the story begins Chopin’s description of Edna makes it look like she is the antagonist of the novel, when Mr. Pontellier was sitting on the
Dale Disney Professor Pucciarelli English Composition: Section 64 21 September 2011 FICTION OR DESCRIPTION There are various techniques to write and share stories. Which technique is best to use seems to be subjective. In both Joan Didion’s essay “On Keeping a Notebook” and Patricia Hampl’s essay “The Dark Art of Description” illustrates this fact clearly. While Joan Didion uses rhetorical questions, personal anecdotes, and imaginary facts to record her life experiences, Patricia Hampl uses imagery and vignettes in her writings, but based on the fact that Patricia Hampl uses less falsehoods in her stories, her style of writing is more appealing to the reader. Joan Didion uses rhetorical questions in her notebook to engage readers into the story of her notebook writings.
This indicates that there is not a strong bond between Richard and his potential wife, rather he is marrying for convenience, she is the ideal wife for his situation. In immediate contrast is Hermia and Lysander’s conversation. The lover’s are talking directly to each other, expressing the love that they have for one another, along with the despair of their situation. Unable to legally marry in Athens they mourn that “the course of true love never did run smooth,” indicating that true love often faces hurdles. The exchange between the two indicates closeness between them,
In this time many modernist authors and artists sourced to change and challenge society’s expectations and their inflexible, harsh conventions that not only restricted free thinking but repressed the ideas of change in their beliefs. The idea of gender roles and the role of women in a patriarchal society are challenged and questioned in Hedda Gabler as Ibsen confronts the audience with the isolation and plight of women that was created out of extreme patriarchy during the Victorian period. The destructive consequences of society’s barriers and women turning away and escaping from established gender roles is also presented in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening with the two spheres of men and women being challenged with their desires. The rapidly changing world, socially and technologically, brought many people to a dilemma on choosing to stay in their traditional superficial world, or to welcome the new. The superficiality of life is constantly contrasted with the differing social structures within society in Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway with her continuing fear of aging and the new that constantly rocks her world.
Cecily tells Lady Bracknell how she is engaged to Algernon and after much questioning gives her consent to the marriage. There is a common theme of love in this section with both Algernon and Jack revealing their true love for Gwendolen and Cecily. One aspect of comedy that Wilde has perfectly placed in this section is Algernon’s contradiction of views on marriage. This links with earlier in the play, when he expresses how there is nothing romantic in a proposal of marriage; whereas now he has found love, his view has completely changed. Wilde constantly contradicts the direct speech from the characters.
But Austen did not approve of it. In her novel Pride and Prejudice gives preference to a marriage which is based on love. In her novel, Austen presents several contrasting attitudes to marriage.The five Bennet sisters - Elizabeth, or Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Mary and Kitty - have been raised well aware of their mother's fixation on finding them husbands and securing set futures. There are mainly four attitudes to marriage are presented in the novel: the marriage for money, marriage for the satisfaction of bodily desires, marriage based on the physical look and marriage for love. Marriage of Mr. Collins and Charlotte: At first, “marriage for money”- this attitude is presented through Mr. Collins and Charlotte.
How is the theme of marriage explored in Pride and Prejudice? The importance of the theme of marriage in Pride and Prejudice is clear right from the famous opening sentence. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ Of course, Austen is not really being serious here; she is being ironic. In fact, the opposite is true – a single woman without a fortune wants a husband. Exactly why people married, and what they wanted out of marriage is explored in the novel.
First examining marriage in Pride and Prejudice, the prime example of it in this novel is that surrounding the Bennett family who are not wealthy people, and there is nothing that Mrs Bennett wants more than to see her daughters get married to wealthy men. She presents this desperation at the very beginning of the book when she is eagerly mentioning the fact that Netherfield Park has been let, and she is said to be speaking “impatiently” when her husband does not return this eagerness. This is shown when she says “you do not know what I suffer”. This suffering may be as a result of her own marriage (which disappoints her) or the fact that she wants each of her five daughters to find wealthy husbands. She states in the first chapter that the “solace” of marriage is “visiting and news.” This explains why Mrs Bennett is so desperate for her husband to visit Bingley and find out more about him and to introduce him to their daughters.