Medieval women are typically considered to be young beautiful ladies who are damsels in distress, awaiting their knight to come rescue them. “The Canterbury Tales” reveals that this notion is far from the truth. Refuting this idea in the novel is The Wife of Bath. She is overtly manipulative by using her exuding sexuality. Her husbands, all five of them were teased with sex, but they had to provide luxuries that she desperately craved for.
Machado way of expressing his ironical approach to writing gives the women characters a dilemma attitude especially when he infers that the best way to define love in the world is not worth one kiss from the girl you love(pg 60). Allende on the other hand foreshadows much of the sensuality of the stories in the Prologue, as the Carle and Luna rest after love making, and in the painting that is their images, their skin gleaming moistly and lying in intimate complicity. Onetti portrays love and women as geared by unreasoned sexual desires and so women presents a distorted image of men, but Allende depicts women as the main cause of suffering irresponsible men inflict left to rear the children in
When we first meet Curley’s wife, Steinbeck makes her appear very flirtatious and dangerously beautiful. Steinbeck does this by giving her features that are very atrocious but yet lures you such as ‘full, rouged lips’, ‘red fingernails’, and ‘red mules’. The word ‘red’ symbolises many associations with sex, lust and seduction. Another quote that would question the reader would be, ‘She’s a jailbait.’ From this quote alone, it evokes the reader of suspicion that she could be the ticket to jail as well as being an object that would foreshadow later in the book. In addition to the previous paragraph, we also know that Curley’s wife is a married woman, a possession of Curley’s.
In her story "The Storm," Kate Chopin illustrates the sexual constraints of marriage during the late nineteenth century through symbolic representations witnessed during an affair. The storm itself is a literal symbol for the fear, desire, and damage that are all associated with the act of an affair. While Calizta's husband and son are out at the general store, she indulges in her own carnal desires and takes away a positive experience and new outlook for having done so. In the beginning, Calizta's young son, Bibi, when speaking to his father, Bobinot, describe his mother as being a worrisome woman. As the storm begins to approach, the two began to banter about what she will be doing during the storm.
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. Yet she is afraid her feminine qualities will prevent her from achieving the murder of King Duncan. Which would gradually lead to her mental breakdown. Regicide was considered a mortal sin in Jacobean times, one God couldn't forgive. Whereas Browning’s protagonist in The Laboratory sustains her feminine qualities this is reflected in the line “The colours too grim” in which she is referring to her dislike of the colour of poison and that it needs to be 'brightened' up in order to convince her victim to drink it.
Both women are contrasting representations of Hedda. From the opening of the play her [Hedda’s] relationship with Aunt Julie is a strained one. Hedda views Aunt Julie as a symbol of what she herself loathes and could at the same time could quite easily become. Aunt Julie epitomises the idea of the domestic, dutiful woman with no true purpose of her own. She instead finds her purpose through the lives of the male characters and the arguably mediocre success that Tessman has had.
The very first descriptions illustrate her initial animus by describing it as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Perkins 41-42). This is significant for it reflects the narrator’s own presence—she is committing an artistic sin during her marriage by having her engaging imagination and her need to compose. Her husband, John, dislikes this, and as a result, the narrator deliberately feels stifled and has to obscure her writing so that her husband will not know. The narrator is characterized as having a nervous state and is overly protected by her
Within The Bloody Chamber, the protagonist brings about the attention of female sexuality to the reader through the loss of her innocence “I remember how…country of marriage” she is experiencing a journey from her innocence and individuality to being the possession of a man. The “unguessable country of marriage” is the female moving into an unknown journey making her vulnerable; however, she expresses a sense of excitement thus making her not wholly the victim. Animalistic connotations such as “his kiss with tongue and teeth” present the male as forceful and all powerful, and his behaviour towards her shows her as a victim of his actions consuming her. Similarly, in the Snow Child the young girl can be seen as victim as “I wish I had a girl as white as snow… the child of his desires” displays how the count is wishing for purity and youthfulness, his title bestows an aristocratic status over the young girl that allows him to have complete control over her. This may be a comment on how patriarchy shapes women in the image of men’s desires.
Zelda and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night are rich socialites seduced by living in the exuberant lifestyles they were accustomed to enjoying. Zelda Fitzgerald and Nicole Diver also are very dependent on their husbands for support of their lavish ways and their mental stability. In the end, both women are plagued with mental illness that is crippling, and forces both husbands to be their support system. Fitzgerald utilized the heroine Nicole Diver to symbolize his relationship with his erratic wife Zelda in Tender is the Night. In the beginning of both the Fitzgerald’s and the Diver’s relationships Zelda and Nicole are rich socialites.
His blatant disregard of his own life when it comes to lady watching further demonstrates that he will do whatever it takes to look or enjoy the sight of other women. Hence according to the short story, the author conveys that women are being objectified as something a man can risk his own life just to get a look at her. “She’s not so pretty,” Frances said. “Anyway, not pretty enough to take a chance of breaking your neck.” This quote seems that Frances is trying to justify for her husband why he should not waste his time or risk his life for that woman. There is a hint of jealousy in her tone.