“How does this add to your understanding of women’s role within society at this time?” In this passage, Curley’s Wife is confiding in Lennie. A few lines into the extract, she asks Lennie “Ain’t I got a right to talk to nobody?”- Which could show that women at this time were told what to do, and whom they were allowed to talk to by their husbands. Women at this time were seen as having a lower status than men. Obviously Curley’s Wife does not love her husband, which is delicately shown when she tells Lennie “I don’t like Curley, he’s not a nice fella.” It is noticeable that Curley’s Wife does not have a name throughout the novel. She is only addressed as “Curley’s Wife” – her real name is never said.
Mrs Linde has had to work hard and was not afforded love and children which she longed to have. She took care of her mother and brother as her own but still desired more. Once her circumstances had changed she set out to acquire that which she had lost. When Mrs Linde is introduced in Act I, we can immediately see she is a woman who has been through a harder time and worked hard to have a meekly accommodating life. She is more insightful of her surrounding than Nora Helmer.
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.
Lady Macbeth and Squealer are both characters surrounded by conflict. Even though the characters could not be more different, they are forced to deal with the conflict created by their superiors. Lady Macbeth, being the wife of the thane, Macbeth, is expected to care for and serve her husband although this is not the case. In the drama Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a strong minded, anti-feminist female who prays to dark spirits asking them to 'unsex me here', she manipulates people into her way of thinking and constantly works to resolve the conflict arousing in her husband's mind. Similarly, in the novel 'Animal Farm', Squealer soothes over any conflicts the animals have between what they know and what they have been told.
This further suggests her need to overcompensate in her image as an attempt to impress the ranch workers and her husband. The reader may infer that Curley’s wife succeeds in her attempt for their attention when slim addresses her as “good-lookin” in a friendly manner, however we notice George stays constantly wary of her and treats her with a similarly brusque air “well he aint now.” Steinbeck uses this short and abrupt sentence to perhaps highlight George’s intolerance of her, and her dangerously flirty personality. Steinbeck prefigures the death of Curley’s wife, later in the novel, also through his physical description of her. This is shown through use of the colour red in her; “rouged lips”; “little bouquets of red ostrich feathers” and “red mules” perhaps meaning her association with the colour red holds connotations of danger and death. Her death is also prefigured in the very first introduction of her entering the bunkhouse “the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off” Steinbeck presents the sunshine as being part of Curley’s wife’s’ ‘dream’ and perhaps being used as a metaphor for the freedom and happiness she longs for, however when the light is “cut
For example, turning down Mr. Collins may demonstrateher as a no-brainer woman among the society at that time. But by rejecting him, this suggests that Elizabeth places her own judgment over social pressures to comfort. In spite of the fact that she has been forced to get married with Mr. Collins by her mother, she persists to her strong position of rejecting his proposal. Plus, although Lady Catherine tries to strong-arm her into rejecting any proposal from Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth gets angry and asks her to get away. Hence, it can be noticed how Austen stresses on the empowerment of women through Elizabeth’s
When Lancelot is going to see the Lady of Shallot, she knows she is stepping into dangerous waters, but still goes along with it. Her image of herself turns so bad, that the basically kills herself and unhappy and lonely woman. After she is dead, Lancelot sees her and only says that “She has a lovely face,” demonstrating that he only cared about her looks and not really her inner beauty. The Lady of Shallot is a round character because she changes throughout the short story. At the beginning, she believes in herself and who she is as a person, but she is lonely.
It is commonly believed that in the ancient time, women suffered from the prejudice that they were inferior and should be controlled and shaped by men. With the resurgence of self-awareness and enhancement of feminism, women have been increasingly independent and eager to assert themselves physically and mentally. Whereas, admittedly, their fragile and instinct side is indispensable with no exception to all human beings, which, in comparison with men, they hold more stress from the whole society and individual. Sylvia Plath's poems, Child and Mirror, are exuberant in feeling and thinking and represent women's deep disappointment by vivid and detailed description. Sylvia Plath's Child depicts her disappointing emotional statement owing to the world in which her child is being raised, and radically it derives from her instinct and affection as a mother.
Maggie was very uneasy around her sister; her mother tells her anxiousness in regard to Dee’s visitation: “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (119). Dee undermines her sister, not always knowing what type of impact she impresses upon Maggie. Dee does not appreciate her sister or her mother, both of which is barely educated and lives in a poor, dilapidated home. In fact, Dee had her own way of making this noticeable in one instance when she stood off in the distance while their first home burned down with her mother and sister inside (121). She does not feel comfortable taking on the old fashioned lifestyle her mother and sister do.
Medusa is told in the first person as a dramatic monologue by a woman who is insecure and worried that her husband is cheating on her. The poem begins: ‘A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy’ and it is this jealousy which has turned the woman into a gorgon and now everything she looks at turns to stone. This feeling of doubt resonates throughout the poem, exemplified in the line, ‘but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home’. Unlike our feelings towards the traditional monstrous character, this poem evokes empathy for the character as she is clearly distressed and suffering. Especially when she reminisces in the final stanza about the time she was young and beautiful, illustrating her complete lack of confidence.