The only detail about Aunt Clara described by Steinbeck is that she used to give Lenny mice to pet. Aunt Clara is also described as the enemy towards the end of the book. Another way Steinbeck recalls women is, whenever women are mentioned in the plot of the novel, they are usually in the context of a sexual nature. The ranch hands, including Lennie and George, frequently visit the local whorehouse. This is an example of how women in the novel are associated with promiscuous behavior.
Despite being written during patriarchal Jacobean society, the protagonist is a female, which is was highly unusual in those days. Of course this protagonist is Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play, through Lady Macbeth's actions we are forced to believe that she is evil. In contrast, the novel John Steinbeck tells a story of dreams, hopes and loneliness. We are introduced to a majorly significant and complex character, named Curley’s wife.
As an example two influential short stories will be discussed in depth in order to shed light into the lives of the two authors and their stories. The short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) and Angela Carter (1940–1992) both sideway the same idea; the confinement of women in particular roles and positions in both personal and professional lives, posed on them by patriarchal figures. Toril Moi quotes in her examination of feministic criticism, Sexual/Textual Politics (2002), Elaine Showalter’s idea that “women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike, or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine” (Moi, 2002: 49), which comes across when reading the two stories which are stylistically already very different. It might be so that a feminist reader of both times (there’s some 80 years difference between the two stories) did not only want to see her own experiences mirrored in fiction, but strived to identify with strong, impressive female characters (Moi, 2002: 46), and looked for role-models that would instil positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women as self-actualising strong identities who were not dependent on men (Moi, 2002, 46). The two stories bring out two female characters, very different by position and character; the other a new mother, scared and confused of her own role, and the other a young newly-wed girl, still a child, being fouled by a much older man, mainly as a mark of his authority over women in general.
In Chapters 20 and 21 of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, the author retells the story of the Odyssey in order to convey new ideas of Genre, Gender and Culture. Setting the story in the ever-shifting, unstable landscape of post-modern folly and trickery, Atwood produces characters that desperately reach up from in between the lines, begging for us to pull them out of their coffins. She gives us, and only us, the power to reach down to them. In this strange world of Atwood’s we see genre merge and blend and swap in order to explore the identity of her characters. Gender and culture are not safe in this world either, shifting, shaping and contorting our perception of the story, Atwood guides us down a labyrinthine hall of mirrors.
In The Bloody Chamber Angela Carter reverses gothic traditions so that the males become the victims instead of the females. Consider at least two of the stories in the bloody chamber in the light of this view. The gender constructs of passive, young, virginal woman who are victimised by dominant, strong and wealthy males is a common trait throughout gothic tales including many of Angela Carters short stories from “The Bloody Chamber”. However, Carter received the criticism of “[extracting] latent content, conjuring up a new exotic hybrid” in which she challenges the typical stereotypes of gothic conventions, influenced by her feminist nature. These caused the post modern versions of her stories to adopt dualisms of combining sexual desires with naivety and give alternative interpretations that perhaps the male characters suffered victimisation instead.
Both texts are essentially about human relationships and their complications. Both texts revolve around their major character’s transformation of human nature. While language, dress codes, styles and technology have changed…the texts of Emma and Clueless reveal how human nature over time remains a constant. Heckerling draws on many parallels of character, plot and theme to transform Austin’s classic ‘Emma’ into the modern film of ‘Clueless’. Austin uses the genre of a novel with literary techniques to present a satirical and sometimes humorous view of her 19thC world.
The Power of Lara Croft: Feminist Figure or Sex Object? “Lara is everything that is bad about representations of women in culture, and everything good…” (182). This is ultimately the response that Maja Mikula gives in her essay Gender and Videogames: the Political Valency of Lara Croft to the question pertaining Lara Croft being either a feminist icon or sexist fantasy in the video game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. An answer similar to what her creator, Toby Gard, held in his interview with The Face magazine: “Neither and a bit of both.” For the feminists, Lara has potential to project a positive image and a role model aura; yet she is limited to being a sex symbol. It is a question that is often reduced to trying to decide whether she is a positive role model for young girls or just a perfect and artificial embodiment of a male sexual fantasy for the boys.
Atwood discusses the several genres of fiction that are available in this time and explains how this is not only a time of gender crossover but of genre crossover. By using the comparison she shows how literature has evolved as well as gender relations. In conclusion Margaret Atwood’s speech “spotty handed villainess” is a speech that explores the flaws in extreme feminism, challenges the patriarchal order and examines the intentions of literature and fiction. The speech still has relevance today as it examines gender roles and expectations in modern day
Question: A reading of Letters to Alice changes the modern responder’s understanding of Pride and Prejudice. Discuss with reference to both texts. Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice on First reading Jane Austen, through the didactic literary form of an epistolic novel, serves to encourage a heightened understanding of the values and contemporary issues of Jane Austen’s cultural context. In doing so, it inspires the modern responder to adopt more holistic appreciation for the plight of the characters and the values inherent in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Through the inclusion of relevant contextual information from Austen’s time and didactic assertions of the fictional character Aunt Fay, Weldon implores the responder to accept her opinions on the values and issues of Austen’s context.
These different opinions are present in the personalities of the women characters’ personalities and their actions. This theme is present in both pieces of literature. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Arthur Miller creates the character of Abigail Williams. His creation of Abigail Williams “reinforces stereotypes of femme fatales” (Schissel). By doing this