Once Tituba confessed to witchcraft, Abigail joined in by accusing others of witchcraft so the negative attention would not be on the girls. Once Abigail started accusing people, Betty woke up from her “infinite” sleep and joined in along with the other girls. When the trials began, it was Abigail who kept the charade going by pretending that the accused were casting their spirits upon her and the other girls in the court room. Abigail led the girls by crying out in pain, pretending to see things and shivering. When the affair with John Proctor almost came up, Abigail was quick to turn on whoever went against
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.
March 2011 Woman's Study Book Report Wicked The following is an analysis of the book "Wicked - The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West", by Gregory Maguire and its connectivity of the novel with the concepts and teachings of the Woman's Study Course. Perhaps most stirring passage in the entire book is the following: "Perhaps, thought Nanny, little green Elphaba chose her own sex, and her own color, and to hell with her parents". We all know that in reality, selectively choosing of our gender, sexuality and race is not available. However, we know all too well, that a person's traits can entirely establish the person's strata in life - a life of poverty, a life of riches, a life of class and society, sexuality, or a life of oppression. This strata - is often times not a choice that is given to people to make in the real world.
The Civil Rights Movements and The Salem witchcraft trials Since the witch trials times in Salem and before, fear and persecution have acted on people’s life. It doesn’t matter if the person was one of the involved or not, it affected indirectectly everyone around. Arthur Miller in the Crucible showed a perfect fear and persecution scenery using the Salem witchcraft trials as and example. Arthur Miller used the Crucible to represent the Mc Cartheism, when the communists were been “persecuted” and everyone was pointing fingers to the enemies. As in Salem, it started with a small portion of people trying to accuse people for personal reasons and ended with a big mass of ruined lives without any evidence.
Response Paper #1 September 23, 2010 Female Sexuality Sexuality is often a word that when heard people often feel uncomfortable talking about, or believe it should just be kept to yourself. However, female sexuality has been a huge theme in history, women have battled discrimination, sexual tourcher, been labeled with derogatory names and have been seen as objects rather then people. In the novel Dracula, female sexuality is a major reoccurring theme. Taking place in Victorian England women were given two options set by societies firm expectations, she was either an innocent virgin or a marred mother, anyone who didn’t follow these guidelines was labeled a whore. In the novel we are presented with very different examples of female sexual expression and are brought with the idea of the “new woman”.
Pearl symbolizes evil in the story by representing God's punishment of Hester's sin, symbolizing the guilt and the scarlet letter that controls her behavior and defying Puritan laws by being cheerful and associating with nature. Pearl is a greater punishment then Hester’s “A”. First, Pearl represents God's punishment by her mocking and nagging of Hester. This is shown throughout the novel she sometimes seemed to her mother as almost a witch baby (Hawthorne 88).Second, Pearl is a baffling mixture of strong emotions with a fierce temper and a capacity for evil; with Pearl, Hester's life became one of constant nagging, and no joy. This is proven when Hester remarks to herself, "Oh Father in heaven - if thou art still my father - what is this being which I have brought into the world" (Hawthorne 89).Thirdly, Pearl represents the sins of both Hester and Dimmesdale.
As early as Scene one, we learn of the motives behind Abigail’s actions as she tries to get the girls to agree on a story to protect herself. She uses the threat of violence and their belief that she might know some real witchcraft, to keep them in line, “Let either of you breath a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you... i can make you wish you had never seen the sun come
(70-71) In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack explains that the witches are associated with fate: Except in one phrase (I.3.6) and in the stage directions, the play always refers to the witches as weyard - or weyward - sisters. Both spellings are variations of weird, which in Shakespeare's time did not mean "freakish," but "fateful" - having to do with the determination of destinies. Shakespeare had met with such creatures in Holinshed, who regularly refers to the supernatural agents with whom Macbeth has dealings as "the three sisters," or "the three weird sisters," i.e., the three Fates.
Nathaniel Hawthorne has a very impressive way of using his mastery of irony to portray the truth of the characters in his remarkable novels. The Scarlet Letter, a novel taken place in sixteenth century about a young woman named Hester Prynne who wears an “A” on her chest as punishment for her adulterous actions with the minister of the town, Arthur Dimmesdale. Hawthorne uses the names of characters or their abilities to stand out from their true qualities. Puritans consider the town is what people have built up and the forest is the true goals and standards of the people. In the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne conveys several different types of irony – not just in the characters but in the symbolism and true meanings as well.
The appropriation of dystopian symbols in texts is a key way writers and directors get across their personal, contextual message. The burning of women with her books in Fahrenheit 451 symbolises, through the biblical and historical illusion of witch burning, that society finds free thinking and education an act of heracy. This symbol is appropriated in equilibrium with the burning of marry, is the biblical illusion of the innocent virgin marry. This key scean of women burning in both texts is either the tipping point as in the case of john Preston or the beginning of awakening