Cal The antagonist is Cal. Cal is clearly the opposing character. He may seem as is if he is the victim, but all he does is deliberately attack Andre’s mother not understanding her situation and position. According to the play, Cal states “How many of us don’t want to hurt our mothers and live in mortal terror of their disapproval. Our lives aren’t furtive, just our feelings towards people like you” (50).
Earlier in the life of Aunt Tam, “some man jumped” (186) on her and nearly took away her purity. Women are taken advantage of in a “place [that is] deserted” (186) and cannot defend themselves. Society looks down upon them and gives not respect if the women are sexually attacked unwillingly. The story of Aunt Tam displays the gender stereotype that women are victimized and powerless. After Aunt Tam fought and “resisted with every bone” (186) in her body, she runs away, symbolizing the rise of women.
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.
Atwood presents Offred as a symbol of rebellion. Offred lives in a dystopian society where women are treaded as mere objects. They are refused the right to express their emotions, to read, to dress as they please, and to be with anyone they choose. The government is a theocracy which cherishes life and is strictly against abortion. Offred copes with the oppression of her government with small acts of rebellion and the memories of the past.
It wallpaper traps the narrator as she comes to identify with, and later become, the woman in the wallpaper. Her own identity is stripped away by society and is forced to bend to what society wishes the perfect “woman” to be. It acts as a domestic sphere that society had been trying to stuff women, regardless if they fit, into. The wallpaper that traps women and strangles them when they crawl about trying to find a way out is the same as the society that punishes women who wish to escape the domestic sphere and develop as a person with a distinct personality and identity. This mold that the wallpaper and society is trying to force the women living behind its bars to fit into (strangling off the parts that stick out) is what drives women like the narrator into wishing for escape from the prison.
In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the author uses setting to reflect the many developing sociopathic characteristics of Miss Emily Grierson. Her eccentric, antisocial personality leads the reader to believe she has some type of mental defect. The different settings are used in a way to show her mental decline throughout the story. Emily uses the death of her father and her sheltered lifestyle to her advantage by bully those around her into getting exactly what she wants. These attributes are shown her doorstep, in the parlor of her home, and her secret upstairs room.
She is introduced as a temptress or “looker” but later reveals a deeper character in the novel. Curley’s wife is powerless due to her gender. In the book, women are portrayed as troublemakers and Curley’s wife is defiantly included in this portrayal. She is described as a “tart”, “bitch”, and a “tramp”. The workers speak of her, basically, as Curley’s problem that needs to stay at home away from the other workers.
Rape as a form of silencing: The connection between rape and other forms of silencing women in The Color Purple, and the strategies that the women use to rebel against patriarchal power. “You had better never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy” (3). This threatening first sentence in the novel The Color Purple is a “command and a paternal injunction of silence” (Abbandonato: 11). The story is told within the context of this sentence.
When Betty and Mary Warren start to get scared and want to tell the adults about their doing, Abigail threatens them: “Now look you… I will come to you in the black of some terrible night… bring a reckoning that will shudder you… I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down” (Miller 20). This quote tells us that Abigail is showing who is in charge. She has no power at first, but then becomes empowered over the group of girls and maintains that power over them through fear and threats. Abigail, who was once powerless, now has the power to take control of her peers by threatening them to do her
Through a modern perception on the playwright’s female characters, women can be seen as worthless, sexually corrupt indiviudals. Ophelia, often through the words of the men around her, can be partiicuarly perceived in this way. This is evident, with her father, Polonius when he says to Claudius, “At such a time, I loose my daughter to him; Be you and I behind an arras then; Mark the encounter…” (2.2.176-178) Polonius’ language here suggests that Ophelia is more of an animal than his daughter, and he as her father shows her little respect. This reading of Ophelia is also apparent through Hamlet’s language, describing her in unpleasant context or as a “dead dog”(2.2.81). He treats her with little regard and believes that she is a “breeder of maggot” This is also evident when Hamlet says to her, “ I say we will have no more marriages.