Description In Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey, Lillian Eileen Doherty shows us that the attitude of Odysseus, as well as of the Odyssey, is highly ambivalent toward women. Odysseus rewards supportive female characters by treating them as privileged members of the audience for his own tales. At the same time, dangerous female narrators--who threaten to disrupt or revise the hero's story--are discredited by the narrative framework in which their stories appear. Siren Songs synthesizes audience-oriented and narratological approaches, and examines the relationships among three kinds of audiences: internal, implied, and actual. The author prefaces her own reading of the Odyssey with an analysis of the issues posed by the earlier feminist readings on which she builds.
If you are hoping for the highest grades (B and above) you must make comparisons between the characters in the poems and Lady Macbeth. Intro All these texts contain examples of central characters whose minds are unbalanced. In Macbeth the longer nature of a play allows us to understand why Lady Macbeth mind becomes increasingly disturbed, but in the brief dramatic monologues of Browning we have no background to their disturbance. Another crucial difference between the Shakespeare and Browning texts is that we see the character of Lady Macbeth from the outside whereas the disturbed character is the narrator in all 3 Browning peoms, so we only get his/her perspective on events. The basic difference between a dramatic monologue and a play also means that different techniques are used to convey the disturbance.
Marie de France does this to criticize and combat the societal expectations and inherent inequalities in Norman England. The poem begins by Marie immediately introducing and defending herself as a writer. She declares that in her culture, People should praise anyone who wins admiring comments for herself but anywhere there is a man or a woman of great worth, people who envy their good fortune often say evil things about them. (5-10) This introduction reflects the negativity her society has against female writers. Where Marie de France comes from, many people disagree with women having power through literature.
Whether woman are perceived as weak and feeble victims, or sinister seductresses (or not included at all), writers of this genre present this gender to the audience as either of these options which makes us question how innocent are women? Or are women significantly absent and therefore not an influence at all? Popular texts which introduce these aspects in this genre include; Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein; Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus and The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. It’s been argued these writers portray woman in different ways which outset onto society they’re role as a whole: Gothic literature can have an inclination towards female writers but also accumulate a patriarchal nightmare in which violence is constantly sanctioned on the female body. Mary Shelley is significant herself; being the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first feminists; who lived in an era of women’s writing that openly condemned patriarchy.
Moreover, the contrast of Odysseus’s story with Agamemnon’s gives the reader insight into the character traits of each, exposing their strengths as well as flaws. Aside from appreciating them as human beings, the audience is also able to understand why the fate of Agamemnon was death, whereas the fate of Odysseus was triumph. The story also helps illustrate many Homeric symbols and themes, including glory and fate. The parallelism of the stories’ plot lines and characters are the literary tools Homer utilizes to convey these ideas. Glory, or kleos, is a recurring theme in Homeric epics.
She shows how women can only be categorised as either an angel or a whore. It shows the way that women can only be judged at the time. She also frequently alludes to the “bad” women in literature to show how women could only be categorised in those binary opposites like Lady Macbeth or Eve. She uses rhetorical devices to explain how bad women are needed to disrupt the static order which is Patriarchy. Atwood also shows her opposition to the extreme feminism that existed in her time where feminism was influencing the creation of literature at the time.
In what ways is your appreciation of both texts enhanced by a comparative study of ambition on Frankenstein and Blade runner? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ridley Scott's Bladerunner both project dystopian images of society and morality, propelled by the main characters' ambition and egotism. It is through this that an audience’s appreciation for texts is enhanced. These complex texts can be seen as a pair that differs in context, seeing as they are separated through time. Frankenstein driven by romantic imagery and set in historic context, that analysis the European divide in society perpetuated by superficiality.
1 Modestly Appropriating Conventions: Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley and the Literary Sphere of Early America Marian Schlotterbeck English 255 T.S. McMillin 17 May 2002 Copyright 2002 Marian Schlotterbeck 2 Contrary to many people’s perception that the exclusion of works by women in the canon of Early American Literature reflects the absence of female authors, we can reflect today that women in colonial times did in fact write a great deal and their writings span a range of genres: from polished verse to personal diaries. In addition to the texts that were published in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ‘rediscovered’ manuscripts, diaries, and letters of many women have since been published in the twentieth century. Taken
Though, when actually examined, the females portrayed in both literary works do show signs of bravery and rebellious spirit, which represents the actual mind of authors, they are still oppressed by the patriarchal society to a large extent. In Frankenstein, superficially, most female characters are portrayed as “heaven-sent” angels (Shelley, 34). The soul of them is like “a shrine-dedicated lamp” and they are “the living spirits of love to soften and attract” (38), which are fully consistent with the image of women in people’s minds in mainstream society in the 19th century (Sunstein, 4). Nonetheless, the weaknesses of them, which are used by the author to criticize the unfairness of the society, cannot be neglected. The two main female characters in Frankenstein: Caroline and Elizabeth are carefully analyzed in this essay, and from Frankenstein’s narration of them, we can see the author’s deep thinking and criticism about the unfairness of society.
Fitzgerald openly shows his opinion that women generally have low moral qualities, and demonstrates this by the actions and speech illustrated by the three main female characters in the novel; Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson. His portrayal of them appears to expose a disturbing, misogynistic view of women in the 1920’s. Others would say this is not the case and his approach to how he presents the women has a much deeper meaning therefore implying that Fitzgerald could in fact be a feminist. In my essay I will discuss how I feel that Fitzgerald’s experiences with women are mirrored throughout the novel and undoubtedly display his general ‘underlying hatred’ for the female kind in the Jazz Age through his constant implications of the negative characteristics women possess. Like the central character of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination; he once called it "a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life."