Written in two distinct periods, the Victorian era and the post war period of the jazz age , Elizabeth Barret-browning’s sonnets Portuguese an F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby explore the values of freedom an security through individuals who subvert the established moralities of their respective times. These differing contexts of challenging the conventional roles of a women within a patriarchal society and the moral decline of the hedonistic 1920’sand the downfall of the American dream attempt to establish the conflicting ideologies present. Elizabeth Barret browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese explores the subversion of the conventional and idealised traditional courtly love present within the Victorian era. BB alludes to ancient Greek poet Theocritus in sonnet 1 “I though once how Theocritus had sung, of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years.” “The sweet sad years the melancholy years.” From here we see BB’s manifestation of desire to experience such feelings as authentic love. Her newfound love with Robert browning made her feel insecure, BB reversing the role of the conventional women in sonnet 14 she demanded Robert to love her for who she is as a person not by her physical appearance “if thou must love me let it be for nought, except for loves sake only “By doing so, BB gains a sense of security and freedom to love truly as she challenges the values of the Victoria era and its goal to be the ideal women.
Beauvoir’s analysis of love is ultimately the comparison of the two genders. Within the differences of the genders authentic and in inauthentic love. De Beauvoir labels her theories on two forms of love. Inauthentic love, she believes that love is used as a liberator, where the woman takes pride in her matters over the one she loves (2010). Her love is inauthentic in the way she loves, due to viewing her lover, being godlike, this is inauthentic in the sense that no man is godlike.
The romantic love triangle between the three characters arose more conflict when Fowler states,“I should have realised how saving a country and saving a woman would be the same thing to Pyle,” because it shows that Phuong was just like a country in need to Pyle but all she wanted was some security. The manner in which Pyle and Fowler struggle over Phuong represents the approach that Britain and America employed in their fight to ‘save’ Vietnam from Communism. Pyle’s intentions toward Phoung, although similar in some cases to Fowler’s, differ greatly at the same time which is the main reason this conflict is arised. Fowler uses past tense because it was stated at the end of the
Mary Wollstonecraft: Tradition, Feminism and Contemporary Society It is interesting to compare Burke’s argument on “tradition” to Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas in her work, Vindication of the rights of Women. While Burke is a theorist who upholds the idea of tradition and inheritance, Wollstonecraft’s ideas suggest that men have inflated egos because of the titles that they have inherited as she writes “such, indeed, has been the wretchedness that had flowed from hereditary honours, riches, and monarchy, that men of lively sensibility have almost uttered blasphemy in order to justify the dispensations of providence” (Wollstonecraft, 12). In a sense, this critique of Europe’s male-dominated society sets the tone for her entire work as she also combines her argument with her critique of Rousseau’s work and even labels him as a “fool” (Wollstonecraft, 13) due to his misogynistic writing. In Burke’s Reflection on the Revolution in France, Burke argues that tradition is one of the most important aspects of society. To completely change tradition would result in chaos as he even foreshadows the downfall of the newly installed French government.
Although, highly engrossed in medieval concepts of patriarchy, Romantic poets like S.T Coleridge, John Keats’ fraction of work silhouettes range in the attributes of Feminism. They are; liberty of thought, freedom of expression and equality in social hierarchy with men. The role of women in society, in early 18th century and before, portrays a dismal picture as far as their liberty, social status and gender equality is concerned. Medieval culture, deep rooted in religion, had kept woman at bay from the mainstream economic, political and societal activities. She was a threat to the male chauvinism and was condemned as a weaker, inferior sort of being.
The reason, he says, is that "I contain multitudes." Whitman's work embodies two ideals which seem to oppose each other: the first is his notion of the self, the second is his idea of the tribal, or collective, spirit of America. Whitman sings odes to the individual, and lifts up self-discovery as the highest ideal of the individual. But the self, inconsistent on its own, must also battle with the needs of society. It is both physical and spiritual and Whitman attempts to reconcile these differences.
The Great Gatsby is a modern novel charting the failures of the Jazz Age. Discuss in reference to appropriately selected parts of the novel and provide relevant contextual information on 1920s America to illuminate your understanding of the novel’s thematic concerns. A modern novel is a novel that disobeys and rejects the old “Victorian” style of writing, which was traditionally based around the necessity of respect for authority and usually had a religious coda, which ended with a clean-cut moral lesson. A modernist novel contravenes this linear, moral structure and instead conveys a comment on social mores. A modern novel’s purpose is to expose social injustices instead of indoctrinating readers with rose-tinted views of society.
Studying John Donne Q/: Comment on Donne’s different attitudes to women in any two of his poems. John Donne is widely known as the major metaphysical poet of the 17th century who contributed much in the escalation of the flow of literary transformation through his unique meshing of unusual unions, called conceits, and his varying attitudes towards womenkind. In “The Sun Rising”, Donne portrays his beloved to be so important and special that he does not want to lose sight of her for even an instance, as a result of a wink. This attitude contrasts that of “Go and Catch a Falling Star”, where he is cynical and untrusting of women, refusing to believe that a true woman exists. “The Sun Rising” is perfectly described as an aubade: a poem about lovers separating at dawn.
Love is perhaps the most actively sought moral objective of one's life. And though marriage is often thought to be the logical consequence of love, it is Oscar Wilde's contention in his satire, The Importance of Being Earnest, that love begets bliss and marriage thwarts this course of bliss. Algernon Moncrieff spends very little time falling in love and the rest of the time striving toward engagement. Wilde demonstrates through him that once one becomes intent upon achieving a goal, the individual's motivation becomes a matter of action rather than truth. Algernon is no longer driven by a moral objective; instead, he becomes intent upon achieving a societal standard.
The eye and the heart are but organs that make up the body. Physical desire and emotional attraction are just aspects of the overlying concept of love.This is Shakespeare's final point: both physicality and emotional attachment combine to form the powerful force humans know as love. The opening quatrain of "Sonnet 46" sets up the conflict of infatuation versus true love, acknowledging the classic view of a battle between opposing forces, but swiftly moving beyond such a black and white portrayal of the issue. The first line of the poem seems to say that Shakespeare, like many others, sees infatuation and spiritual attraction as