Allie Dille Mrs. Kangas English 10x Hour 4 October 25, 2010 Clare Boothe Luce, an American playwright, journalist, ambassador, and U.S. Congresswoman once stated, “Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed”. Women have forever been seen as the “weakest link” of society and are rarely given the voice they deserve. Sometimes, women feel as though they must go to extremes to be heard in society due to their lack of power. The women of Salem in The Crucible by Arthur Miller feel as though they must go to great lengths in order to have an influence in their community. The lack of power that women have in Salem sets the stage for hysteria.
Annie Keene Mr. Cummings English 9H 29 October 2013 “The Lottery” In the short story, “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson focuses on a small town whose villagers conduct a yearly lottery, in which the person who draws a piece of paper containing a block spot on it gets stoned to death by the remaining villagers. Although within this tradition there involves a human sacrifice, the villagers remain obedient to the society there were raised in, and contribute to it. It is through the loyalty of characters Old Man Warner and Davy Hutchinson, the setting of an old fashioned town, as well as the symbols of the black box and black spot that display the primary theme that people born into a society follow its traditions, reluctant to change, for they
Summers tells the crowd all the rules. Every time he said a name, the family heads came up and draw a paper. Nobody was allowed to look at this paper until everyone went. Mr. Summers then finishes saying all the names. Everyone says that Mr. Hutchison got the paper and Tessie states that the lottery wasn’t fair because he didn’t have enough time to choose the paper.
But Walter begins to see a new side to his great uncles when he stumbles on an old photograph of a beautiful woman hidden away in a trunk and asks Garth who she is. FFor 14-year old Walter, his great uncles’ farm in rural Texas is the last place on earth he wants to spend the summer. Dumped off by his mother, Mae, in the middle of nowhere with two crazy old men and the promise that she’ll come back for him, Walter doesn’t know what to believe in. Eccentric and gruff, Hub and Garth McCaan are rumored to have been bank robbers, mafia hit men and/or war criminals in their younger days. The truth is elusive, although they do seem to have an endless supply of cash.
We wonder if Tessie would have spoken up if it was another family was chosen. What started as a normal day becomes a ritualistic death ceremony. “The Lottery”, may have many meanings it could express different themes and ideas. Most importantly The Lottery discusses conformity and rebellion. The towns people live their lives believing that the day of the lottery is a normal day and that sacrificing one of their will help them have a good crop season; and rebellion in the way that Tessie stood up for herself in front of the whole town to try to stay alive but did not succeed.
Education, employment, and politics are all barriers where women were held back from the full development of their faculties. In the 19th century women were denied political equality, robbed of their natural rights, and handicapped by laws and customs at every turn. Trained to dependence with no assets of their own women were left to bear the attitude of being less intelligent and able to make political decisions than men. While they have freely accepted a deferential position to men they have also refused to look toward a future of tradition and domesticity. The campaign for women’s suffrage had a sincere beginning
Shirley Jackson was the author of “The Lottery” and she showed death by community. Once a year the townspeople gathered together and took a piece of paper from a black box. The first round of the drawing is just for the head of the family. Whichever man has the dotted paper then it is on to everyone in that family taking a draw. Now whoever has drew the paper with the dot on it is the one who gets stoned to death by the townspeople.
All that chaos contributed to the male chauvinism we see in our current society. Women had to handle that change without any moral support. It is also important to remember the important role women took in both world wars. A “Jury of Her Peers”, demonstrates how hard marriage was for all women who did not enjoy their relationships. Women in those types of relationships were treated as objects instead of being valued as women of freedom which represent intelligence, compassion, love and beauty.
Day after day she was forced to burden the cruel thoughts of others opinions of being inferior because she was a women and a women with her own thoughts at that. Taking place in 1630, societies thought upon women as the subsidiary sex and not respected in the way modern day women is. The job of a puritan women was limited, care for your house, your husband, and your children. If a women stepped out of those bounds her life became hard and wicked. The only women who were relieved of these bonds were widows who had the privilege of being able to sue or be sued, owning their own home or land and disciplining children and servants.
She believes that feminists and feminism attacks marriage and women who believe in marriage and simply being a good mother and wife. An example O’Beirne uses to express these attacks is an excerpt from a book call “The Future of Marriage” by Jessie Bernard. In the excerpt Bernard says that marriage simply holds women back: “Being a housewife makes women sick.” “To be happy in a relationship which imposes so many impediments on her, as traditional marriage does, women must be slightly mentally ill.” O’Beirne says that the feminist movement did nothing but confuse gender roles and weaken the family structure that was established. I personally am not quite sure which side to take so I’m sitting on the fence. I believe that feminists and their movement did do a great deal of good for our society as a whole.