Although critics disagree on how the vastly different gender perceptions within the play are used to portray the theme of women’s power within law and justice, all of their arguments tie back to the fact that the women in the story act as a surrogate for the female society of that time, showing them that they have more power than they realize. Phyllis Mael asserts in "Trifles: The Path to Sisterhood," that the evolution of the women's relationships from acquaintance to co-conspirators illustrates the female psyche. Mael says the she feels the play's "moral dilemma" stresses the inherent differences between male theoretical sense of morality and female sensitive ethical sense which includes "moral problems as problems of responsibility in relationship" (Mael, 282-83). Although the women draw closer to solving the crime as the men, using "abstract rules and rights," make comments that "trivialize the domestic sphere," ethical agreement comes only after Mrs. Peters moves from "acquiescence to patriarchal law" to
The poet gives the impression of repulsiveness when he speaks of his Mistress’s hair and breath (“Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” “If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.”) He uses a tone of honesty when describing her unpleasant voice (which he loves to hear) and the way she walks (“I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound;” “My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.” He uses nature’s beauty to describe her complete imperfection in comparison to nature. Nature is far more pleasing to the eye than she is (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; I snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;” “But no such roses see I in her cheeks;” ) Yet, the tone changes in line 13, when the poets’ words becomes endearing and words of adoration. He is content with the reality of what his mistress is. He is not blinded by love, but that does not make him love her less. He adores his mistress, flaws and all.
The Victorian Era was characterised by very rigid perceptions of gender and class. Brönte’s Jane Eyre challenges these rules. It is, therefore, no surprise that the novel was met with sharp criticism. Most critics of the novel were, in particular, concerned with the apparent insult that it posed to the accepted image of femininity of the time. One review states that the novel proves to be filled with “ruthless rigour [which] must command our admiration, but [is] almost startling in one of the softer sex” (The Christian Remembrancer).
Some people believe that Shahrazad's stories are the beginning of feminism while others not. The work is contradictory since it has extremely misogynist parts and feminist parts. The purpose of this essay is to find out can this text be viewed as a feminist text or not. 1) We can notice Shahrazad’ feminist views in some places. For example, there are many cases in the first several stories of Arabian Nights when women are disloyal and evil, but there are also stories about the wrong of men.
Woolf interprets the contrast between the women in fiction and the real women of the period as evidence that the famous characters are nothing but impossibilities imagined upon by men. She argues that only a female writer could have created characters endowed with women’s hindered possibilities. But perhaps the women portrayed in Elizabethan fiction weren’t just men being conveniently portrayed as women like Woolf claims. Perhaps Shakespeare and other authors created these strong characters as symbols of what women could’ve been, barring the legal and social injustices they faced. Lady Macbeth is undoubtedly Shakespeare’s most vicious and cunning female character.
Photographic Paradox Margaret Atwood's poem "This Is a Photograph of Me" is filled with many paradoxes with a simple theme which is the roles of women at the time of the photograph. The poem depicts the prominent society driven by males and how females are flushed with domestic tasks rather than social creating a threshold that reveals the insignificance of women in the past. This could be interpreted in many ways from a logical stance being, women were the only ones to be able to carry such tasks, or even to a feminists belief of it's an additional reason to the idea of an unequal society between men and women. Take note of the poem's title the diction and syntax is ordinary but the ideal behind is what makes the poem paradoxical. The diction of the author leans more towards describing a continuous situation rather than the photograph.
Elisa was not only trapped by the time period and society’s expectation of her gender role, but also by her marriage. In the short story The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck’s, the main character Elisa ‘s circumstances, point of view and actions were shape by her gender and class. In The Chrysanthemums Steinbeck addresses the issue of gender inequality a number of times, first when Elisa’s Husband Henry knowing about her love and passion for her chrysanthemums stated “ I wish you ‘d work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big “ Literature a Portable Anthology (205). Assuming that her time would be better spent growing large apples at the orchard instead of wasting so much time caring for her chrysanthemums. Secondly, while Elisa was having a conversation with the thinker Elisa asked the thinker “ You sleep in right in the wagon?” The thinker replied, “ right in the wagon ma’am.
He documents a complex woman’s struggle to cope, as she is suffocated by the male dominated society that she has been forced to subject herself to. The following essay will in particular discuss the relationships between the women of Hedda Gabler. Ibsen uses the themes explored in the play to examine and challenge the role of women in society. This is evident through the relationships that Hedda has not only with the male characters in the play but from those that she has with the two other prominent female characters in the play; Thea Elvsted, the delicate love interest of Ejlert Lövborg and Aunt Julie the benevolent aunt of Hedda’s new husband Jörgen Tessman. Both women are contrasting representations of Hedda.
Here, Austen as the omniscient narrator is directly manipulating the reader to perceive that a man’s judgment and intelligence is greater than that of a woman’s and also sets the readers up to distrust the character judgement of Mrs Bennet throughout the novel. This idea of women lacking knowledge and having a bad sense of character judgement is also displayed in ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’. Fowles internalises Charles inner thoughts, as ‘to whether Ernestina would ever really understand him as well as he understood her.’ This suggests that Ernestina is easy to read, perhaps a typical woman such as Mrs Bennet, who is perceived as never truly understanding a
Life Without Love or Independence? In Jane Eyre and Hard Times, women are portrayed in a negative light throughout their respected novels; females are represented as being second class citizens to their male counterparts, and are unable to have a thought of their own. The traditional views of Victorian era gender roles are both enforced through the outside portrayal of the women that do not fit the mold of the ideal Victorian women yet is also subverted by the feelings the women feel when they left their bonds, or the consequences of living in the suffering of the gender misogamy they endure over their lifestyle. By expressing the men through traditional Victorian masculine characteristics such as being powerful and dominant to their meek and loyal female counterparts, the novels establish early on the barrier that the protagonists struggle with merely being female. In the novels, women are treated like second class citizens when compared to men and are expected to be content with this Victorian idea of patriarchal domination.