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.
While analyzing the reasons of the triggers of The Trojan War, the fact of “woman” cannot escape from the attention of reader. As a result of the beauty competition that had not been mentioned clearly in The Iliad, goddesses took their sides in The Trojan War. As a matter of fact, it is the real reason of The Trojan War which is “love of Helen and Paris”. Homer’s Iliad includes strong female characters with no doubt. For instance, Hera and Athena are respected as the most reputable and powerful women in the book.
‘She had full rouged lips and wide spaced eyes, heavily made up,’ which suggests that the author wanted us to presume the worst of her before she’d even spoken and we set ourselves up for her to be a character we feel a lot of resentment for. The fact that her ‘finger nails were red,’ along with ‘red mules’ and ‘red ostrich feathers’ shows us how Steinbeck’s use of colour goes well alongside her sexual appeal. The colour red is used in two ways. One is a strong representation of love or a form of attraction, the other is the inner appeal of sexual preference and seduction. The intention of making the reader perceive her early on as a ‘tart’ foreshadows that something later is going to happen and there could be trouble.
One of the most powerful themes in the story that especially resonates with me is gender inequality. This essay effectively communicates unfair treatment of women in China and the amount of a support that women gave to the patriarchal system because punishment came from both: men and women. Punished women did not simply accept the treatment but acted in accordance with their culture: instead of standing up for themselves, they perpetuated the patriarchy by torturing other women. On the third page of the essay Kingston says that “to be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough” (p.396). This passage effectively points out that women were considered physically and mentally inferior to men; it also implies that their job could be easily accomplished by men as if women are imperfect, mindless beings that are incapable of completing a task.
The beauty standards of white Western culture, the sexual abuse of Pecola by her father, and Pecola’s low economic status have multiplicative effects on Pecola and all aid in her progressive alienation from society as well as her fall towards insanity. Deborah King states that “the experience of black women is assumed to be synonymous with that of either black males or white females” (King 45). It is mistakenly granted that either there is no difference in being black and female than being generically black or generically female. The intensity of the physical and psychological impact of racism is very different from that of sexism. For example, the group experience of slavery and lynching for blacks, and genocide for Native Americans is not comparable to the physical abuse, social discrimination, and cultural denigration suffered by women.
Women’s rights have come a long way in the past 100 years; nonetheless, it is no secret that women are still subject to gender prejudice in society. Women are equal in intelligence to men; however, women are still shockingly paid less than men, and are often victims of physical and mental abuse from cruel men. Margaret Atwood is a well-known feminist author who often writes about the oppression of women in society. In her mysterious poem “This is a Photograph of Me,” Atwood utilizes several aspects of nature observed in a photograph to symbolize the dominance of men over women in our oppressive society. She demands society as a whole to see through the stereotypes placed on women and observe the true importance and significance women have in history and our present lives.
In many myths involving Aphrodite, it is said that she was vain, ill-tempered and easily offended. She is one of the few Greek gods to be married, but was frequently unfaithful to her husband, Hephaestus. Aphrodite preferred Ares, Adonis, Anchises and more. Even though she was unfaithful to her husband, she was protective of her son, Aeneas. During the Trojan War, Aeneas was hurt and Aphrodite came to help him.
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).
The final line “Who could not say, ‘Tis pity she’s a whore?” can be seen as directed towards her and so she is blamed for everything that has occurred. Throughout the play she is seen as quite powerful and headstrong by refusing many marriage proposals and being quite stubborn in doing so. However, she is reduced to a weak being however upon dying which is a culmination of her passions. It is perceived that women are a danger to men and to society as a whole and so Giovanni’s actions are to be blamed not on himself, but on Annabella because of the beauty she possesses. Giovanni states that Annabella’s “lips would tempt a saint” thus showing the corruption her presence inflicts upon even the supposed innocent of men.
The dictionary definition of sexism is the discriminatory or abusive behaviour towards members of the opposite sex. Sexism is a term that was coined in the mid-20th century. It is the belief or attitude that one gender or sex is inferior to, less competent, or less valuable than the other. This area of ‘politically correct language’ is introduced by the avoidance of such words like ‘mankind’ and ‘chairman’. The arguments over words and language which, is said to denigrate women or ‘make them invisible’ has been going on for a long time, and from the feminist point of view some progress has been made in the widespread acceptance of, for example, chair or chair person, instead of chairman and in the accepted use of Ms instead of Mrs or Miss.