Carol Ann Duffy describes Medusa as a bitter woman, who has been betrayed by the man she loved. The poet creates the reader’s reaction to medusa’s character through a direst address to the reader. Rhetorical questions like ‘Are you terrified?’ and ‘Wasn’t I beautiful?’ bring the reader unto immediate contact with Medusa. Furthermore commands like ‘Be terrified’ and ‘Look at me now’ are used to build fear and allow the reader o experience her rage. This is just one method used to create the reader’s reaction to Medusa.
“… How I wish I might see him and his bride in utter ruin, house and all, for the wrongs they dare inflict on me who never did them harm!” (55) Medea resolves to avenge her self and make her husband Jason suffer more then she has in order to punish him. While Medea speaks to the Chorus of the role of women in their society and their great disadvantages she is seen as a heroine willing to avenge the wrongs done to women, which is a rarity during the given time period “Of all creatures that have life and reason we women are the most miserable of specimens! In the first place, at great expense we must buy a husband, taking a master to play the tyrant with our bodies…” (56) Medea is undoubtedly a feminist which emphasizes her strong and independent character. Her tendency to violence and ruthlessness however is evident at the start of the play when the nurse is prompted to predict that Medea may do harm to Jason’s new bride out of jealousy and harm her children because they remind her of Jason “I’ve already seen her glaring at them like a bull, as if she wanted to do something awful. I’m sure of one thing, that anger of hers won’t die down until someone’s felt the force of her thunderbolt.
"She'd brooded on her loss, misery had brewed/ In her heart, that female horror, Grendel's/ Mother, slain his father's son/ With an angry sword. " First this quote refers to Grendel's mother and how the loss of her son impacted her. The physical description of both Grendel and his mother represent them as monstrous looking, tempting to ignore that they're very real emotions. Grendel's mother has been cast away from humanity, but also that she didn't do anything to precipitate this. The poet remains reader of how understandable Grendel's mother's response is.
Although it was just one unfortunate couple so terribly disturbed, they may represent the thousands of unnoticed tragedies that occur. The poem depicts one tragic death paralleling it with the loss of love and familiarity. The poem is from a woman, whose husband had recently died, as an expression of her sentiments. I believe the poem was a monologue and the woman was speaking to herself in a loss. It could also be interpreted as a funeral speech because she makes strict orders to aid her mourning.
Examine the portrayal of women and their roles in the poems you have studied in the ‘scars upon my heart’ anthology. In the poem ‘The jingo woman’ written by Helen Hamilton, she talks about her dislike of a woman who feels it is her duty to punish the men who do not go to war, asks her how she can do this with no experience of war. At the beginning of the 1st stanza she describes why she hates the Jingo woman so much, then carries on to question the jingo woman as to who gave her the right to judge these men. She says “the judgement of your eye, the wild, infuriate eye” this suggests that the Jingo woman is a bit crazy, making her view on the men seems wrong as her judgement cannot be trusted. Hamilton goes on to explain why her dislike of the jingo woman is so strong; “you make all women seem church duffers!” she implies the Jingo woman is seen as unintelligent, criticising why her opinions are wrong and that this view of her is being applied to all women.
Poor Curley’s wife! Curley’s wife is a victim. She is a victim because she suffered through a lot when she was young or before she was married and also after her marriage.In this scene Curleys wife was flirting with lennie and she said “I get Lonely. You can talk to people but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad.
Look at ‘Havisham’ and three other poems. Compare how the poets treat the theme of revenge. ‘Havisham’, a poem about a woman who has been jilted at the altar, is a description of and woman’s anguish and hatred for her fiancée, which leads to her thinking of specific acts of revenge. In this way ‘Havisham’ is dissimilar to ‘The Laboratory’ in which a woman who has been dumped by her lover actually acts upon her hateful and bitter thoughts and goes on to kill her ex’s new mistress. In this way, ‘My Last Duchess’ is also unlike ‘Havisham’ in which the narrator too acts on his anger and kills his wife for revenge.
Raluca Gherzan 211571395 gherzanm@yorku.ca Stephanie Hart EN 1001: Introduction to Literary Study November 17, 2011 Rebelling against Societal Restraints The two female protagonists in Scorched and Antigone are given the archetype of the madwoman—Nawal as a cause of her silence and Antigone because of her “crazy death wish” of wanting to bury her brother. The two women feel that they have been wronged and in the end, find an escape. In a patriarchal society where men rule over women, the only choice the two female protagonists see, which could potentially lead others to empathize with them, would be to rebel against societal norms and to disregard human laws. Their motives for rebellion are explored in their character portrayal, as well as through the themes of identity and fate versus free will. The first motive for the protagonists’ rebellion is expressed through the theme of identity.
Medea Discussion Question #2 I actually think that Medea is the victim compared to Jason being the villain, although not entirely. I think this evidenced during a conversation between the nurse and the tutor, “Nurse: Oh, what an enemy Jason’s proved to those he should have loved! Tutor: What human being is not?” (Lines 15-16). They are both shown to have had their feelings of love with near absolute abhor. I think Medea deserves pity in certain situations, such as in the beginning and the events leading up to the murders, when she is shown crying out in the beginning of the play, “The pain of misery!
My chosen monologue is spoken by Juliet to her nurse and can be found at Act 3, Scene 2 lines 97 – 127. In this scene, on hearing the news that Romeo killed her cousin, Tybalt, Juliet is initially angry, but her love for him resurfaces and Romeo’s banishment overshadows Tybalt’s death. There are a lot of conflicting stresses in the first few lines; opposites with contrasting arguments to show Juliet's opposed states of mind. Juliet feels conflicted because her love for Romeo clashes with her love and sense of duty to her family. She asks why Romeo killed her cousin, calling him a villain, but realises Tybalt’s death is less significant and she grants Romeo the license to kill her cousin when she realises that her cousin would have killed Romeo had he not been killed instead.