The content of any given text offers an insight into the human experience of that time, for example The Sonnets from the Portuguese and The Great Gatsby offer an insight into the human experience of two alternate times that were shaped by the historical context of Victorian England and the ‘Jazz Age’ of the 1920’s respectively and the value systems associated with each. The sonnet sequence The Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) composed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the modernistic novel The Great Gatsby (1925) written by F. Scott. Fitzgerald, both illustrate how the historical context of a time period affect the human experience and therefore influence the content of a text. The two composers both represent the universal desire of love through alternate text types involving language techniques such as metaphors and figurative language. Through a comparison of how the authors depict this theme the responder gains an insight into the different human experiences of each time and the composers.
This essay will argue and explain the parallel lives of Luke Beaton and Lulach MacGillecomgain. It will compare and contrast the two protagonists and argue that they are more similar than you initial thought. In the novel, Macbeth And Son, Shakespeare has presented to the world a particular and generally accepted view of the Scottish King, Macbeth. There are two narrative strands to this novel, one set in Alba (Ancient Scotland) and modern day Australia. The story begins by helping us, the readers, to compare and contrast the two parallel lives, Luke and Lulach, with Lulach waking up to the “sound of bagpipes”, and Luke in the present time, “gazing of the limousine”.
This essay will argue that In both texts motherhood and marriage is shown to be a hindrance to both women’s careers and their female identity. The theme of marriage in The Bell Jar and Top Girls Is shown to demolish the female identity of the women. In The Bell Jar Plath uses Buddy as a symbolic figure to show how even the “clean” men of that time were only out for one
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Fitzgerald both discern their exploration of the universal human concerns of love, hope and morality according to their own contextual influences. Notably one of the best known piece of American prose fiction, Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, critiques the hedonistic lifestyle of the roaring twenties and the failure of the fruitless promises of the American Dream to highlight the illusion of love and hope. Fitzgerald ultimately develops a pessimistic point of view on the materialistic and superficial society presented in the 1920’s, which prevented the ideas of pure love. Elizabeth Barrett Browning however, through her sonnets from the Portuguese, challenges the established patriarchal values of her time by subverting our expectations through the manipulation of the Petrarchan sonnets. Elizabeth Browning presents an idealistic and an optimistic view towards love and hope through sonnets I, XIV and XLIII.
TO LOVE OR NOT TO LOVE? “The most interesting aspects of texts written in different times is seeing the difference in what people value.” Possibly one of the best known piece of American prose fiction of its time, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, develops an ironic but ultimately pessimistic point of view on the materialistic and superficial society presented in the 1920s which prevented the ideas of pure love. The form of a prose fiction does not have a structure which makes the novel unique. Sonnets from the Portuguese, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, presents a more idealistic and optimistic view about love and hope. She portrays her personal voice through the use of sonnets, specifically Petrarchan.
Shakespeare uses language, structure and dramatic devices to convey and create the effect of strong emotions through his ambitious characters, which is similarly portrayed in laboratory with the narrator’s strong and bitter emotions towards her husband’s infidelity. These characters can also be compared to the narrator of Porphyria’s lover whose intense emotions of love become too overwhelming for him to handle. Both Shakespeare and Browning show Elizabethan society as patriarchal, where men were considered to be the leaders and women subservient. Women were regarded as the weaker sex not just in terms of physical strength, but also emotionally. Women were also depicted as kind and caring as well as being the perfect mother and housewife, on the other hand men were portrayed as brave, strong and loyal.
Abigail Adams believed women should be educated and be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husband instead of being companions. Three reasons why men shouldn’t be given unlimited power are because women and men should have equal powers, education and property rights. Would you want to live a life where the husband treats you as a slave and he’s the master? Or where women are ignored and do not have any property rights? While John Adams was attending the Continental Congress to support American independence, Abigail Adam asked her husband to “remember the ladies” (pg.
As the context is altered from Jane Austen's 19th century novel, Emma to the late 20th century film, Clueless directed by Amy Heckerling, the initial attitudes towards the existence of patriarchy in society remain of concern but adjust to their new backgrounds. Austen’s novel, through Emma’s self-improvement shows the notions of the importance of marriage, as a subjectification of women and also uses the characters of Emma to challenge society’s patriarchy and Mr. Knightley as the male archetype to whom Emma must impress, whereas Heckerling transforms these ideas to the importance of dating, and Cher’s need for Josh’s approval, with the remaining of both their requirement of improving themselves. Emma makes a statement on the notions of female independence, and subtly confronts the values of her 19th century patriarchal context. Women’s roles in society at this time were solely marital and maternal, with writers such as Rousseau stating the idea that women must be subservient, dutiful and devoted to the men in their lives. The book firmly projects the patriarchal society as the context: “A young woman, if she falls into bad hands may be teased…but one cannot comprehend a young man’s being under such restraint.” This language, although satirical reaffirms a main attitude existent in the context of Regency England.
Her poetry intentionally brings up questions of Otherness and forces readers to reevaluate “their relation to her ‘Otherness,’” thus, both reader and author come into a dialogue over the text (47). Using the ideas of the Enlightenment, Wheatley sought to make her readers rethink “the prejudices of tradition” (57). By seeking Phillis Wheatley we find “a powerful perspective on how we can seek out each other in our own moment” (62). Henry Louis Gates, Jr. provides a clear explication of how Phillis Wheatley fit into the debates over race and racial equality in the eighteenth century. The phenomenon that Wheatley became in her day is indicative of the debates over human’s natural rights versus nature’s placement of them.
Women are under a constant pressure to adhere to roles that are specific to their gender and so are men. The woman by norm is relegated to the private domain and is allocated the affective role, while the man has full access to the public domain for he plays the role of the bread-winner. Devdutt Pattanaik, in his book, ‘The Pregnant King’, strives to show how gender plays an important part in defining roles and relationships, while at the same time also accounting for the interesting change in gender roles of men and women, which appears extremely contemporary and unthinkable at the time and context in which the story is set. Based at the time of the Mahabharata, Pattanaik’s ‘The Pregnant King’ brings forth a wide new range of ideas that are exceedingly modern in nature. These ideas question the societal norms that privilege the men and not the women, the norms that prevent both men and women from adopting occupations and indulging in activities that majorly interests them.