Also, it gives an opportunity for women how to be independent such as cleaning, cooking, running errands, and serving her family. At the same time, by the way girls are taught in their childhood and adolescents, women are to be dependent of the men around them. For example, in earlier times, women are taught to be subordinate to their husbands. They are not allowed to work but to stay home and take care of the family. Similarly, women today are expected to raise their family more than men.
“I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it.” (para. 4). Most of the essay shows how husbands are demanding when it comes to taking care of the family. The writer is trying to get a point across that wives are expected to a whole lot of things perfectly but are not giving the due appreciation. The writer makes her readers aware that she knows what she is talking about in the early parts of the essay because she has experienced it herself.
(Hekker,416) On the other hand, Tannen reveals that she never wanted the traditional life that her Russian born mother wanted her to live. Instead, Tannen achieved her own educational goals and then tried to understand her mother's point of view about the roles of women. (Tannen,422) While both Hekker and Tannen discuss the changes over the last fifty years involving gender roles, cultural viewpoints on American marriage, and the value of a higher education for women, Tannen’s article proves to be more valid because she avoids not only the unnecessary emotionally loaded excuses but also Hekker's apathetic approach to attain the possibilities that women have available to them today. Of the two authors, Tannen seems more credible because she takes more responsibility for her decisions. Both articles discuss personal examples of how the women in each of the author's families affect their own decisions regarding marriage, the value of a higher education, and gender roles.
The song “don’t want you back” by Backstreet Boys and the poem “a snowflake falls” by Ruth Adams are powerful examples of the amount of impact discoveries have on the characters . All these texts show that the discoveries that have a life changing impact on us turn out to be the most important discoveries we make. Significant discoveries are a slow realisation process that change the way we perceive ourselves and our relationships. Initially in the short story “Big World” the adolescent narrator is hoping to discover excitement, girls and escape from his boring life. But during the journey he is forced to confront uncomfortable truths about himself and his relationship with Biggie which was initiated by “a single decisive act or violence that joined me to Biggie forever” but the
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Top Girls By Caryl Churchill both feature motherhood and marriage as one of their main themes even though the texts were set at different points in time. The Bell Jar was published in 1963 around the time of the publication of Betty Freidan’s Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique stated that the ideal housewives of the 1960’s were a myth as each one of them were secretly unhappy but never spoke out about their unhappiness due to fear of not abiding by the social normality of the time. This feeling of displacement in the social norm is what Plath bases the experiences of protagonist Esther upon and what eventually drives Esther into mental instability. Motherhood and marriage is seen to be a key factor in the society of which The Bell Jar is set ,and is portrayed as one of the things that supresses female identity when Esther is asked to be “Mrs Buddy Willard” as if she is owned by Buddy and not her own person.
In The Bloody Chamber Angela Carter reverses gothic traditions so that the males become the victims instead of the females. Consider at least two of the stories in the bloody chamber in the light of this view. The gender constructs of passive, young, virginal woman who are victimised by dominant, strong and wealthy males is a common trait throughout gothic tales including many of Angela Carters short stories from “The Bloody Chamber”. However, Carter received the criticism of “[extracting] latent content, conjuring up a new exotic hybrid” in which she challenges the typical stereotypes of gothic conventions, influenced by her feminist nature. These caused the post modern versions of her stories to adopt dualisms of combining sexual desires with naivety and give alternative interpretations that perhaps the male characters suffered victimisation instead.
Her aim is to help the first-generation people recognize the difficulty of being an immigrant in the United States and the challenges their parents face. Due to their lack of verbal proficiency in English, they are often ignored, underestimated, and misunderstood. “Mother Tongue” illustrates the biased nature of interacting with people who are not familiar with the American culture, but are actually part of a smaller aspect of society that adds to the overall diversity of the culture. Essentially, Tan is able to come to terms with her rich cultural history and learns to appreciate her mother for re-structuring her thoughts and outlook on
Donna Woolfolk Cross explains in her article, "Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled" that propaganda shapes our attitudes on thousands of subjects by tactics such as name-calling which "consists of labeling people or ideas with words of bad connotation" (Cross 210). Aunt Lydia uses name-calling by stating that these women were lazy sluts and explains how important and how much better childbirth is in Gilead in comparison to the old days. Her manipulative speech is what blocks the handmaids from thinking, only to react unquestioningly. Cross's article explains that glittering generalities "try to get us to accept and agree without examining the evidence" (Cross 211). Aunt Lydia's use of glittering generalities and convincing tone of voice makes these women accept whatever she defines them as, giving no reason to think otherwise.
In the articles we read, the authors created a fundamental value specific to their culture by using examples of the effects they had with different members of their family. In Lee’s “Mute in an English-Only World,” it shows his level of maturity due to his mother’s influence on him an her respect in the culture. In "Mother Tongue," Tan explains how her mother changed her writing by changing her way of receiving the language. Lee and Tan, both of immigrant backgrounds, use their memories of deceased mothers to build credibility in their respective articles. Both of these writers were molded by their mothers.
Maggie and her mother, the narrator, signify a vastly different existence from Dee, who represents desire for possessions and vanity in regard for the past. Maggie and her mother, on the other hand, prefer a more simple life that values culture and heritage for both its personal meaning and practicality. The clash between these women and their connection to the past culminate into a battle over the story’s most significant symbol; hand sewn quilts. Using the symbolism of the quilts, Alice Walker shows the reader her position on the debate; arguing that heritage and culture should be valued, not as a distant heirloom, but in everyday