The Lady of Shalott and The Lady in the Looking Glass
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote "The Lady of Shalott" around 1830, during what is known as the Victorian Age. Virginia Woolf published "The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection" in 1929, during what is referred to as the Modernist Age. These works of art both deal with women who have important relationships with mirrors. The light in these stories has a great and different effect and meaning for each of these women. The importance and meaning of light are contrasted in these two tales, representing a change in writer's attitudes toward light portrayal.
In Tennyson's poem, the woman known as The Lady of Shalott, has been placed in a tower and told if she ever looks directly onto Camelot, she will be cursed. "A curse is on her if she stay / To look down to Camelot"(lines 40-41). She relies upon a mirror to reflect to her what happens outside her tower. Light is very important to her, as without the light there can be no reflections. It is through the use of this mirror that she glimpses Lancelot riding by, in the sunlight, "His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;"(line 100). She falls in love with him, and watches him ride away causing her eye to wander from the mirror to the road and on to Camelot. The light, which beforehand had allowed her glimpses of the world, is her undoing and the curse is upon her. Up until the point when the Lady decided to look toward Camelot, the light had been a positive aspect in her life.
The light was most often friendly for The Lady of Shalott, but it does not prove to be friendly to Isabella Tyson, the main character in Woolf's "The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection." After returning from the garden, "At once the looking-glass began to pour over her a light that seemed to fix her; that seemed like some acid to bite off the unessential and superficial and to leave only the truth"(2456).
Gandhi, Rajmohan. Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire. Berkeley: U of California, 2008. Print.
It is known that the relationship between a father and daughter can make a great impact on the daughter's life for the rest of her life. Throughout The Glass Castle the reader sees this relation between Jeannette and her dad, Rex, starts off as a roller coaster, it’s dangerous yet so full of fun. Then at the end, the roller coaster stops as life starts kicks in and reality of the world pushes that force to a stop. You do see the love between Jeannette and her dad, Rex, from, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, their relationship is considered to be rather unhealthy than healthy, which is because Rex relies too much on Jeannette to be the one to keep the relationship strong.
Lancelot is portrayed mostly as a love-struck man and not a very logical knight. From the first moment he is introduced, he is seen as someone sick from love. He will do anything to save his love, Gweneviere; even if that meant dishonor. When Lancelot rode on the cart, he was immediately labeled as someone bad. He pushed aside reason for love. “Because love ordered it, and wished it, he jumped in; since Love ruled his action, the disgrace did not matter.” (212) There seemed to have been nothing that could stand in the path of Lancelot.
...d stanza begins with, “One shade the more, one ray the less” (Byron pp. 358). This demonstrates that the woman is not solely good or positive. Even with a heart of innocence the contradiction of being born with different shades and gray areas leaves the reader to think that the beauty is not entirely good. Her beauty might make her fragile and innocent. One thing that Byron ends with is referencing the separation of the mind and heart in the last two lines. This separation lets the reader truly analyze the fact that feelings and thoughts can be two separate realities. Feelings and thought inside a person can be a mixture of good and evil. This can influence an individual’s actions looking at each especially through separation. Byron continues to leave the reader with these two lines maybe inferring that innocence is what we should finally revolve our lives around.
of the fairest stars in all the heaven" (II.ii.15). But hers is a light that shows best against the darkness; she "hangs upon the cheek of night / As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear" (I.v.44-45). The comparison to Juliet and the light shows the significance of Juliet beauty.
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is a play that is ahead of its time in its views toward gender roles within society. Katherine is a woman who is intelligent, and is not afraid to assert her views on any given situation. She is paired with another obstinate character in Pertuchio. The Marriage formed between the two is a match made in heaven for two reasons. First Because Katherine is strong enough to assert her views, and more importantly, she realizes when she should assert them. The second reason the bond survives is that Petruchio is strong enough to accept the fact that Katherine has a mind and, more importantly he loves her for that reason. Petruchio cleverly weaves the relationship into the framework of society without compromising the integrity of the relationship. Petruchio does this by comparing Katherine’s at attitude to repulsive clothing. Carefully and calculatingly, Petruchio forges a relationship that is envied by all who witness it.
Germinating in anonymous Middle English lyrics, the subversion of the classical poetic representation of feminine beauty as fair-haired and blue-eyed took on new meaning in the age of exploration under sonneteers Sidney and Shakespeare. No longer did the brown hair of "Alison" only serve to distinguish her from the pack; the features of the new "Dark Lady" became more pronounced and sullied, and her eroticized associations with the foreignness of the New World grew more explicit through conceits of colonization. However, the evolving dichotomy between fairness and darkness was not quite so revolutionary; in fact, Sidney and Shakespeare lauded the virtues of fairness with the same degree of passion as their predecessors, albeit in a cloaked form. To counter their mistresses' exterior darkness, the poets locate an interior lightness that radiates beyond the funereal veil of hair or eyes‹raven-hair or jet-eyes is acceptable only if there is an innate brightness that illuminates the sensuality of the superficial.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a person who had a cause to act, acted instead of being acted upon, and not only influenced India and South Africa, but the entire world. “ French writer Romain Rolland (1866—1944) said Gandhi was as stubborn as a mule, but a “sacred mule”(qtd. in Cook). Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an extremely confident, peace loving man which is proved by the quote. Gandhi is a very important and amazingly influential person in the society we live in today. Without Gandhi’s influential ideas the world would have faced many terrible wars resulting massive destruction and would have affected many aspects of our current lives. Problems like the British rule and the caste system caused Gandhi to act. Great leaders and books influenced Gandhi’s belief of life. Gandhi accomplished many important things in his life to solve the problems faced by many people in South Africa, but most of all in India. Many people do not realize how much impact Gandhi’s accomplishments and beliefs have on the world. Indian independence was Gandhi’s most important accomplishment and the highlight of his illustrious life. Gandhi’s beliefs and vision influence the world today most notably through the civil rights movements of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Nelson Mandela in South Africa, but his ideas are present throughout the globe. Through these great leaders who adopted Gandhi’s technique, we see the power of strong words and nonviolent action.
On May 19, 1925 Malcolm Little was born in a small Midwest town called Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up in a family of eight children with his mother, Louis Norton Little, who was a homemaker and his father, Earl Little, who was a Baptist minister and supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Earl’s active part in with the civil rights provoked death threats from the white organization Black Legion, forcing the Little family to relocate. At this time Malcolm experienced friction between his parents and the child abuse of his older siblings by his mother. Despite this hostility, the family lived well in a good part of Michigan. Then one night, after a fight Rev. Little went out to take a walk, Malcolm and family were awaken by the terrible news of their father’s death. This simple act of racism drastically affected the lifestyle of the Little family, and a large insurance policy which Rev. Little signed for, refused to pay leaving the family with hardly anything. With only unskilled jobs to support the nine-person family, Malcolm’s mother began receiving welfare checks. With this came the deterioration of her pride and eventual mental breakdown and she was then admitted to a mental institution. Soon the family fell into poverty and could not feed themselves. After much struggle, the welfare agency split the family among various foster homes and orphanages.
One of the two themes of Alice Through the Looking Glass is to never stop believing and to always try your hardest, even if you get defeated. Another lesson for Alice Through the Looking Glass is that you shouldn’t dwell on the past even if it makes you furious. The Queen of Hearts dwelled on the fact that her sister, the White Queen, lied one night as a kid and got her in trouble. That night was the night that the Queen of Hearts became penurious and self conscious about herself. One of the themes for Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is that though trusting people may be hard, it can help you in the future. For Example, Jacob had to trust his grandfather that the monsters and the peculiar children were real. Another example of this
Spratt, P. Gandhi in Retrospect. Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4. Cambridge University Press 1969. P. 343-356. http://www.jstor.org/stable/311931.
To the Indian people, Gandhi gave a nation. To the world, he gave satyagraha, arguably the most revolutionary idea of a long and ravaged century. He showed that political change could be affected by renouncing violence; that unjust laws could be defied peacefully and with a readiness to accept punishment; that "soul-force," as much as armed force, could bring down an empire. He drew this lesson from his readings of the Bible and Tolstoy and the Bhagavad-Gita, and he taught it to Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and countless other political protestors who would follow his example in the years to come. In some sense, Gandhi's greatest achievement lay in his legacy; for his ideals, and the example he provided in living them out, inspired, and continue to inspire, people of all nations to take up the peaceful struggle for freedom from oppression.
The world knows him as Mahatma Gandhi, a thin, wrinkled, elderly Indian wrapped in white traditional garb and leaning on a cane. Wire-rimmed spectacles frame the broad, aging face that has come to be associated with peace, wisdom, and the independence of India. Because of his untiring efforts to reform the cultural and political systems in India, Gandhi is well-known for his views on vegetarianism, birth control and the caste system. Most know about the peace-loving liberator of India, but what made Gandhi such a powerful force in the destiny of such a great nation? Many factors early in Gandhi’s life, such as his child-marriage, education, and experiences abroad, strongly influenced his philosophies and eventually compelled him to lead the non-violent movement, a “bloodless revolution,” that resulted in India’s independence.
Mahatma Gandhi is one of India’s biggest key factors in gaining its independence from Great Britain. Gandhi became a civil rights pioneer making himself an architect of a non-violent form of civil obedience that would sway the world to a more positive or peaceful perspective on life itself. Mahatma’s eloquent embracement of an abstinent lifestyle based on prayer, meditation, and fasting earned him respect fast to who most around began to call him “the great-souled one”.
 Gandhi was an influential figure in our society. He taught many people about equal rights, honouring