Gender Dichotomy Reinforcement in Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
McCarthy reinforces the mind/body and culture/nature gender dichotomies proposed by Sherry Ortner through character presentation. She aligns mind and culture aspects with male characters, and bodily concerns and natural occurrences with the female. She exhibits traditionally feminine qualities of writing by using a more circular rather than linear style, giving attention to details of food, clothing, and body appearances.
In her book Making Gender, Ortner argues that women's different bodily functions may cause them to be closer to nature, place them in different social roles, and give them a different psychic structure than men (27). Along with the woman-is-to-man-as-nature-is-to-culture analogy come other dichotomies associated with masculinity and femininity. Women's writings are traditionally more circular than linear and women are more concerned with their bodies than men. The opposite can then be said about men; they write in a linear style more often and value their bodies less.
McCarthy aligns most female characters, including her grandmother Preston and her great-aunt Margaret, with bodily concerns. She describes her grandmother physically, giving details about her high-bridged nose, and hair that "was naturally black, black as a raven's wing and with a fine silky gloss, like loose skeins of embroidery thread" (202). McCarthy furthers the importance of her grandmother's body by stating that "this body of hers was the cult object around which our household revolved" (225). Her body is on display, not any aspect of her mind or personality. Mrs. Preston is most concerned with the presentation of the body, her own as well as McCarthy's. Due to its importance, she keeps properly clothed so much so that it becomes a garish sight whenever exposed. She often reminds McCarthy to pull her skirt down, even in the private home. This concern with coverage adds to the dramatic scene when her grandmother learns of her sister's death, goes into hysterics and her nightgown exposes her thighs. McCarthy remembers wanting to pull down the gown as a first impulse rather than comfort her. This thought reveals that body presentation is the concern that overrides the mental state of the woman. It also reinforces the idea that women are more concerned with bodies than minds.
McCarthy presents her grandfather Preston more abstractly with illustrations about his character rather than details about his physical appearance.
(U) IPB and MDMP: In order to fully understand the IPB process, an understanding of how MDMP and IPB are interrelated needs to be addressed. IPB is utilized to minimize unknown elements concerning an adversary, terrain, weather and civil considerations for a variety of operations including on-going and future operations. IPB provides a framework that assists in identifying information, facts and assumptions pertaining to the Mission, Enemy, Terrain and Weather, Troops and Support available, Time available and any Civil Considerations (METT-TC). While this does not answer everything that may occur, it does facilitate effective staff planning. By using the IPB Process and MDMP, the Commander and Staff are able to select a Course of Action (COA) and begin the orders process...
In the first half of the book, “Half-changed world”, “Half-changed minds”, the author argues about how social and environmental factors influence the mind on the gender differences. She also includes the history and impact of the gender stereotypes we see and how science has been used to justify the use of sexism. In the first chapter in the “Half-changed world” section of the book she uses an example of if a researcher tapped you on the shoulder and asked you to write down what males and females were like if you would write down things such as compassionate for females and aggressive for males or if you would look at the researcher and tell them that every person is unique.(Fine,3) Based on the information in the book most people would pick up the pencil and write down descriptions of each gender based on the way the world perceives gender. She also talks about marriage and how “the husband is the breadwinner and works outside the home to provide financial resources for the family. In return, his wife is responsible for both the emotional and household labor created by the family…” (Fine,78)
The gender binary of Western culture dichotomizes disgendered females and males, categorizing women and men as opposing beings and excluding all other people. Former professor of Gender Studies Walter Lee Williams argues that gender binarism “ignores the great diversity of human existence,” (191) and is “an artifact of our society’s rigid sex-roles” (197). This social structure has proved detrimental to a plethora of people who fall outside the Western gender dichotomy. And while this gender-exclusive system is an unyielding element of present day North American culture, it only came to be upon European arrival to the Americas. As explained by Judith Lorber in her essay “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”, “gender is so pervasive in our society we assume it is bred into our genes” (356). Lorber goes on to explain that gender, like culture, is a human production that requires constant participation (358).
...ation of men and women to the reader; we accept the cliché’s and gender-roles as the collective standard.
Soy is becoming an increasingly popular food commodity in the United States. This plant serves as one of the food industry’s top cheapest products for food manufacturing processes. Soy derives from the soybean, a leguminous plant widely cultivated for its edible seeds. The soybean originated in China, where the plant was widely famed for being used in a variety of foods, especially when acting as an animal protein replacement. During the late 1700s, the soybeans were imported into the United States. At the time, soy’s main purpose was to serve as a cheaper way to feed farm animals. As time progressed, Americans began using soy for their own nutritional benefits. Although many studies prove positive health benefits from this plant, there are lingering concerns pertaining to the safety of soy consumption.
Introduction The topic of gender differences must understandably be approached with caution in our modern world. Emotionally charged and fraught with ideas about political correctness, gender can be a difficult subject to address, particularly when discussed in correlation to behavior and social behavior. Throughout history, many people have strove to understand what makes men and women different. Until the modern era, this topic was generally left up to religious leaders and philosophers to discuss. However, with the acquisition of more specialized medical knowledge of human physiology and the advent of anthropology, we now know a great deal more about gender differences than at any other point in history.
In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Malvolio is considered an outcast by almost everyone in the play. He doesn’t act the same way that any of the other characters act, in that he doesn’t participate in any of their activities, he enforces rules that the others could care less about, and he is just overall a socially awkward guy. Malvolio not only claims to adhere to the rules of the household himself, but uses his relations with Olivia to try and help make the others follow the rules as well. This upsets certain characters more than others. For instance Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria find his behavior particularly detestable. But Malvolio’s strict coherence to the rules allows him to have a rather high position in Olivia’s household. While Malvolio may be considered a social outcast to most of the characters in the play, Olivia considers Malvolio to be a very trusted steward of her household. For these reasons Malvolio is not only a social outcast, but an outcast that Shakespeare uses to keep people interested in his play.
Ortner, S. (1996) Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? Retrieved from http://moodle.csun.edu
conceptualizations of gender in literature are situated in a culture and historical context ; the
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
Lorber grabs the attention of any reader by using some effective strategies and stating that discussing gender is considered equal to “fish talking about water”( Lorber 1). Therefore it meaning that a fish cannot think of living without water and similarly human beings cannot ponder the thought of living without gender. Judith Lorber has also compared the questioning the authenticity of gender to the rising of the sun. So, it is clearly understood that gender, though being practiced inevitably in our daily lives, many of us fail to accept that it is a way of organizing our lives and practicing gender is like practicing to organize our disorganized lives.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.
Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.
Throughout literature, authors employ a variety of strategies to highlight the central message being conveyed to the audience. Analyzing pieces of literature through the gender critics lens accentuates what the author believes to be masculine or feminine and that society and culture determines the gender responsibility of an individual. In the classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, the gender strategies appear through the typical fragile women of the mother and the grandmother, the heartless and clever male wolf, and the naïve and vulnerable girl as little red riding hood.