Conflicts, Motives, and Transformations Everyone has heard it said, “it is not the beauty on the outside, but the beauty on the inside that counts.” However, it is a common practice for most people to judge someone on the outside, long before they will take the time to see what is on the inside. Eliza Doolittle and Gracie Hart find this out the hard way.In the texts My Fair Lady and Miss Congeniality there is unmistakable intertextuality between the two text dispite utterly different setting and circumstances. The intertextuality is built throughout Miss Congeniality referring back to My Fair Lady, by illustrating comparisons between the conflict, character motives, and protagonist. To begin, both text’s the conflict is the most important
The book is narrated from the first person perspectives of three women: Skeeter,Aibleen and Minny.The twenty two year old Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is the daughter of a prominent white family who has just graduated and wants to pursure her career as a writer but it’s 1960s and her mother will not be happy if she doesn’t have a ring on her finger. She has been brought up by black maids since she was young, and longs to find out why her much-loved maid, Constantine, has disappeared.Aibleen is a black,wise maid who is raising her seventeenth white child.She dedicates all her work time to Miss.Leeflot,while trying to heal the scars left by her own son’s death.Minny,Aibleen’s best frend is short,fat and the sassiest women in Mississippi.She is the best cook but she cannot mind her tongue resulting having being fired from nineteen jobs. Stockett’s characters are strong, sometimes bold, yet sometimes silent. She adds humor and fun, as well as danger and intrigue in the novel. She has done a great job writing from the point of view of numerous characters. All three of them had their own chapter.Every character has a personality, goals, and a backstory.
Jane Austen completes her story with a “Cinderella ending” of Catherine and Henry marrying. However, her novel is more than a fairytale ending. Although often wrong and misguided in their judgments, she shows the supremacy of males that permeated throughout her society. Jane Austen takes us from a portrayal of men as rude, self-centered, and opinionate to uncaring, demanding, and lying to downright ruthless, hurtful, and evil. John Thorpe’s and General Tilney’s total disregard for others feelings and their villainous ways prove Austen’s point. Whether reading Northanger Abbey for the happy ending or the moral lesson, this novel has much to offer.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s journey to love and marriage is the focal point of the narrative. But, the lesser known source of richness in Austen’s writing comes from her complex themes the well-developed minor characters. A closer examination of Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s dear friend in Pride and Prejudice, shows that while she did not take up a large amount of space in the narrative, her impact was great. Charlotte’s unfortunate circumstances in the marriage market make her a foil to Elizabeth, who has the power of choice and refusal when it comes to deciding who will be her husband. By focusing on Charlotte’s age and lack of beauty, Austen emphasizes how ridiculous and cruel marriage can be in this time.
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
Unlike Elizabeth, Charlotte is not so fortunate in her physical appearance. She is referred to as plain by Mrs. Bennet and even her own mother views her as such, which can be seen when Mrs. Bennet states, ‘she is very plain. Lady Lucas herself has often said so, and envied me Jane’s beauty. ’ Charlotte is aware that she is not the most beautiful woman, and she states this when she describes herself as having never been handsome . These physical attributes of ...
Both of the two main protagonists of these two books are beautiful women but the difference is how the narrator conveys the fact to the reader. While prettiness is a natural part of a female for Anne Brontë and her heroine is beautiful, George Eliot surveys this issue much deeply: she shows how the appearance of a young woman may not only form her character but also influence her future life.
The independence of the heroines in “Pride and Prejudice” and “A Room With a View” can be defined by their unconventional views and the fearlessness that they display. In “Pride and Prejudice”, Austen presents her heroine Elizabeth as having unconventional views on marriage and society. It is clear that in Austen’s choice of Elizabeth she is presenting an alternative role model for the women of Regency society. Similarly, in “A Room With a View”, E.M Forster’s heroine Lucy demonstrates an independence and fearlessness in her choices which challenges society’s expectations.
The theme that the people dearest to a person‘s heart can sometimes undermine that person’s affection and, in the end, cause them the most pain, is present in both works of literature and provokes a pronounced impact on the reading. In Sense and Sensibility, the reader is directed to the pain that the ladies face because of who they bestow their affection upon even further due to the theme. This is expressed greatly from the point that Marianne first hears of Willoughby’s
In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen presents her readers with a dilemma: Fanny Price is the heroine of the story, but lacks the qualities Jane Austen usually presents in her protagonists, while Mary Crawford, the antihero, has these qualities. Mary is active, effective, and witty, much like Austen’s heroines Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet. Contrasting this is Fanny, who is timid, complacent, and dull. Austen gives Mary passages of quick, sharp, even occasionally shocking, dialogue, while Fanny often does not speak for pages at a time. When she does, her speeches are typically banal and forgettable. In Mansfield Park, Austen largely rests Fanny’s standing as protagonist on the fact that Fanny adheres to the moral standards of Austen’s era. Mary Crawford makes a more satisfying and appealing heroine but due to her modern-era sensibility and uncertain moral fiber, she cannot fulfill this role.
Evaluate and respond to the presentations of women in the Romantic period. Feel free to discuss presentations of women, by women (such as Austen’s Persuasion) as well as presentations of women by men (such as the “she” in Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”). Consider the following questions: are these presentations problematic? What do they tell us about the values and briefs of the Romantic Period? Do any of these presentations subvert (complicate, or call into questions) the time’s notions of femininity?
The roles of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice are contrasted between a father who cares about what’s inside of people and a mother who only worries about vanity and appearance. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s parental guidance is unique to their personalities. Because of their two opposing personas, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s ideas of marriage are contradictory for their daughters; Mr. Bennet believes in a loving respectful marriage whereas Mrs. Bennet values a marriage which concerns wealth and social status. Their aspirations for Lydia, Jane, Mary, Kitty and Elizabeth mirror their conflicting ideologies. Mr. Bennet seems to have a quiet deep love for his daughters while, on the contrary, Mrs. Bennet’s love is over-acted and conditional. Both parents help to shape their daughters’ characteristics and beliefs: Lydia reflecting Mrs. Bennet’s flighty and excessive behavior while Elizabeth inherits Mr. Bennet’s pensive and reflective temperament. Looking past their dissimilar personality traits and contradicting convictions, both parents hold the family together and play an integral role in the household structure.
Literature is a form of art with many facets, many obvious and others subtle. The surface of literature can be composed of many elements such as genre, form, rhythm, tone, diction, sentence structure, etc. Time periods, authors’ personal style and type of work all determine what elements are used in the literature. The deeper more subtle side of literature is the use of symbolism, imagery and the significance of the work. In most works of literature, parallels can be drawn between the author’s personality and current life’s events through the subject matter, the characters, and the use of specific literary techniques. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s use of literary techniques in the first two stanzas of The Lover: A Ballad, are consistent throughout the six stanza ballad identifying and refuting the ways in which women were defined by literature of the 18th century era.
Beginning Gibert and Gubar’s piece about the position of female writers during the nineteenth century, this passage conjures up images of women as transient forms, bodiless and indefinite. It seems such a being could never possess enough agency to pick up a pen and write herself into history. Still, this woman, however incomprehensible by others, has the ability to know herself. This chapter of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, titled “The Queen’s Looking Glass,” discusses how the external, and particularly male, representations of a woman can affect her so much that the image she sees in the mirror is no longer her own. Thus, female writers are left with a problem. As Gibert and Gubar state, “the woman writer’s self-contemplation may be said to have begun with a searching glance into the mirror of the male-inscribed literary text. There she would see at first only those eternal lineaments fixed on her like a mask…” (Gilbert & Gubar, 15). In Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, the narrator and heroine Lucy Snowe is faced with a great deal of “reflections” which could influence her self-image and become detrimental to her writing. However, she is aware that the mirrors she finds, whether the literal mirror of the looking glass or her reflection in other characters’ ...