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Womens roles in the 19th century
Womens roles in the 19th century
Sexuality in literature
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During the movement of romanticism in the 19th century literature usually portrayed women to be considerably less than males. Charles Baudelaire is a poet and symbolist born in France in 1821 and is viewed as one of the best lyric poets. He is best known for writing a volume of poems entitled Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) published in 1857 and also pioneered the translation of the work of Edgar Allen Poe to French. During his lifetime the volume gained no critical praise due to its vulgar and perverse imagery and six poems were subsequently banned for outrage to public decency. One of these six poems entitled A Carcass depicts the speaker (presumably male) and his lover as they discover a female, human corpse.
‘Remember, my love, the object we saw
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;’1
The imagery in this poem depicts both that of a Petrarchan love poem and a rotting corpse further juxtaposed by a lengthy, disgusting description which seems to make it sexual. The poem itself is lyrical perhaps to mirror the unequal position which women acquired in society during the early 19th century. In this essay I will explore the imagery painted in The Carcass and how it may hide various connections to the reader’s views of women as sex objects and how he also reveals the difficulties faced by women during the 19th century. I will also be comparing the tone of the poem to that of the ideals of Petrarchan love poetry or sonnets.
Charles Baudelaire’s choice of language in The Carcass evokes strong imagery and his use of simple yet powerful verbs enforce the juxtaposition. ‘The flies buzzed and droned on these bowels of filth’ and ‘her stinking and festering ...
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...turbing imagery. This separation of style can maybe reflect the way in which women’s rights have changed over the years.
In conclusion Baudelaire’s The Carcass has strong imagery and the language is more direct in order to make his point. This doesn’t mean it is les symbolic. Each line is created to contain as much symbolic meaning as possible to evoke emotion as well as imagery. This imagery is disturbing and disgusting in order to juxtapose his view of 13th century women in society. Petrarcha’s poems are less shocking with its meaning and do not negatively portray women. It can therefore be said that the view and treatment of women in society from the 13th century to the 19th century worsened somewhat and this is vaguely evident in the poetry I have analysed. Only now in this day and age can we discuss these once ignored views and make progress in women’s rights.
In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period. Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry. The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity. The second fears and mistrusts them for their (usually fantasized) infidelity, an infidelity that requires their actual or temporary elimination from the world of men, which then re-forms [sic] itself around the certainty of men’s shared victimization (Neely 127).
The author of this article aims to show how Sor Juana defended women’s right and links female suffering with the acquisition of knowledge. At the same time, the author also redefines female body, which is always excluded power structures. Apart from this, Krik discusses how Sor Juana uses references from Katherine of Alexandria and Lucretia in her works, since they are emblems of the female knowledge and defended their dignity as women in Antiquity.
When studying gender roles in history, one will find that females are often depicted in similar ways no matter the era or region of study. Even when comparing the industrialized, early, twentieth century to today’s progressive era, there are striking similarities between female roles. We can see that over the course of the twentieth century, the qualities of loyalty and honesty have decreased in marriages due to the treatment of the two main female roles as depicted literature. The first was the role of the wife. The wife was often portrayed as a housekeeper and a nanny. Dull in appearance, there was no aesthetic beauty to this typical female. The other main role was the “other woman.” The more mysterious and promiscuous character, this woman portrayed the other part of the female population. Both of these types of characters are composites that portrayed the average, disposable female while how they were treated conveyed the general handling of females in the early, twentieth century.
The book then talks about viewpoints of women, both real and those who face tragedy. Women during this time were very secluded and silent, but the heroines contradicted that. This chapter talks about the images of women in the classical literature in Athens, and the role they had in society. Many tragedies were ones that formed by mythes during the Bronze Age. It showed the separation in what made women heroic, rather than average. While viewing other Scholarly sourcese, Pomerory writes her own theory, she used others
The pervasive notion of woman as property, prized indeed but more as object than as person, indicates one aspect of a deep-seated sexual pathology in Venice. [. . .] Fear of women’s sexuality is omnipresent in Othello. Iago fans to flames the coals of socially induced unease in Othello, fantasizes on his own about being cuckolded by Othello and Cassio. In an ideology that can value only cloistered, desireless women, any woman who departs from this passivity will cause intense anxiety. (295)
Sexual relations between men and woman have created issues of life and death from the beginning of time. In most classic Western beliefs it began when Eve with the help of the Devil seduced Adam thus leading the downfall of humanity into an abyss of sin and hopelessness. This issue arises in all literature from Genesis, Chaucer and into modern day. Authors, clerks and writers of all types have aided stereotyping women throughout history and Geoffrey Chaucer is not an exception in most cases. However, in Chaucer's Wife of Bath we can find the beginnings of a new type of woman arising from the dark ages of the post-Roman era. And of course at the center of his character's struggle is sex. As this topic develops, we shall take a brief look into sex, women, the Middle Ages and Chaucer's Wife of Bath as an example of Middle Ages reflections.
Her chief arguing points and evidence relate to the constriction of female sexuality in comparison to male sexuality; women’s economic and political roles; women’s access to power, agency, and land; the cultural roles of women in shaping their society; and, finally, contemporary ideology about women. For her, the change in privacy and public life in the Renaissance escalated the modern division of the sexes, thus firmly making the woman into a beautiful
Christina Rossetti's, 'Goblin Market' is one of the most controversial poems of it's time. Although she insisted it was meant to be seen as a childrens fairytale, many readers have interpreted it as an erotic poem, many seeing it as a warning for young women against the temptations of sex. The poem has many hidden inuendos. For example the Goblin's describe the fruit in a sensual way, “Plump unpecked cherries” (line 7). Cherries are seen as a sign of virtue so this a clear example of a sexual situation. There is also a very strong religious theme in this poem. The fruit the goblin merchants are offering is a very clear symbol of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. “Obviously the conscious or semi-conscious allegorial intention of this narrative poem is sexual/religious.” (Gilbert and Gubar, 566). This essay will discuss the theme of sensuous experience in terms of what makes this poem erotic, female sexuality and it also aims to discuss the religious symbolism in Rossetti's, 'Goblin Market'.
In the 1930s, who would have perpetrated violent acts against women in the name of sexual gratification yet still hold expectations that women take care of them? By making men in general the placeholder for “you” in the poem, it creates a much stronger and universal statement about the sexual inequality women face. She relates to women who have had “a god for [a] guest” yet it seems ironic because she is criticising the way these women have been treated (10). It could be argued, instead, that it is not that she sees men as gods, but that it is the way they see themselves. Zeus was a god who ruled Olympus and felt entitled to any woman he wanted, immortal or otherwise.
The poets integrated ?metaphysical conceits? as focal parts of these poems. Along with these, they used effective language as a basis for their convincing arguments, they included subjects of periodical importance (e.g. ?courtship? and ?religion?), and use very clever structures that are manipulated in order to make the poem read in the desired way. The very clear indication of the theme in question was strongly aided by the way in which the personas portrayed the emotions they felt and the way they showed their attitudes towards the subject. Considering all these factors, the poets made critical arguments to the mistresses in order to alter their views, thus changing their minds, on denying the poets the sex that they desired so strongly.
Women have played many roles in societies since the dawn of time ever changing with time and from society to society. Each society hold a special place and role for women good and bad. Freedoms and equality of women has varied from opression to freedom. I will discuss some specific pieces of art and explain how the art shows the role of women in a specific society. I will tell you of their paril and achivements through time. Giving you a glimpse into the lives of women and how they were percieved by males and society. Some have have reveared women and some have disrespected them but through it all women have found a way to perservear. Women hold a place in history from culture to culture, and we see this in many pieces of art. From the art we can have a glimpse into a culture view of women and how they were treated in society.
Women were often subjects of intense focus in ancient literary works. In Sarah Pomeroy’s introduction of her text Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, she writes, “Women pervade nearly every genre of classical literature, yet often the bias of the author distorts the information” (x). It is evident in literature that the social roles of women were more restricted than the roles of men. And since the majority of early literature was written by men, misogyny tends to taint much of it. The female characters are usually given negative traits of deception, temptation, selfishness, and seduction. Women were controlled, contained, and exploited. In early literature, women are seen as objects of possession, forces deadly to men, cunning, passive, shameful, and often less honorable than men. Literature reflects the societal beliefs and attitudes of an era and the consistency of these beliefs and attitudes toward women and the roles women play has endured through the centuries in literature. Women begin at a disadvantage according to these societal definitions. In a world run by competing men, women were viewed as property—prizes of contests, booty of battle and the more power men had over these possessions the more prestigious the man. When reading ancient literature one finds that women are often not only prizes, but they were responsible for luring or seducing men into damnation by using their feminine traits.
Women’s lives are represented by the roles they either choose or have imposed on them. This is evident in the play Medea by Euripides through the characters of Medea and the nurse. During the time period which Medea is set women have very limited social power and no political power at all, although a women’s maternal and domestic power was respected in the privacy of the home, “Our lives depend on how his lordship feels”. The limited power these women were given is different to modern society yet roles are still imposed on women to conform and be a dutiful wife.
In “Sonnet 43,” Browning wrote a deeply committed poem describing her love for her husband, fellow poet Robert Browning. Here, she writes in a Petrarchan sonnet, traditionally about an unattainable love following the styles of Francesco Petrarca. This may be partly true in Browning’s case; at the time she wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese, Browning was in courtship with Robert and the love had not yet been consummated into marriage. But nevertheless, the sonnet serves as an excellent ...
In a society, there are many different opinions on how a women figure is seen. These ideas have changed overtime with the progress of women bring consider equal to men. There are two ways a woman can be interpreted, one brings lower to the men and the other being equal to men. Women play an important role in shaping lives, directly or indirectly. The tales depicted in this book shows the reader the broader insight of how women were seen as in previous years. The different ideas of what women meant to men are seen in the tales told by the characters in the book, mostly the men. The perspective of a woman for a male and a female is different. If we were to compare two tales from each side, the opinion would only be in favour for the individual who is narrating the tale. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, the role of women is portrayed in two different ways, one