Tiffany Fisher
Professor McAbee
ENG 3331
10 April, 2016
Desire as Power, and Stripping it through sexual means in The Swimming Lady and The Disappointment. In anonymous’ The Swimming Lady and Bhen’s The Disappointment the power of desire, and the stripping of it through sexual situations are both common themes. The role of desire is used as a source of power that can be given as in The Disappointment and taken away as in The Swimming Lady. In both texts the females have their power taken from them. In The Swimming Lady it is taken by force and not returned. The female is stripped of the desire the author gives her with in the first 9 stanzas. In The Disappointment first Cloris takes it, empowering herself. It is then taken by Lysander assuming
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She is in fact so powerful, that the author writes “Each Fish did wish himself a Man / About her all were drawn / And at the Sight of her began / To spread abroad their Spawn” (lines 57-60). Though the masculinity is defined in animals at this point in the poem, it is still a testament to her power, because of their desire for her. Anonymous goes on to further the depiction of her being desirable in lines 63 and 64 by saying: “If Jove had then in Heaven been / He would have dropt upon her.” This is clear foreshadowing of the violation to come, which hints at the stripping of her …show more content…
This line illustrates her dislike for the boy, negating the argument that she might have been willing. The following stanza paints a vivid and violent picture. The lad pulling her onto the shore, and then “As Adam did old Eve enjoy” (line 85). It glosses over the actual violation, but the lines leading up to it are clearly against her will. “She shrieks, she strives, and down she dives / He brings her up again” (lines 81-82). It is here the power she embodied earlier is stripped from her against her will. The proof comes from line 90 when the female quotes “I am utterly undone.” She insists that her rapist marry her. He effectively strips her of the power of marrying anyone else with the rape and thus strips her of her power to be desired by anyone else but him.
Unlike The Swimming Lady, where the woman is stripped of her power, in The Disappointment, Lysander is the one who is divested of his desire. In the beginning Lysander has the power. In the first stanza it is unclear whether Cloris is violated by Lysander based on lines 1 through 4:
ONE Day the Amarous
In this novel, many female characters are considered to be possessions. In fact, they are considered to be the servants of men. “I have a pretty present for my Victor—tomorrow he shall have it.” (Mary Shelly, Pg. 70) For instance, Elizabeth is given to Victor as a gift without any consideration for her feelings. As a result, Victor has the power to “protect, love and cherish” (Pg. 21) Elizabeth or neglect and isolate her. As well, Elizabeth’s main role in this novel is to comfort and alleviate Victor’s feeling of guilt and sadness. She is always there for Victor as a source of comfort. In contrast, Victor leaves Elizabeth to explore his passions. For instance, after Victor goes to university, he doesn’t come back for two years. During this time, he expects Elizabeth to wait for him as if she was his property. Moreover, Elizabeth is not the only female character who is under Victor’s control. In fact, Victor presents the female monster to the creature as a bargaini...
In Drea Knufken’s essay entitled “Help, We’re Drowning!: Please Pay Attention to Our Disaster,” the horrific Colorado flood is experienced and the reactions of worldly citizens are examined (510-512). The author’s tone for this formal essay seems to be quite reflective, shifting to a tone of frustration and even disappointment. Knufken has a reflective tone especially during the first few paragraphs of the essay. According to Drea Knufken, a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor, “when many of my out-of-town friends, family and colleagues reacted to the flood with a torrent of indifference, I realized something. As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis. We scan through headlines without understanding how stories impact people,
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Under the sea, in an idyllic and beautiful garden, stands a statue of a young man cut out of cold stone – for the Little Mermaid who knows nothing but the sea, the statue stands as an emblem of the mysterious over-world, a stimulus for imagination and sexual desire, an incentive for expansion of experience, and most predominately, an indication that something great and all-encompassing is missing from her existence. Traces of curiosity and a vague indication of the complexities of adult desires mark the child mermaid; in such a stage of development, the statue will suffice. However, as the Little Mermaid reaches puberty, the statue must allegorically come alive in order to parallel the manifestation of her new-found adult desires – the statue must become a prince in his world of adulthood above the sea. Thus, powered by an insistent and ambiguous longing for self-completion, the Little Mermaid embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and, to her ultimate misfortune, prematurely abandons her child-like self as sexual lust and the lust for an adult life takes hold of her.
In the article “Swimming for Her Life” by Kristin Lewis the main character is Yusra and Syria (her sister). She loved swimming, she has a dream to be the Olympics, and she will never accept fait. They had to flee because they were attacked and knew if they stayed they might get attacked again. The main character problem that she face trying to flee was that the motor stop and her and her sister had to push the boat for 3.5 hours saving 18 lives, and they had to be careful for the authorities. What happened to the main character is that 20 minutes in the ride the motor stopped and they had to jump in the cold water and push the boat for 3.5 hours muscles were aching. They survived by swimming and pushing the boat and saved 18 lives. One of the
...n could seem to a poisoned cup, the libido of a man still hesitates to bring over and drink it. In case of Hamlet, for example, although he complains " about the weakness " about a woman, he is still subject to his beauty or delight.
As exemplified throughout history, literature and life, love and sex have often been linked to each other without being mutually exclusive. Through our work this past year with Freud and Baumeister, we’ve learned a lot about the relationship between love and sex and the psychological corresponding between the two. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales provided a insight elaborating more on this relationship of love and sex through the tales of many characters in the series. Although both of these concepts are recurring events, one central theme seems to have connected the two in many of the stories. In the Canterbury Tales, manipulation is a key component in attaining both love and sex. This is demonstrated in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, as
“Women are not only associated with and defined by the ‘inferior’ realm of flesh (while men represent ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’) but they also are told they must rise above their carnal appetites,” ...
In our present era, there is no doubt that the evolution of women's rights has come a long way. It is in the Western Culture that these values for which women have fought for generations, are in conflict with Genesis 1-3. The events that occur in this "creation story" are crucial in that it begins when God creates man in his own likeness and man is given domination over all living things. The significance is the prominence given to men; God is male and his most important creation is male. The biblical account underlines the supremacy of man while making it clear that women play an inferior role. Furthermore, the biblical account also describes how woman are disobedient and yield to temptation, the result of which is the expulsion of both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In the poem "How Cruel is the Story of Eve", Stevie Smith's castigation towards the biblical story of Eve demonstrates how women have been victims of despair and suffering since the beginning of time. She holds it responsible for cruelty towards women in history, she implies that the values derived from the story of Eve were forced upon women without choice, and finally, she challenges the authenticity of the religious tale on a whole. Without a doubt, women have fallen victim to an untrue, religious tale from the beginning of time, and the poem is an outcry representing the suffering of women throughout history.
Violet Winspear's Time of the Temptress may not be considered a literary masterpiece by many critics, but it does give a specific example of male dominant and female submissive sexual roles. Even though the novel contains no explicit or even implied sexual scenes occurring between the main characters, the actions and speech of Wade and Eve serve as a substitute for erotic passages.
“The Swimmer” is an allegory that is narrated in third person point of view as someone who is observing Neddy’s journey. This enables the reader to discover the reactions of friends and neighbors as Neddy arrives at their homes while still revealing the shift of the round character’s own attitude and feelings as his journey through life continues. Cheever wisely tells the story from a perspective in which the reader can still be connected to Neddy from the beginning to the end of the story while learning how his actions have disappointed others and not just himself. It also uncovers the involvement of each character and their relationship with Neddy before and after his mid-life crisis. If this story was told from any other point of view then the reader would only be obtaining one sided, in a sense a close minded, version whereas with a third person point of view the reader is approached to the entire situation given all perspectives. It guides the reader from one meaningful piece to another on an even level without any bias impressions while the story is being delivered.
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Northon Anthology American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Throughout "Eve's Apology," Layner confidently makes her point of female inequality and female injustice by using poetic devices, while continuing to keep an ironic tone and bring out unusual language. She is clearly trying to prove that woman and men are equal. She suggests that because Adam is a man, thus "stronger" than Eve, he should be held responsible for eating the forbidden fruit rather than the "weaker" Eve. Layner believes that men should not look down upon women as lesser and weaker than themselves; she successfully proves that women deserve an equal status with men. Throughout the poem, Layner makes the point that the reason men have always been condescending to woman is dishonest because men are actually more at fault for the pain we endure today.
The last two lines of this speech are very dramatic. Eve has such a great love for Adam that she could endure anything as long as he would be by her side, but she would be nothing without him. However, this creates a paradox. One may ask, if Eve loves Adam as much as she professes to, then why put his life in jeopardy just to make her own suffering more bearable? The answer, of course, goes back to the selfishness that has pervaded her entire speech. These lines stand out because of the spondees at the end of both of them.
...In a drunken state or bad mood, he would beat her severely without a reason. Everyday she suffered verbal and emotional abuse by her boyfriend but yet she takes no action in correcting. In the song, Eve was trying to save her from her abusive boyfriend, but she was blinded by love and refused to take her advice. At the end of the song, her best friend died because she was severely beaten by her boyfriend. Therefore, love makes people ignorant to reality and lose sight of their self-confidence and self-respect.