Motherhood is seen in our culture as a nurturing and loving role. It’s much more empathetic unlike the view of fathers. A strong and more independent individual with little emotions to speak of. A provider and a protector, a stark contrast to mothers who promote emotional and social growth for their children as opposed to mental or physical. However White Fang has a different take on the vanilla roles parents play and how they should or can function. It’s clear the way London portrays these parenting roles is a far cry from the perfect functioning family of children's books and TV. These portrayals can be explored in White Fang to understand what kind of ideas, intended or not, London created when he connected his wild society to our civilized and very much human one. White Fang explores different kinds of savagery and violence displayed by the male and female sex, painting the role of motherhood as instinctually violent and a woman's sexuality can become a valid reason for violence. However at the same time the novel appears to cast aside fatherhood, deeming them as less necessary in their role and function within a family. Obviously this is considered a more dangerous and sexist view of …show more content…
“Perhaps the most compelling answer to why London wrote stories about animals was that he saw no hard-and-fast distinction between the human and the animal.”(Feldman,169) Thus when viewing the story through this context, the connection mothers and motherhood have to being inherently aggressive in the story no doubt translates over to human society as well. This aggression can and will be used against fathers or sons by mothers in this wild world, and the civil. While London may have intended to connect wolf society to human society in order to show we are not unalike in many aspects, he also created a bridge to compare savagery of wolves to that of
The ways women are presented in Northanger Abbey are through the characters of Catherine Morland, Isabella Thorpe, Eleanor Tilney, Mrs Allen, and the mothers of the Morland and Thorpe family, who are the main female characters within this novel. I will be seeing how they are presented through their personalities, character analysis, and the development of the character though out the novel. I will be finding and deciphering scenes, conversations and character description and backing up with quotes to show how Austen has presented women in her novel Northanger Abbey.
The narrator reflects,”I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two things life and death,”(Hurst 3).This quote showed that at first the narrator thought pride was good but later he became self centered and ashamed of his disabled brother and pushed him far beyond his limit.The short story called The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst is a drama where the narrator, or older brother, wishes his younger brother wasn’t disabled. Because he is so fueled by pride, the older brother ends up pushing his brother beyond his capabilities to his death. In this story, we will learn how the narrator’s pride led to the tragic death of Doodle.
Are all mothers fit for motherhood? The concept of motherhood is scrutinized in the stories “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “Tears Idle Tears”. In “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H Lawrence the mother, Hester, unpremeditatedly provokes her son into providing for her through gambling. In the story “Tears Idle Tears” by Elizabeth Bowen, Mrs. Dickinson disregards her son’s emotions and puts more emphasis in her appearance than her son’s wellbeing. Hester and Mrs. Dickinson both were inadequate mothers. Both the mothers were materialistic, pretended to love their offspring, and their dominance hindered their children’s progress in life.
The mother-infant bond is the familiarity and attachment a mother forms with her offspring. These helpless babies are reliant on their mother’s nurture for survival. This dependence reaches farther than a physiological need. Infants rely on their mothers for a wide variety of demands. The mother-infant bond is critical to maximizing the fitness of each individual, as well as the growth of the species.
In conclusion, readers identify with the human form and use it as a vehicle for defamiliarization to show the mechanical functions they serve themselves and others. The characters in “Bloodchild” behave as part of a process and show a lack of respect for their human qualities. As they desensitize their bodies, they allow the Tlic to engage with them in an unbalanced power relationship. Then, the Tlic interact with them in a sheltering way and inhibit their thought process. Through this interaction chain, Butler effectively conveys that the way humans treat themselves will dictate how others treat them. As the afterword said, “Bloodchild” is not about slavery; it’s about the relationships humans take on because they allow themselves to be
In “The Company of Wolves” Carter employs conventions of gender construction and didacticism, which help establish a fairy tale space (Koske 323). Carter presents a world in which fairy tale notions of gender are upheld. In her paper, “In Olden Times, When Wishing was Having: Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales”, Joyce Carol Oates explains that the girls and women in fairy tales “are the uncontested property of men”. Carter alludes to this male dominated reality in her tale (99). When the girl, Carter’s Red Riding Hood, insists on venturing into the woods, the narrator says that “[h]er father might forbid her, if he were home, but he is away in the forest, gathering wood, and her mother cannot deny her” (1224). There is perhaps no gendered element to a parent preventing his child from wandering into the wilderness, b...
This rule applies not only to slavery, but also to sexism. In Kindred, Butler concentrates on the powerless position of women in society and continuously relies on unexpected rhetorical tools to approach the problem. On one hand, the story of Alice who was raped by her master Rufus employs pathos to give a very accurate description of her feelings, as well as experiences of Dana who was forced to convince the woman to sleep with Rufus after her body recovered from severe beatings. On the other hand, Butler uses logos to examine gender inequality in society. Despite decades of economic, social, political, and technological transformations, women are still perceived as inferior to men. They are often viewed as a tool to satisfy men’s ambitions and needs. Butler acknowledges this incongruity between human progress and human prejudice as illogical when describing Dana’s choice to return to Maryland after she had spent two months there, and witnessed the evils of slavery. The progressive and seemingly independent Dana feels she owes something to a cruel and narcissistic
A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques. Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love. To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”. Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility. Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s inevitable evilness. Victor was not predestined to failure, nor was his creation innately depraved. Rather, it was Victor’s poor “parenting” of his progeny that lead to his creation’s thirst for vindication of his unjust life, in turn leading to the ruin of Victor’s life.
As Victor Frankenstein recounts his informative tale to a seafaring Robert Walton, he makes it known that he was a child of nobility; however it is sadly transparent that, combined with insufficient parenting, Victor’s rare perspective on life pushes him towards a lifestyle of conditional love. Children are considered symbolic of innocence, but as a child Victor’s arrogance was fueled by his parents. With his family being “one of the most distinguished of the republic,”(Shelley 17), Victor’s parents saw him as their “plaything and their idol, and something better-their child, the innocent and helpless Creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me,”(19). “The Social Order vs. the Wretch: Mary Shelley's Contradictory-Mindedness in Frankenstein Sylvia Bowerbank.” Bowerbank, "The Social Order vs. the Wretch", knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/bower.html.
“The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter is a feminist and gruesome retelling of the fairy tale “Little Red Riding-Hood”. The story involves a werewolf, who represents a sexual predator. The werewolf is used as a symbol for both danger and desire. It also involves a young girl who does not fall victim to the fear of the wolf that she is surrounded by. She embraces her newfound sexual power and serves as symbol of sexual desire/power and female strength.
The main part of the novel is written from the point of view of the eponymous character of the book White Fang so we can see how animals view humans and the violent world of wild animals. However, during the narration, Jack London shows us that the humans’ world can be equally cruel and violent as the animals’. We meet White Fang at the beginning of the novel and follow him in his journey to domestication. During his life the wolf changes three masters completely different from each other. To my mind, these men are intercrossed with three main Laws of the book: the Law of Gods, the Law of Hate and the Law of Love.
...the young girl prior to meeting the wolf, how the young girl strays from the ideals of femininity once she meets the wolf, and last, what is inherently not feminine as represented by the wolf and his masculine characteristics. The wolf does not naturalize masculine characteristics within the reader because he still acts somewhat like a wolf, he is used as a tool to further naturalize the ideals of femininity, by standing in stark contrast to them.
...is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. And that is why we say that Mother is Supreme"(pg.116).
Mothers are the primary caretakers of the children. The fathers have had minimal care taking responsibilities. Many women, if they had a career before hand, have to give it up to stay at home with the child. Although, many fathers where the wives must work become important in the process of care taking because their role must increase to their children. Studies of human fathers and their infants confirm that many fathers can act sensitively with their infant (according to Parke & Sawin, 1980) and their infants form attachments to both their mothers and fathers at roughly the same age (according to Lamb, 1977).
A mother is a woman in charge. By definitions created by other civilians a mother is a compassionate woman who gave birth to you and always wants to protect you. Most of the time it is an unspoken rule that the female rules the house. As the joke states, “happy wife, happy life”. The mother carries the baby in her womb for nine months and goes through hours of excruciating pain to bring the child into the world. People typically see the mom as the more caring and compassionate parent.