In Zadie Smith’s first and third novels, White Teeth and On Beauty, respectively, Smith utilizes the plot point of having a husband cheat on his wife with a younger and white woman. Through this plot point, Zadie Smith explores the marital dynamics of two couples: Alsana and Samad Miah in White Teeth and Kiki and Howard Belsey in On Beauty. Howard and Samad both sleep with women who are very different from their wives; Howard has relations with Claire Bowden (who is white, very thin, and academic) (and then with Victoria Kipps, who is young, extremely beautiful, and one of his art students), and Samad has relations with Poppy (who is white, childish, and a school teacher). These couples’ plot events are similar, but the reasons and outcomes …show more content…
The infidelity plot highlights the way foreign cultures are not accepted in London through the affair that Samad Miah, a Bangladeshi man, begins with Poppy Burt-Jones, a white, British, much younger band instructor. Poppy is very different from Samad’s wife, Alsana. Alsana pushes Samad around—sometimes literally. One fight described comes to blows, after exposing how unhappy they are as a couple. Samad tells her that she is “‘a mother who is going mad. Utterly cuckoo. Many raisins short of the fruitcake. Look at you, look at the state of you! Look how fat you are!’ He grabbed a piece of her, and then released it as if it would infect him. ‘Look how you dress. Running shoes and a sari?’” (166). This interchange exposes one of the main themes of this novel which is even more strongly presented in On Beauty: society’s expectations of feminine beauty. Samad is very attracted to Poppy Burt-Jones physically, and is in the affair for the physical and nothing more, and tells her, “‘There is nothing funny about this situation. There is nothing good about it. I do not wish to discuss the rights or wrongs of this with you. Let us stick to what we are obviously here for, . . . The physical, not the metaphysical’” …show more content…
. . But that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally good, now does it?’” (Smith 130). Now, Poppy tries to educate the class, by pointedly asking Millat what kind of music he likes. In doing so, Poppy ignores the fact that Millat has lived in London his entire life. Millat responds by “[swinging] his saxophone to his side and beg[ins] fingering it like a guitar. ‘Bo-orn to ruuun! Da da da da daaa! Bruce Springsteen, miss! Da da da da daaa! Baby, we were bo-orn—’” At this point, Poppy interrupts Millat, unsatisfied with his unexotic answer: “‘Umm, nothing—nothing else? Something you listen to at home, maybe?’” (Smith 130). Samad tries to help his son out by miming “the jerky head and hand movements of bharata natyam, the form of dance Alsana had once enjoyed before sadness weighted her heart, and babies tied down her hands and feet’” (Smith 130). Millat, rather hilariously, mistakes these movements for the “Thriller” dance of Michael Jackson. Poppy assumes, simply because of Millat’s heritage, that “at home,” he and his family listen to what Poppy considers “Indian” music. Samad even tries to promote and further entrench this assumption by miming moves of music that Poppy wants Millat to say he listens to at home. Millat, however, answers Poppy truthfully, as he listens to
Pinchwife’s adopts a relatively relaxed attitude being ‘cuckolded’ despite his jealousy; he employs exaggeration to ridicule women in London; he tells Margery ‘Ay, my Dear, you must love me only, and not be like the naughty town women, who only hate their husbands.’ (2.1.79-80) ‘Ay’ show the distress he is experiencing due to his tremendous jealosy, He attempts to control the fool Margery by criticising women of the ‘town’ He describes women of London as ‘naughty’ as they cuckold their husbands. They are not ‘good’ wives and they are not controlled by their husbands. This gives the reader an insight on the role of women in the male social power exchange.
Mrs. Ames from “The Astronomer’s Wife” and Elisa Allen from “The Chrysanthemums”, two women in their best ages, did share similar lives. They were loyal wives, of decent beauty and good manners. They were married for some time, without any children and they were fighting the dullness of their marriages. At first, it looked like they were just caught in marriage monotony, but after the surface has been scratched deeper, it was clear that these two women were crying for attention: but they had different reasons.
The article Poor Teeth was written by Sarah Smarsh with the goal in mind being to shed light on the issue between upper and lower class society in a particularly concrete way. Teeth and dental health are an easy thing for people to imagine in their head because everyone has a set whether they’re white and shiny or black and rotted. This makes it easy to draw a comparison between people that care for their teeth and those who don’t. However, access to dental knowledge and services which the lower class often times doesn’t have is very different between the poor and the rich. While the rich stroll through life showing off their perfect glossy white rows of teeth, there are less privileged people out there with barren mouths whose weak pale gums
Plump, undeniable, fashion-impaired Minerva Dobbs suffers one of the cruelest fates of a unmarried woman’s lifestyles: she gets dumped by means of her boyfriend 3 weeks earlier than her beautiful sister Diana’s wedding. She turned into virtually counting on David to be her date, and it rankles while he dumps her due to the fact she received’t sleep with him. Dumping is just part of David’s ordinary scheme for purchasing electricity of their courting, however. He doesn’t imply this to be over for good. But he is ticked at the shortage of horizontal tangoing in their courting. To get back at Min, he bets Mr. Successful, Calvin Morrisey (who he also can’t stand), $10,000 that he can’t get Min inside the sack in a month’s time. Unfortunately (or luckily) for Cal, Min overhears a part of their verbal exchange, and is infuriated. But then she recollects the marriage, and thinks that Cal may want to end up beneficial in spite of everything. Thus begins an fun story of misunderstandings, distrust, misanthropy, misadventure, distress, and genuine
/The beautiful wife. / For sometimes she fancied he looked at her as though, / Measuring her. As if he considered, had she been worth it? […] Whatever she might feel or half-feel, the lipstick necessity was something apart.” (Brooks, 48-53). It wasn’t as though she was afraid of her husband distinctly killing a young boy or even her being partially the cause of it; it was a feeling of guilt she was trying to cover up. Her entire fantasy is distributed and destroyed, she retreat inwards and uses her makeup to create a wall to maintain the foundation of her life based upon the fairy tale imagery. For many women, makeup is an extension to certain parts of themselves. Carolyn worked so hard to maintain this ideal image of having the perfect family, being an obedient housewife, looking after her children and basically being beautiful, than watching it all fall to ruins because of individual actions. One can only put on so much make up, like a placebo, it is harmless but it really only hides and masks the reality behind it. Eventually the truth will show, whether it is someone’s natural appearance, the qualities of a family or an individual’s true
But in reality, a male narrator gives a certain sense of understanding to the male audience and society’s understand of the male and females roles and responsibilities in a marriage. Just as men were expected to cut the grass, take out the trash, pay the bills and maintain the household as a whole, women were expected to cook, clean, nurture the children, and be a loving and submissive wife to their husband. The only stipulation required for this exchange of power was to establish a mutual love. In the Victorian age love was all it took for a man to take or alter a woman’s livelihood and
Contrastingly, Mrs. Darling, his wife, is portrayed as a romantic, maternal character. She is a “lovely lady”, who had many suitors yet was “won” by Mr. Darling, who got to her first. However, she is a multifaceted character because her mind is described “like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East”, suggesting that she is, to some extent, an enigma to the other characters, especially Mr. Darling. As well as this, she exemplifies the characteristics of a “perfect mother”. She puts everything in order, including her children’s minds, which is a metaphor for the morals and ethics that she instils in them. Although ...
Toni Morrison’s use of her character Hagar emphasizes this point and furthermore exemplifies how this culture of identity can effect a romantic relationship. We observe this as Hagar becomes obsessed with the idea of meeting the standards of beauty in order to get milkman back because she has seen him with a woman who is of a lighter complexion who better fits the standard than Hagar herself does, “That had been shoulders of a girl whose silky copper-colored hair cascaded over the sleeve of his coat.” (Morrison 127).The lighter complexion of the woman fits better with the culturally accepted idea of beauty and feeds into the debate of light skin vs dark skin girls which ultimately ties back to the white-washed culture because lighter skin women are thought to be more attractive because their skin is closer to that of a white woman’s’ this can be seen in the diction that Morrison choices with the use of descriptive words such as silky and copper-haired, adjectives that normally describe the Caucasian woman. To coincide with idea of Caucasian attributes being beautiful Morrison also criticizes consumer beauty. We examine this As Hagar tries to achieve the physical beauty of the cultural standard it appears that the only products to available are those marketed for white women, "Morrison’s implied comparison between the attributes of popularized, white consumer beauty and the O.K
Initially he views his wife as a mere possession, a toy doll. which he is able to show off at party’s to the admiration of fellow. members of powerful society, ‘curtsy here, curtsy there – and the vision of loveliness was gone as they say in fairy tales.’ However.
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 this extended essay, the subject chosen to study and formulate a question from was English Literature, in particular the portrayal of women during the 19th and 20th centuries, where the following novels 'The Great Gatsby' written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' were set in and originated the basis from. The question is as follows 'How does Jane Austen and F Scott Fitzgerald portray gender inequalities in both lower and upper class relationships particularly through love and marriage within the novels 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'The Great Gatsby' from the different era's it was written in?' This particular topic was chosen reflecting the morality and social class during the two different era's and determining whether there was change in the characteristics of women as well as men and how their behaviour was depicted through the two completely different stories, as they both reflect the same ethical principles in terms of love and marriage. The two novels were chosen in particular to view their differences as well as their similarities in terms of gender inequality through love and marriage, as the different era's it was set in gives a broader view in context about how society behaved and what each author was trying to portray through their different circumstances, bringing forward a similar message in both novels.
In Oscar Wilde’s drama The Importance of Being Earnest, he uses light-hearted tones and humor to poke fun at British high society while handling the serious theme of truth and the true identity of who is really “Earnest.” Truth as theme is most significantly portrayed through the women characters, Gwendolen and Cecily but to present serious themes comically, Wilde portrays women to be the weaker sex of society, despite the seriousness of the subject—the identity of the men they want to marry.
white woman of such beauty to fall in love with a black man. The failure of their
Lady Bracknell represents the typical aristocrat who focuses the idea of marriage on social and economic status. She believes that if the men trying to marry these girls are not of proper background, there is no engagement. Through this major exaggeration, Wilde satirically reveals the irrational and insignificant matters that the upper class society uses to view marriage.
In Playboy of the Western World by John M. Synge, Widow Quin is an intriguing woman under suspicion for her husbands sudden death. Widow Quin has a goal throughout the play to formulate a relationship with Christy, a mysterious Playboy of the Western World. Putting this goal in front of much else, Widow Quin uses her devious voice and manipulative characteristic in her attempt to achieve this goal. Although mistaken as sympathetic at times, Widow Quin is constantly striving for this goal; and always has personal, selfish reasons for each statement crafted. Although some audience members may think that Widow Quin is a humane and sympathetic character, Widow Quin uses her manipulative tone to sneakily pursue her goal and deviously assert the