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role of women in general literature
role of women in general literature
female role in literature
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The Language of Eudora Welty's Losing Battles
In his essay, "The Languages of Losing Battles", Mr. Bass contends that the form of language used by two major characters in Eudora Welty's Losing Battles, Julia Mortimer and Granny Vaughn, serves as a challenge to the "male-authored decrees" (Bass) found throughout the book. Julia's idioms are "teaching, writing, and books," (Bass)while Granny Vaughn, on the other hand, uses oral language to transmit family history. While Julia's province is one of ideas and abstraction in the written word, Granny Vaughn's stories are concrete, empirical, and rooted in actual events and real people. How these two methods of
questioning male authority are used by the two characters is discussed at length by Mr.
Bass, and this discussion comprises much of the bulk of this article.
The "male-authored decrees" challenged by the two women throughout the book
are numerous, and Mr. Bass makes use of only a few of these to make his point. In
truth, although his thesis is strong and well composed, most this article consists of a
rather opaque discussion of biblical symbolism, and how its various applications in the
novel relate to Granny Vaughn's "spoken folk myth." In Losing Battles,Julia has "written
her own apocrypha" (Bass) on leaves torn from her bible. This is used by Bass as a
prototype of written challenge to male authority. In some way, Bass contends, the
written word of Julia is a counterweight to Granny's dominance of the family, although
Julia's words must be taken for what they are, since she is not alive to interpret them.
While the written word "moves outward toward the abstract or conceptual and away
from the concrete center," the spoken language of Granny Vaughn and others "draws in
close to make the emblematic concrete, familial." (Bass) What exactly this balance does
for the furthering of the women's influence in the book is a question that seems to have
been left for the reader to answer.
Included in the piece is an interesting discussion of "banners and battles," and
the way that these images "mark the main conflict of the novel between local and
absolute."Bass uses the emblem of "Jack's 'torn sleeve that flowed free from his
shoulder like some old flag carried home from far-off battle.' " to represent a
convergence of a "banner" with a "battle".
Mr. Bass has taken a risk with his attempt to convince his readers that
Gendered strategies, in the criticism of early fiction, made feminine fiction incapable of excellence. By using conventional heterosexual relationships in their prefaces, authors only succeed in supporting the masculine control over fiction. The appraisals women gained only reinforced their inferior status. "Criticism placed female authors in a specific and confined critical sphere, while it located male authors in an other, more respected field" (375). By aligning their works with popular male literature, women inadvertently strengthened male authority. Women were only granted recognition in terms of their limited social stature. It is these gendered values and strategies that makes the history of the novel and feminine achievement difficult to assess.
When we think about Mississippi and all of its glory one cannot help but to feel oblige to rejoice at how far Mississippi has come over time. Since joining the Union in 1817, Mississippi has experienced its fair share adversity. Mississippi is a unique state because of many different reasons. Three things that has significantly help shaped modern Mississippi is the art, music, and literature. One could dwell on the pain of the past or go through countless stories about the wars. However, when I think of modern Mississippi I envision Eudora Welty writing her stories, BB King strumming Louise, and Leontyne Price melodic melodies filling the air. It is the culture, traditions, and way of life that has truly shaped modern Mississippi.
The identity of a graffiti artist is hardly ever known unless they want to tag their art with their name or a nickname. Graffiti writers as a subculture are trying to express their political views through civil disobedience by painting pictures that speak out against the government. This subculture developed because they were tired of being oppressed by the government. Graffiti is one of the most enduring acts of protest. It is an important tool for the resistance movement as a way to publicize their protest. It is a visible and powerful form of protest that is going to promote change in the social justice by allowing oppressed groups of people express their viewpoints without being penalized by the
...eristics of feminism but did not fully grasp them. They act as a perfect representation of women in the Middle Ages to Scholasticism period that went through social suppression by enlightening readers of the men’s misconduct against them. These two women started a movement that changed the course of history for humankind, even for being fictional and nonfictional pieces.
...ualities and influences we want to accept as truth instead of blindly accepting the book of myths. She encourages women to descend the ladder and find the “thing itself” and the meaning that thing has for each individual woman.
...hetypes of these primary characters, both of these novels make a parallel statement on feminism. The expectations of both themselves and society greatly determine the way that these women function in their families and in other relationships. Looking at the time periods in which these novels were written and take place, it is clear that these gender roles greatly influence whether a female character displays independence or dependence. From a contemporary viewpoint, readers can see how these women either fit or push the boundaries of these expected gender roles.
From the start of the book we can see that women in the book are
No matter what people say about it, Graffiti is a form of self-expression. It is important to realize the amount of talent and work required to create a piece of graffiti. The scale of such a piece can be small found on a corner to massive one taking up an entire wall. However, there are varying
Graffiti is a form of art that people use to express themselves and to convey various messages to people in a particular community. In the movie "Graffiti Verite':. One of the graffiti artist explained that his purpose in doing graffiti is that it allows him to "express his anger' on the wall. Another kid by the name of "Jipsie" said that graffiti is a "form of growth". There were several different explanations that artists shared as well as several different reasons why they like graffiti. The common theme among the graffiti artist and taggers was that graffiti is simply a form of self-expression (Bryan). At the end of the film one tagger made a comment and said, "graffiti is not vandalism, but it is a beautiful crime". This comment did not make sense to me. Committing a crime, a hideous act, is not a beautiful thing to do by any means. Graffiti does not mean people can go around and draw and spray paint on other peoples property. Regardless of what types of graffiti are being expressed by the tagger, this type of self expression is considered vandalism when people decide to draw, destroy, or violate any persons property without consent. As a result of taggers committing the crime of vandalism, property owners, concerned citizens, and law enforcement officers spend too much time, money, and energy trying to put an end to the unlawful act of vandalism.
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
...choice. These females ably fulfilled the biological gender role purely by their own volition. Therefore, a woman's struggle isn't with the biological gender role, but its patriarchal limits. All in all, the three texts describe the patriarchal tendency to posit the female in a gender role, the female's struggle with it.
In order for us to deal with how a consideration of femininity can effect our understanding of a literary text, we must also be able to grasp the notion of `feminism' and `Feminist Literary Theory'. A dictionary definition of `feminism' is: `the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes.' Although this leans towards feminism in the historical sense of the word, it still provides the grounds, or foundations, from which feminist literary theories were created. Feminists argue against the stereotyping and social construction of female norms, seeing them as created by men in order to establish their own sense of power. It is thought that while males suggest that gender is sex and not actually a construct, the female role will become much more passive, stereotyped and controlled.
‘“Graffiti (sgraffiti), meaning drawings or scribblings on a flat surface and deriving from the Italian sgraffio (‘scratch’), with a nod to the Greek graphein (‘to write’), originally referred to those marks found on ancient Roman architecture”’(Weisburg). Though, it is unknown when or where graffiti first made an appearance; modern graffiti did not come around till the late 1960’s to early 1970’s in New York. The term “tagging” is the modern form of scratching (Weisburg). It also is considered the origin of all modern graffiti, including street art.
The first case of graffiti was when Darryl McCray was trying to impress a girl that he liked. He went around his town tagging his pseudonym around town. “Cornbread” could be seen all throughout the town. (B) This small act was just the start of a phenomenon that overtook urban life in the United States.
Why has this book become so popular in rapid time? Why are women flocking to buy the book and why are they talking about it with their friends? More importantly, why was I a part of the craze? These are all valid questions I would like to find answers to. In my opinion, the book negatively portrays women, and yet women, and some men, are still reading it. It is alarming that so many readers are blinded by the message of the book because they are so wrapped in the content. This is why I find the book worth studying. In order to find answers to my questions, I will look to feminist criticism to better understand my topic.