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Cultural variations in interpersonal relationships
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Gender roles in literature examples
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In Morley Callaghan’s short story, Rigmarole and Bronwen Wallace’s For Puzzled in Wisconsin, gender guides the characters of each story toward unbalanced positions of power in their relationships, ultimately leading to an overwhelming feeling of isolation and disunity. This becomes evident through the constraints of gender norms, and their inability to effectively communicate their feelings with their partners.
Within many respects gender plays an overwhelming role in defining a person, and promotes a sense of confinement to the characters of both Rigmarole and Puzzled in Wisconsin. The character’s acceptance of these norms allow for an imbalance of power, and ultimately a feeling of isolation. In Callaghan’s short story, Rigmarole, both main
Anna, looks back on her past relationship with a man named Jeff, and juxtaposes that with her current husband, many years later: Peter. She reflects back on her youth when she was with Jeff, and the time that they spent with her friend Gwen and her boyfriend Chuck. The first instance of imposed gender norms is that of Anna’s memories of Gwen and Chuck’s interactions. “She always called him ‘honey’ or ‘hon’. He called her ‘babe’. I could imagine Jeff calling me anything” (Wallace, 315). The difference between Anna and Mathilde being that Anna, though she recognizes these gender norms and conforms, she does not want to adhere to them. Whenever confronted with a gender norm she tackles it the best she can, even rejecting the norms whenever possible. When Jeff attempts to mimic Chuck, Anna shuts him
Even when examining Anna’s early relationship with Jeff, when she arranges for him to come up on weekends with Chuck. He protests saying, “Jesus, I don’t even know the guy…why didn’t you call me first” (Wallace, 315). Her insecurity about whether or not Jeff would come up on weekends without this convenience allowed for a lack of communication of feelings between Jeff and Anna. However, of more importance is Anna’s lack of communication with Peter. A large part of what makes Anna herself is her ability and love of creating stories. When her husband does not share this, Anna finds this challenging, and lets it become a barrier for communication. “His face set in the pained expression he wears for conversations like this – “What ifs” speculations. When Jennifer and I sit in a restaurant making up stories about the people around us, he closes his eyes, just as he’s doing now” (Wallace, 317). Peters almost dismissal through the closing his eyes of Anna’s love for story making allows for a distancing and ultimately a deep seeded feeling of isolation and
American culture has defined the ideal dynamic for a family for many generations as one with a single, or perhaps multitude of dominant male figures, a submissive role or roles usually filled by the women in the household, and of course, children, who are deemed more acceptable if they are “seen and not heard”. Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping deconstructs and twists around what has grown to be custom in American Literature, and challenges the reader to feel uncomfortable about missing or swapped gender roles within the story itself. In Housekeeping, Ruthie and her sister Lucille have been transferred through several relatives after their mother’s death, and find themselves aching for a “normalcy” that they have never experienced, one that
Recently, I saw a movie about female tennis champion – Billie Jean King, and although I have never been into the feminism (neither can I say that I quite understand it), her character woke up some other kind of sensitivity in me. After this – to me significant change – I could not help myself not to notice different approaches of John Steinbeck and Kay Boyle to the similar thematic. They both deal with marital relationships and it was quite interesting to view lives of ordinary married couples through both “male” and “female eyes”. While Steinbeck opens his story describing the Salinas Valley in December metaphorically referring to the Elisa’s character, Boyle jumps directly to Mrs. Ames’s inner world. Although both writers give us pretty clear picture of their characters, Boyle does it with more emotions aiming our feelings immediately, unlike Steinbeck who leaves us more space to think about Elisa Allen.
The two main approaches to this type of criticism are very different, but help make distinctions in the text. Essentialists focus on the biologically determined sex of a character in literature, while others focus on constructivism or the qualities determined by society as strictly male or female. Constructivists argue that patriarchal gender roles harm women’s confidence and assertiveness, promoting stereotypes and false binaries. Gender constructivism favors the idea that gender and sexual categories are a societal construct that prefers men and restricts women. The application of this literary criticism to a text looks into the character and their relevance to the plot. Focusing on how the character promotes or rejects the imposed gender roles is a significant part in the use of this lens (Hildreth January
Conflict theory in sociology suggests that the relationship between females and males has traditionally been one of unequal power, with men in a dominant position over women (Schaefer 278). By page one of the short story there are examples of this inequality and subordination. Speaking of her illness, the narrator states, “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is ...
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The The Difference: Growing Up Female in America and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
For the past century, the United States of America has made countless advancements in technology, medicine, and many other fronts. As a society, it has advanced at an incredible rate, becoming a major world power in an incredibly short period of time. The biggest barriers that America is working on are currently taking place within its own borders; civil rights and the battle for equality have men and women of every race up and arms. Specifically, the fight against sexism is the most modern struggle in America. Discrimination against women is harmful to both men and women; it holds women back into a useless position and forces men to take the brunt of the work. Men are expected to work, but women are almost expected not to, and instead "be nothing more than dangling, decorative ornaments--non-thinking and virtually non-functional” (Chisholm 4). There is progress to be made in the American society in its attitude and treatment of women. Gender inequality continues to be a social problem in the business, family, and personal lives of women.
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
Her husband rejects the idea of her having any social interaction and does not allow her to have contact with anyone other than himself and Jeanie. She attempts to write for entertainment but she becomes too tired and soon the only source of entertainment for the Narrator is the wallpaper. She begins to look for patterns to ease her
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
Despite the perception that women are inferior and incompetent, seldom do women withstand this consistent discrimination upon their sex. Under the jurisdiction of men in their families, women are oftentimes restrained from opportunity and development. Curley, a man with an intimidating complexion, forces many, including his flirtatious wife, to succumb to his power. However, he fails to recognize his wife’s rising empowerment as she manipulates men around him into becoming her pawns. John Steinbeck’s usage of Curley’s wife in the novel Of Mice and Men delineates the desire of women to eliminate the over dominance of men through deceit in exchange for their own power.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
Anna plays the role of the classic submissive female married to David's classic chauvinist male. "Wanting to remain attractive to her husband, Anna attempts to conform to the eroticized and commodified images of women promulgated in the mass culture" (Bouson 44). Although the novel is set during the 1970"s, the decade of one of the great feminist movements in our history, Anna remains a woman who maintains herself for her husbands benefit. In a critical scene in the novel, the narrator sees Anna applying makeup. When she (the narrator) tells her that it is unnecessary where they are Anna says "He doesn't like to see me without it," and then quickly adds, "He doesn't know I wear it" (41).
Since the 19th century, the women's movement has made fantastic strides toward obtaining civil rights for women in America. Woman suffrage has been abolished, and they are no longer viewed as second-class citizens. Unfortunately, the issue of gender inequality still echoes in today's society. The fight to change a society shaped predominately by men continues, and will likely pursue for decades to come. Whether it be social, political, or economic rights, the main idea is equality for all genders, man or woman. In modern society, it seems that such a simple concept should be accepted globally by everyone – so why do women still face the daily toils of demanding the privileges that should available to all? No matter the class of woman, it is likely they will suffer from inequality and stereotypes at some point in their life. We see this in the workplace, where women have been shown to earn less then men. Some women also face the dangers of sexual violence, and are left victimized for such crimes.