As the title suggests, I’ve hit a few notable markers in my research. Some of them would definitely be called bumps in the literary road as far as this paper goes, but I feel that a broader view of what I’ve experienced and found has created something original. Let me explain.
I started this idea with a simple goal in mind. I wanted to make A Thousand Acres working class. I simply wanted to show how it was working class, but more importantly why, it fit in that category. What that has evolved into, however, is not so simple. Jane Smiley’s novel encompasses a huge array of ideas and could fit in an absurd number of categories. Drama, tragedy, pastoral, family, business and several other one word titles would just as effectively classify this novel as does working class, so I had to look elsewhere. I had close to a dozen sources from JSTOR to Google Scholar saved on my flash drive, and I read them all. Only in about 2 of them were the terms “working class” even alluded to, and I got a little worried. I had plenty of time to change my topic, but I found a few points of interest. Working class, as it stands in my mind, has the metaphoric likeness of Play-Dough and I would like to be the person to look at A Thousand Acres as the working class text that I believe it is, and mold and form a wholly original idea using feminism, education and prosperity (or the lack thereof) as the backbone.
Conveniently enough, three texts in particular struck me as particularly useful. Each one is very different from the other in its own right, but each text also solidified Jane Smiley’s work as something useful to my project. Just when I thought I’d move on to something easier and over done (like Steinbeck), these articles renewed my in...
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...another crisis that may be insoluble” (590). This crisis is the same problem in some respects that Hall and Leslie note, the same problem that I started my paper with, and the crisis is “discontent within families, especially among females, within a quintessentially patriarchal institution” (590).
These three articles are so very different, but share similar ideas underneath their main ideas in several areas, and on different levels. The main ideas are important, but the underlying connections are what go tme excited about what I was doing. The literature is new, the scholarly community is small, and working with this is challenging, but I think it will be rewarding. With the help of these articles (and a couple more that could prove useful) I hope to find what I’m looking for and be able to produce a product that is at the same time original and insightful.
Women's Existence Reflecting the glare of the sun on its silky, dark green leaves, a formidable, dominant, and patriarchal figure of a grand oak tree stands. Underneath, however, lies the declining structures of wilted flowers, forever shielded from the rays of sunlight. Like the wilted flowers, women during the period of first wave feminism bear a position under the oppression of patriarchal society. Spanning the 19th through the early 20th century, gender inequality prevented women from reaching a
social institutions and honestly address social problems within the confines of his art. In Victorian England religious and social institutions such as church, family and marriage were deeply rooted in patriarchy. True to its nature patriarchy automatically limited women and privileges men. Victorian society, dominated as it was by patriarchal ideology, restricted women physically and mentally, and severely limited their economic opportunities as well. Therefore, women suffered from severe economic
bowl, farm foreclosures, and an unemployment rate of 30 percent reminds us that capitalism is fallible. Although we recall with humility this bleak period of our history, we seldom reflect on the plight of the Depression’s most vulnerable victims--the underpaid, uneducated working poor. In Yonnondio: From the Thirties, Tillie Olsen gives readers a searing personal account of a family struggling to escape, or at least manage, abject poverty. Their journey from a Wyoming mining town to a farm in South
their families, obligate them to engage in peasant farming against the backdrop of constraining factors including lack of access to strategic resources and limited access to farm lands as their major source of
The Role of Women in My Antonia In her novel, My Antonia, Cather represents the frontier as a new nation. Blanche Gelfant notes that Cather "creat[ed] images of strong and resourceful women upon whom the fate of a new country depended" . This responsibility, along with the "economic productivity" Gilbert and Gubar cite (173), reinforces the sense that women hold a different place in this frontier community than they would in the more settled areas of America. One manner in which this
that everyone else refused to carry”(Walker, “In Search Of” 237), who assumes the gender role thrust upon her by a society which seems to sanction abuse. The letters in the first half of the novel, though addressed to God are more of a dialogue with the self. They are open, honest and provide a black woman’s reality where notions of race and sex intersect as oppressive forces in a predominantly patriarchal set up. Her abuse is limited to the domestic space and continues even when she is married
The stereotypical Canadian family during the Great Depression consisted of a father who left home to find work elsewhere in the country, a mother trying to make ends meet with what little they had left, and their malnourished children. Although, as is often the case with stereotypes, this was not how all of the population lived. Specifically speaking, women were not just resigned to waiting for their husbands or fathers to come home with money and provisions. Many Canadian women in the 1930s may
chores on a daily basis, routinely without a rest. The setting in the short story "A Jury of Her Peers" was in a rural town with numerous farms from east to west, therefore, many families work in farms from dawn to dusk and each member has certain tasks throughout the day. The wives, however, usually work alone to maintain indoors in a proper manner. For men, a woman's job was not considered real work, but in reality, a wife is a backbone inside a home. A variety of tasks, such as preparing food, cleaning
According to gender-role stereotypes, women are thought to be domestic and live in their “private sphere,” in the confinements of the house, specifically the kitchen, the place where the women in the play remain. Men are presumed to live in the “public sphere,” away from the chores of the house and provide for the family as indicated by the jobs the male characters hold. Trifles was a play based on a real life tragedy
Prevalence of Patriarchy is an important characteristic of families in Indian Society. Most of the societies in India are patriarchal except few matrilineal communities in Kerala and Meghalaya. In general patriarchy means rule of the father in a male – dominated family. It is a social and ideological construct which considers men as superior to women. Patriarchy is based on a system of power relations which are hierarchical and unequal and in which men control women’s production, reproduction and
are still being forced into a position that even though isn’t necessary for them, but is a social norm in society. If women don’t fit into a specific role of a wife, or a motherly type role, society looks down upon that. The feminist theory is mainly based on how women are treated in society and the fact that society is what controls a woman’s role and not a woman herself, which is a reason why this theory was brought into action. Susan Glaspell lived in the era where the act of feminism started
The nuclear family is fundamentally defined as “a family structure or household composed of a couple and their children” (Kimmel 388). Stemming from a passé way of thinking that was first popularized in the 1950’s and 1960’s by advertisements and television shows, the nuclear family brought forth a notion that it was the male’s role to provide and protect the family whereas the woman’s role consisted of housework and motherhood. The concept of the nuclear family in Canada has undergone dramatic
conditions. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, in her story, "The revolt of mother”, attempts to mirror the problems, hardships and social struggle of women living in the 19th century. Sarah Penn is an obedient wife and a hard working mother living in a small farm house with her husband and two children in the rural New England. She feels that the house is not decent enough for living and for the wedding of her daughter, as it is too old and worn out. Instead of building a new house, Sarah's husband builds a
escaping to America. The women were immigrating to America to be the wives of the settlers this demonstrates that women were expected to live in the household for the rest of their lives. Women in Puritan society fulfilled a number of different roles. History has identified many women who have had different experiences when voicing their beliefs and making a step out of their echelon within society’s social sphere. Among these women are Anne Hutchinson, and Mary Rowlandson. And in this essay I
Gender Roles in Susan Glaspell's A Jury Of Her Peers and Trifles Twentieth century society places few stereotypical roles on men and women. The men are not the sole breadwinners, as they once were, and the women are no longer the sole homemakers. The roles are often reversed, or, in the case of both parents working, the old roles are totally inconsequential. Many works of literature deal with gendered roles and their effect on society as a whole or on an individual as a person. "A Jury Of