Naika Charles
African Novel 373
Professor Isidore Okpewho
May 17, 2014
In this paper I’ll be discussing the gender point of the main characters of these three novels: Woman At Point Zero by Nawalel Saadawi, Changes: A love Story by Ama Ata Aidoo and Maru by Bessie Head. I’ll be showing how brave these women, who are the main characters from each novel; how they fight from being over powered by the opposite sex and being dominated by the men in their lives. In these novel’s you can see how the men’s in the women’s life uses love to control the women and how in all three novel’s power and ownership are the main theme. How the men influence their power over these women. I’ll be revealing the different experience each woman had to go through and step each of her took to get the independence they long for. These women had to fight for what they believe in and fight for their freedom from a country that believe that women should be dominated by men and that a women doesn’t have any right. Each woman had a different perspective of how to be free and independent and each took different path to achieve her independent. From the Woman At Point Zero, Firdaus way of independent was prostitution, in Changes: A love Story for Esi it was her higher value in her career, and in Maru Margaret Cadmore junior was painting and teaching.
In Woman At Point Zero, Firdaus’s the main character, was born into an extremely poor family in the countryside. Her father often mistreated and hit her mother and her. Her fondest memories as a child is the memory of her mother’s eyes watching her, holding her up when she struggled to learn how to walk. For Firdaus, this sense of belonging to her mother and being watched over by her is very comforting. It was the only...
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...ved, since her adoptive mother raised her mostly as an experience than the loved in her heart for the newborn. While she was growing up, she was teased and bullied for being different from her racist roommate. She never felt loved or cared for, she felt rejected from an early age from the environment she was living in as well as her school. Yes her adoptive mothers read her at night and rock her to sleep and defend her from all the prejudice. But she was still treated half like a servant and an experiment. Margaret junior learn from in an early age that it will be difficult to survive this prejudice bing a bushman and a Masarwa The only way she felt happy and not lonely was through her books, while growing she consecrated her life in excelling in school. Then after her adoptive mom died, she had no one in her life; when she moved to the African Village of Dilipe
In a world where the vast majority of cultures are patriarchal, in response to traditional structures, women often find themselves at war in their minds, hearts and in their own actions. 'Yellow woman' and 'The story of an hour' are examples of how women struggle in a male domintaed society. In these two stories, the women fnd themselves wrestling with thoughts and emotions that our society consider unacceptable. The following statements ,ay be asked and considered of these women:
For centuries, a great deal of ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one should realize that none are more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three such women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide great examples. All try to escape from their dreadful environment. Most of them fail, but at first, Sally seems to succeed in escaping from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as equally bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insuperable obstacles that limit the freedom in their women’s lives.
The main way in which the feminist standpoint is shown within both novels is through the use of free indirect style, a technique of narrating a character's thoughts, decisions and feelings through a combination of first- and t...
Nothing has more of an effect to the controversial conversation of women’s liberation than literature. The subtle cues from Cosmopolitan emphasizing femininity: beauty, sensuality, appreciating the female body… Self-help guidebooks persisting the woman to let go and just be free for once. It is liberating for the woman to see such medias to act upon what they were thinking and to even go beyond that. Talks of
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
Therefore, Margaret does not have a religion and will chose her own religion later in her life if she wishes to ever have a religion. Even though she does not have a religion, Margaret does have a relationship with god. While her parents support her in all of her decisions regarding religion, her grandparents are trying to pressure her into choosing their respective religions.She must face all of this in a new town, new friends and classmates (who aren’t necessarily always the best people). The first main event of the book is Margaret and her family moving. They moved from New York City to Farbrook, New Jersey.Margaret believes a big part of the reason for the move is that her parents find she is too close to her paternal grandmother who they think is a bad influence.However, Margaret continues to meet her grandmother at The Lincoln center in New York City once a month. The second main event that happened is Margaret meeting all of her friends. The first friend she meets is Nancy. On the day Margaret moves into town, Nancy comes over to her house to meet her and invites Margaret over to her house. Then, on the first day of school, she meets all of her other friends first in class and then at their secret club meeting at Nancy’s house after school. The third main event that happened is Margaret’s quest to find a religion. This starts with Margaret already having a kinship with god. Then, at their first secret club meeting, Margaret’s new friends ask her if she will join the YMCA or the Jewish Community Center,to which she responds that she might not join either and if she does,it will be her parents’ decision. Then, their teacher, Mr. Benedict, gives them a year-long assignment on something personal and meaningful. Margaret chose religion. Later, she goes with her grandmother to a Synagogue for the Jewish
In a nation brimming with discrimination, violence and fear, a multitudinous number of hearts will become malevolent and unemotional. However, people will rebel. In the eye-opening novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, the country of Afghanistan is exposed to possess cruel, treacherous and sexist law and people. The women are classified as something lower than human, and men have the jurisdiction over the women. At the same time, the most horrible treatment can bring out some of the best traits in victims, such as consideration, boldness, and protectiveness. Although, living in an inconsiderate world, women can still carry aspiration and benevolence. Mariam and Laila (the main characters of A Thousand Splendid Suns) are able to retain their consideration, boldness and protectiveness, as sufferers in their atrocious world.
The works chosen focused on the relationship between the protagonists and how their relationships built the external conflict of male dominance. The works compare and contrast the characters in order to relay the underlying message of authority, dominance, and crushing the idea of
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
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.
Most of the Indian women living in an orthodox and conservative family feel inhibited to raise their voice against aggressive dominance of the male person of the society owing to their inferiority complex and rigid code of conduct imposed on them. Their ambitions, desires, sense and sensibility are faithfully expressed in Nair’s novels. Her novels show how such women in spite of being highly educated undergo psychological suffering due to inferiority complex and dead sense of inhibitions. She not only limits her writing to upper class urban people, but also picks up characters from all stratum of society. Her theme is not only restricted to domestic problems, but it is variegated in nature. Besides, her novels represent what is authentically Indian or native.
This novel shows the struggle of two women suffering against the Taliban society. Their similar suffering leads to the mother-daughter bond they created later in the book. The quote, "Women like us. We endure. It's all we have", can be used to exemplify the importance of hope, strength, and courage. Everyday, Mariam and Laila faced oppression and injustice, yet the book ended with a sense of pleasure. Mariam's mother believes that women have no choice but to be tough and survive.
Her Ma. Ma was always the one who protected her, took the brunt of the fall that she should’ve received and now that she was gone no one could help her now. And deep down she knew there would not anyone now who would ever care for her. Her sister had already been married and she hadn’t seen her in two years now and her brother, her protector¬¬¬—at least should be—wouldn’t dream of supporting her. He idolized their father too much to even dream about helping her, about supporting her and sticking up for her. Her brother didn’t love her. The nine year old had no doubts about this. But what she did know for a fact was that her sister’s love for her was like the rotten brown magnolia flowers in the flower garden. There was love for her from her sister but hesitant, stained with the whispers of the people around
Being a Feminist and having a Feminist point of view in observing every cultural, social and historical issue had been translated as having a feminine centered and anti-masculine perception. Unlike the general and common knowledge about feminism, it is not only an anti-masculine perception towards social and individual issues. Feminism according to Oxford dictionary is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes that more commonly known as the pursuit of equality for women’s rights. On the other hand, in studying literary books as it will be in this paper, the mentioned definition is not applicable. Therefore, in this paper Feminist criticism will be used in order to study some characters’ lives in “Like water for chocolate” and “Season of Migration to the north” novels. Feminist criticism according to Oxford dictionary is a type of literary theory that points out different genders, races, classes, religions that are depictured in literature and will be used in this paper.
In contemporary society, feminism is emerging as a theory of social construct. In literature it is often challenging to discover female characters that go beyond the limits of marginalized female stereotypes and roles as a means to transgress beyond societal norms. Women are characterized as subordinate objects, amid the dominant patriarchal nature entrenched amid the epic. In The Ramayana, women are portrayed as powerless objects that succumb to the manipulation of men as the text portrays a false empowerment of women, which ultimately succumb to common archetypes accustomed to women in literature; implementing a hierarchy of gender that institutionalizes male dominance amid female inferiority. The women of The Ramayana struggle to oppose the systemic patriarchy and pursue a pathway towards attaining dynamic elements of power, that enable their ability to embody autonomous authority. In Valmiki’s The Ramayana, while women appear to be empowered, ultimately they are feeble instruments utilized to fulfill the desires of men.