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The victorian age essay
The victorian age essay
Essay about the victorian era
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In the Next Room, or the vibrator play written by Sarah Ruhl premiered at the Berkley Repertory Theatre in February 2009, and later premiered on Broadway at Lincoln Center in November of 2009. Taking place at the dawn of the age of electricity around 1880 in a wealthy spa town on the skirts of New York City, this play follows the events taking place in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Givings. Mr. Givings is a scientist and a doctor, treating women for hysteria out of his home by using a clinical vibrating machine to induce paroxysms, or what we know today as orgasms. These induced paroxysms are strictly scientific, and are believed to release any congestion in the female womb, which is understood to be the cause of these hysterical symptoms. His wife, Mrs. Givings, quickly becomes curious about her husbands work, which remains under lock and key, in the next room. As Catherine follows her innocent instincts and her undying thirst for knowledge and human connection, she realizes her desire to find true intimacy with her husband. The result of her investigative work to find this intimacy is her first experience with the vibrating machine. It causes her whole world to shift upside down. Sarah Ruhl exposes the play’s thematic issues through this shift in Catherine’s world, and the experiences of her other characters. Through repeating her theme of lightness and darkness, in various manners and forms, visually and textually, Ruhl paints a metaphor for the prevailing struggle of moving forward, embracing social practices and new technology, and preserving current practices. Through this identified struggle, questions arise about the importance of the child in the home and the child’s influence on the structure of marriage, the sep...
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...timately is that they go “Away from the machine. In the garden” (Ruhl 141). Mr. and Mrs. Givings must actually leave the house, with all its structure and confinement, in order to gain access to their own intimate experience. The characters stimulation and desire to explore and pioneer these intimate concepts is what makes In the Next Room so relatable Catherine and Dr. Givings finally begin to overcome distances and explore each other’s natural and healthy desires to intertwine love and sexuality. The last moment of the play, becomes an enactment of the marriages of comfort, growth, purity, exploration, and intimacy, all ideas opposite in nature but consistent with the plays prevailing theme: the struggle of moving forward to embrace human intimacy, while simultaneously embracing social practices and new technology and preserving current or traditional practice
In "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin, the essay uses fragments throughout the essay to symbolize all the topics and people that are involved. The fragments in the essay tie together insides and outsides, human nature, everything affected by past, secrets, cause and effect, and development with the content. These subjects and the fragments are also similar with her life stories and her interviewees that all go together. The author also uses her own memories mixed in with what she heard from the interviewees. Her recollection of her memory is not fully told, but with missing parts and added feelings. Her interviewee's words are told to her and brought to the paper with added information. She tells throughout the book about these recollections.
"Number One!" by Jill Nelson is a story that Jill Nelson tells about her father and his beliefs. She speaks about a Sunday breakfast that her family had every Sunday. This breakfast was like there church every Sunday, and her father was the preacher. He always preached about being number one, and he represented number one by holding up his middle finger. Her father never told the family exactly what he meant by number one, and when she was old enough to have the courage to ask, her father had gone through too many stages to remember. This is a good learning story.
In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.
Communication is a vital component of everyday relationships in all of mankind. In plays, there are many usual staging and dialogue techniques that directors use to achieve the attention of the audience. However, in the play, “Post-its (Notes on a Marriage)”, the authors Paul Dooley and Winnie Holzman use both staging and conversation in order to convey the struggles of modern relationships. The play is unconventional in how it attempts to have the audience react in a unique way. The authors use staging and conversation to portray to the audience that there are complex problems with communication in modern relationships.
Peter Howitt’s Sliding Doors (1998) is a film that explores the events that unfold in Helen’s (Gwyneth Paltrow) life after she simultaneously makes and misses her train. Throughout the film, sliding doors appear as a motif and signify that an important event is about to occur or has occurred in Helen’s life. By manipulating the range of story information and mise-en-scene, Howitt is able to juxtapose Helen and James (John Hannah) with Gerry (John Lynch) and Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn) to ultimately create a stronger allegiance between the audience and Helen and James.
To initiate on the theme of control I will proceed to speak about the narrators husband, who has complete control over her. Her husband John has told her time and time again that she is sick; this can be viewed as control for she cannot tell him otherwise for he is a physician and he knows better, as does the narrator’s brother who is also a physician. At the beginning of the story she can be viewed as an obedient child taking orders from a professor, and whatever these male doctors say is true. The narrator goes on to say, “personally, I disagree with their ideas” (557), that goes without saying that she is not very accepting of their diagnosis yet has no option to overturn her “treatment” the bed rest and isolation. Another example of her husband’s control would be the choice in room in which she must stay in. Her opinion is about the room she stays in is of no value. She is forced to stay in a room she feels uneasy about, but John has trapped her in this particular room, where the windows have bars and the bed is bolted to the floor, and of course the dreadful wall paper, “I never worse paper in my life.” (558) she says. Although she wishes to switch rooms and be in one of the downstairs rooms one that, “opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window. ...” (558). However, she knows that, “John would not hear of it.”(558) to change the rooms.
We have all heard the African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The response given by Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, simply states, “If you’ve got a village. But if you don’t, then maybe it just takes two people” (Donoghue 234). For Jack, Room is where he was born and has been raised for the past five years; it is his home and his world. Jack’s “Ma” on the other hand knows that Room is not a home, in fact, it is a prison. Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story but give significance as well. The Point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side with conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel.
Alexander Stowe is a twin, his brother is Aaron Stowe. Alex is an Unwanted, Aaron is a Wanted, and their parents are Necessaries. Alex is creative in a world where you can’t even see the entire sky, and military is the dream job for everyone and anyone. He should have been eliminated, just like all the unwanteds should have been. He instead comes upon Artimè, where he trains as a magical warrior- after a while. When he was still in basic training, and his friends were not, he got upset, he wants to be the leader, the one everyone looks up to.
Being excluded is something each and every person has been through in this world. It can be for many reasons such as race, color, class, school, jobs, colleges, and sometime just for being who you are. It’s the ugly truth about this world, that people get disliked and excluded because of their choices they make for themselves and for being who they are. People are against gay marriages and are against people, the thing I don’t understand is why, what difference does it make in your life?
Kate Balland is a sixth grade student at Martha Brown Middle School. She is a dedicated and committed author of Stepsister Twisted. She had a lot of fun writing this story thanks to her wonderful English teacher, Mrs. Smith. For example, Kate enjoyed adding the dialogue to give the characters some real life and meaning. She thinks that it gives them a real meaning to their role that they play in the story.
The Glass Menagerie - Amanda Wingfield If there is a signature character type that marks Tennessee -Williams’s dramatic work, it is undeniably that of the faded Southern belle. Amanda is a clear representative of this type. In general, a Tennessee Williams faded belle is from a prominent Southern family, has received a traditional upbringing, and has suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune at some point in her life. Like Amanda, these women all have a hard time coming to terms with their new status in society—and indeed, with modern society in general, which disregards the social distinctions that they were taught to value.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
“’But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'” quoted by a very creative and imaginative author, Lewis Carroll, author of the hit Alice novels. This short novel was written by an extremely upright, ultra conservative man in which his unique character and many experiences had a great influence in the creation of Through the Looking Glass. Of all of Carroll’s works, Alice’s Through the Looking Glass, has a unique way of expressing adventures and stating the events in which occur throughout the whole novel making the novel standout in the category of whimsical, nonsense literature. The novel includes 12 chapters in which every new chapter brings you into different exotic settings introducing you to many peculiar characters involving the only and only Alice, the Tweedledum twins, Red Queen, White King, Humpty Dumpty Walrus and Carpenter. Meeting these characters brought her to finally achieving what her destination had been since the start; she finally became her normal size, making it into the garden. The events and settings involved with Through the Looking Glass make it a very fictional, imaginative novel. Carroll's imagination takes readers with Alice into where she finds the Looking-Glass House. Using the game of chess as the setting of his novel, he fills the novel with situations and puzzles from the ordinary to the extraordinary; including silly characters and adventures in which may be nonsensical, using the game of chess as the setting.
The old and new attitudes toward sexuality and the proper behavior of women is very apparent in the play called A Doll House. The play shows how each woman has sacrificed who they were for the men and the other people in their lives. The play also shows how men see women in general. Several characters give up who they thought they were meant to be, because of the social aspect in their lives. Society has always placed a burden on women as who they are supposed to be as wives, mothers, and as adult women. Women were seen as the inferior sex in the past and in the present. Things have changed over the years as women earn more and more freedom and rights that men have had for a very long time. The sacrifices that are made in this play speak to how things work for women in society. Women give up their right to happiness because they feel obligated to change who they are to help someone else.
Kofi Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations once stated,“We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.” Since the beginning of time, tension results when an individual does not want to live within the confines of their culture or society. Citizens struggle to be a part their community when other residents are intolerant of their way of thinking. Mavericks who feel restrained by tradition and rules are eventually compelled to act.