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Impact of social class
Impact of social class
How poverty can impact on a persons mental health and wellbeing
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The meaning that could be made in “I Stand Here Ironing” through a Marxist lenses is that financial crises diminish an individual's status and growth in society. The story took place during the Great Depression where poverty was high and finding work was difficult, especially for a women. The narrator was a single mother with a lower class social standing because of the economic crisis. It was difficult for a single women to hold a job and balance time with her family. Therefore, her daughter, Emily, was affected internally and externally because of her mother’s financial difficulties. Emily loathed the caregivers she was handed to, but never rebelled against it. She was constantly sick and never had an appetite which made her incredibly thin.
This essay will compare Marx’s understanding of the relationship between laborers and capitalists and Wollstonecraft’s understanding of the relationship between women and men. Both Marx and Wollstonecraft’s conception of these groups of people show a large gap between their treatment and status in society. Marx argues that capitalism is not created by nature and the unequal relationship between laborers and capitalists is not humane. In other words, it is actually the cause of social and economic problems during that time period. On a similar note, Wollstonecraft believes that the oppressive relationship between men and women is also unnatural. The standards for men and women are placed by society, not by biological facts. Society and how people
Marx describes the problem in great detail in the first chapter. He feels there is a problem between the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. The bourgeoisie were the oppressed class before the French Revolution and he argues that they are now the oppressors. The proletarians are the new working class, which works in the large factory and industries. He says that through mass industry they have sacrificed everything from the old way of religion, employment, to a man’s self worth and replaced it with monetary value. He is mad that the people of ole that use to be upper class such as skills man, trades people, & shopkeepers, are now slipping into the proletarians or working class. He talks of the bourgeoisie getting to be so greedy that they are forced to nest all over the world to hock their goods. This is talking about the new import and export system that has formed. He says the working class has to deal with the flux of the market and is disposed of more easily than the machines used in the market. He says that they actually become part of the machine while working. Doing the simplest and most monotonous part of the job. In this new system Marx says “as repulsiveness of work increases, the wage of work decreases”. He also prophesizes that machines will become so advanced that the wages for man will become one extremely low rate. He says the proletarians live a life of exploitation. By being exploited at work in the w...
“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, is a story about a mother's struggle to balance the demands of raising children and having to work to make ends meet during the Great Depression. The story’s primary focus is on the relationship between the narrator, a mother, and her first child, Emily. Throughout the story, the narrator reflects on the decisions and mistakes she made while raising Emily. The narrator was detached from Emily almost completely during her younger years, but she desires an emotional connection to her, like she has with her other children. She also wants Emily to have a better life than she had.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World demonstrates key principles of Marxist literary theory by creating a world where mass happiness is the tool used by positions of power known as the Alphas to control the masses known as the Epsilons at the cost of the people's freedom to choose. The social castes of Brave New World, Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, draw parallels to the castes applied in Marxist literary theory, the Aristocracy, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat.
It is the worker’s condition that he truly focuses on. Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible.
The changes accompany the transition from one epoch to another. In the late nineteenth century labor has become a commodity to the merchants, and the formation of a new mode of production has risen which gave rise to a capitalist society. There is a new class distinction between the laborer and those who owned the means of production.
Marx’s idea of the estrangement of man from the product of his labor described the suffering of countless hours or work by the laborer, contributing to the production of a product that he could not afford with the wages he made. He helped to produce a product that only those wealthier than he could afford. As the society around him became more object-oriented, he became increasingly more alienated. In the lager, one factor that distanced the laborer from his product was that he no longer worked for a wage, but for survival. In a description of his fellow worker, Levi wrote, “He seems to think that his present situation is like outside, where it is honest and logical to work, as well as being of advantage, because according to what everyone says, the more one works the more one earns and eats.” Levi pitied his fellow worker for his naivety, as the Lager was not a place of labor for prosperity, but strictly a place of labor by force. One worked in order to live, focusing more on the uncertainty of their next meal, day, or even breath than the product of their l...
In Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest multiple literary criticism can be applied such as the Feminism theory, the Historical criticism, as well as the Freudian theory. One theory that's applied mostly in the book is a Marxist literary criticism, using a Marxist point of view, readers gain a greater understanding of the novel’s images, the division of people, and power struggles.
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
In this paper, I am going to explore the differences between communism and socialism and how different the thoughts and opinions of these two ways of life are from the current western views on religion and God. To explain about the differences between socialism/communism and western thoughts on religion I will explore the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. They are founders and writers of a lot of the socialist and communist thoughts on religion and God. In our western society when we discuss God and religion, people for the most part are going to lean one way or another when it comes to their beliefs on religion. If you are from the western part of globe like myself the views and thoughts hinge on the belief of God as a superior being, a perfect one, one who controls everything that happens. The other side of the coin in western culture would be the atheist who does not believe in God at all. There are many other views about God and Religion that differ greatly from the views that are held throughout the western regions of the world. In a lot of the Eastern countries of the world the teaching of the Socialist and Communist parties that rule these areas of the world has influenced the views that have been passed down and taught through out the years. Communism and Socialism do not believe in the theory that there is one perfect God and that you can only receive salvation through him.
Mankind has used fairy tales to both entertain and educate each other and their families about the world around them since the beginning of time. Fairy tales have been used to explain more mature aspects of life to children such as social roles, religion, culture, everyday dangers, morality, and so on. A popular sociological theory on the purpose of fairy tales is that they are used to explain to children and relate to families via social Marxist ideas; many tales by the Brothers Grimm can be related to this theory. “The Golden Children”, a tale from The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, clearly showcases class advancement which is linked to a fulfilled life, an exceedingly Marxist idea.
In the short story "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen the conflict between a mother whose giving is limited by hardships is directly related to her daughter's wrinkled adjustment. Ironing, she reflects upon when she was raising her first-born daughter, Emily. The mother contemplates the consequences of her actions. The mother's life had been interrupted by childbirth, desertion, poverty, numerous jobs, childcare, remarriage, frequent relocations, and five children. Her struggling economic situation gave way to little or no opportunity to properly care for and nurture her first-born child. In spite of the attention and love Emily craved and never received, she still survived, and even made strengths, and talents, out of the deprivations she had endured.
Wives had the jobs of housekeeping, childcare, and spending an average of 55 hours a week on domestic chores. This lifestyle however was completely contrasted by the main character in “I Stand Here Ironing”, a short story written by Tillie Olsen. The narrator is a single, working class mother during the Great Depression and during a time where women were expected to stay home and care for their children. The story follows the mother’s economic hardships and struggle to be a good mother for her daughter while facing the difficulties of inequality. This short story highlights the challenges of working-class women and represents the struggle of American women during this
Every story can be viewed in several different ways, and one of these different ways of viewing stories is Marxism; Marxism consists of the political and economic theories created by Karl Marx; its posits and oppositional relationship between the Proletariat, the working class, and the capitalist Bourgeoisie, those members of society that own the means of production. Marx believed that the government exploited its power to oppress the laboring masses for the benefit of the wealthy white portion of society. Ernest Hemingway, an American novelist and short story writer in the twentieth century, wrote many short stories during his lifetime, one of them being “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife”, which can be viewed through the Marxist lens. This short story consists of several Native American log workers, the Proletariat, and the wealthy white citizens of the society (in this story, the Doctor), the Bourgeoisie. The story follows the Doctor’s day as he interacts with the log workers and later, with his family. Ernest Hemingway, in his short story “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife”, blurs the lines of distinction between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat to show that the Marxist concept of different social classes is not completely true.
Classic Marxism is a socioeconomic ideology concerning the major division between the working class or the proletariat, and those in power also known as the bourgeoisie. In the short story “The Brave Little Tailor,” the motif of class