Not for this I was born and then raised up.
Unacquainted was I with such need.
I once prayed to God, I was faithful.
I once had a soul that knew peace.
-from "Fallen," a Russian brothel song (Bernstein, 169)
Prostitutes, women who sell their bodies for money, have been frowned upon since antiquity by most members of society. However, from as early as Rahab, the Whore of Jericho in the Old Testament who helped Joshua and his men regain the Promised Land, prostitutes have been portrayed as not only as sinners with the possibility of redemption, but women who lead men to salvation as well. This trend was particularly taken up in nineteenth-century Russian literature: "Elevated into powerful literary symbols by authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy..., prostitutes became female archetypes who either disillusioned the men with whom they associated or raised them to a higher plane of being" (11). Dostoevsky uses this idea of a "saintly prostitute" repeatedly in his works. The archetype that Bernstein claims he creates in based on the image of Mary Magdalen from the New Testament, the celebrated reformed prostitute who devotes her life to Christ. Crime and Punishment's Sonya Marmeladova, of whom "Notes from Underground's Liza is a prototype, performs the role of the penitent sinner who leads the way to salvation: the saintly prostitute Mary Magdalen.
Despite common belief, Mary Magdalen is never referred to as a reformed prostitute in the four Gospels of the New Testament, though her actual role is just as pertinent to Dostoevsky's writing. In spite of the Gospels' tendencies to conflict with each other, they agree on four aspects of the Magdalen's life. First of all, she is one of Jesus Christ's female followers who is present at ...
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...r one's sins and the perpetual chance of salvation.
Works Cited
Bernstein, Laurie. Sonia's Daughter's: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Conradi, Peter. Modern Novelists: Fyodor Dostoevsky. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Jessie Coulson. Ed. George Gibian. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1989.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. "Notes from Underground." Trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew. New York: Penguin Books, 1961.
Haskins, Susan. Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor. London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993.
Malvern, Marjorie M. Venus in Sackcloth: The Magdalen's Origins and Metamorphoses. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975.
Wasiolek, Edward. Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1964.
The most apparent theme of discrimination in To Kill A Mockingbird is racism, however there is more than just that. Other types of discrimination exist in To Kill A Mockingbird such as prejudice towards women, sexism. For example, Scout says, “Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing anything that required pants” (Lee 59).
Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground is a story about the thoughts, views, and actions of a strange unnamed man who we’ll refer to as The Underground Man. The Underground Man is strange because he lacked self-respect, he had sadistic and masochistic tendencies, and he enjoyed inflicting emotional pain on himself and others.
With his fathers death he inherited a stable realm with a wealthy monarch. At that time parliament had not been summoned for supplies in 5 years. Henry’s different interests and lack of application of government business increased the influence of Thomas Wolsey, a son of a butcher, who became the Lord Chancellor in 1515. Wolsey ended up becoming one of the most powerful ministers in all of British history. He was also appointed Cardinal that year and given papal legate powers that allowed him to counter any decision made by archbishop of Canterbury. It allowed him to “govern” t...
During the mid- to late- 1800s in Russia, a radical phenomenon swept the nation. The idea that life was meaningless and that there was no "mind" or "soul" outside the physical world infected the minds of Russia's elite and Russia's poverty-stricken. This became known as Nihilism. According to Whitney Eggers on "Philosophies in Crime and Punishment," "Nihilists argued that there was a distinction between the weak and the strong, and that in fact the strong had a right to trample over the weak" (Eggers). Nihilism is commonly linked to utilitarianism, or the idea that moral decisions should be based on the rule of the greatest happiness for the largest number of people. Raskolnikov, the protagonist in Crime and Punishment, is a Nihilist, which is his main reason for committing the murders. As a Nihilist, Raskolnikov is a man who "approaches everything from a critical point of view...who does not bow down before any authorities, who does not accept a single principle on faith, no matter how much respect might surround that principle" (Cassedy, 1639).
Black children are disproportionately represented in the foster care system. In the most recent Statistical Abstract published in 2011 by the U.S. Census Bureau, Black children accounted for 15% of the U.S. child population in 2009. In contrast, Black children were at almost 30% of the total number of children in foster care for the same year according to the Department of Health and Human Services 2009 Foster Care report. In addition, there are not enough Black families available to adopt these children. Interracial adoption advocates often hail it as a good solution to address these problems. Interracial adoption is promoted as a major step towards an integrated, unprejudiced, and colorblind society. However, instead of healing the wounds of racism, interracial adoption often contributes to racist ideologies and practices that devalue family relationships in the Black community (Roberts 50). This type of adoption is a surface only solution that fails to dig deeper and address the underlying reasons for the disproportionate representation of Black children in foster care and the lack of minority adoptive parents. This deeper analysis exposes a system of that is very biased against the Black community in the adoption industry. Even when it is altruistic, interracial adoption is mostly detrimental to the Black community because it aids in the breakdown of Black families and the dismissal of the root causes of the circumstances that lead to large numbers of Black children needing to be adopted in the first place. Furthermore, interracial adoption has not made any significant difference in lowering the numbers of Black children in foster care.
Fanger, Donald. Introduction: Notes From Underground. By Fyodor Dostoevsky. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. NY: Bantam, 1992.
This paper seeks to look at the relationship of Jesus and the women he encountered as well as those he used as examples to reveal the principles by which women should be treated.
Fanger, Donald. Introduction. Notes From Underground. By Fyodor Dostoevsky. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. NY: Bantam, 1992.
During the 1960's and 1970's another monumental shift changed the views of adoption. With unwed mothers lessening and the legalization of abortion by the 1973 Roe v. Wade trial, the number of healthy, white infants adoptees dropped. Even though there wasn't that many white babies to be adopted, African-American babies swa...
As issues that affect children enthuse intense interest and emotion it is unsurprising that transracial adoption; the joining together of racially or ethnically different parents and children in an adoptive family, is a subject that is fraught with controversy. Transracial adoption not only raises the question of the how much power should the state have to affect individual choices with respect to family life it also questions the level of state assistance given to families in trouble before removing parents from their parents. It also highlights issue of race within the context of the family with advocates seeing trans-racial adoption as a harbinger of hope, believing that if different races can love each other as a family then there is hope for the relationship between different races in society (Moe, 2007; Perry, 1996). Whereas, radical opponents claim that white society is racist and that transracial adoption is a hostile manifestation of white power and believe that ethnic minority communities should have the right to decide the fate of ethnic minority children (Hayes, 1995).
Oliver Cromwell was an English peasant who became one of the most influential, effective and controversial leaders ever to rule England. A great military leader, he ultimately overthrew the King and, for the first time, changed his country from a monarchy to a Republic. Despite the fact that he was a strong leader, Cromwell’s goal and achievement of eliminating the monarchy did not last long after his death. Oliver Cromwell was and remains a controversial figure in history, reviled by many and revered by many others.
...fered some users success in losing weight. Both the South Beach and Atkins diets adopt the theory that low carbohydrate consumption results in rapid weight loss and use a 3-phase attack to ease the user into long-term weight loss. However, the South Beach diet
Kraeger, Linda, and Joe Barnhart. 1992. Dostoevsky on Evil and Atonement. Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.
While confronting Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground seems a difficult task initially, one must be able to transcend the elaborate diction and parodies, and comprehend the author himself, while also taking root the message Dostoevsky had originally intended in the time it was addressed. Understanding the author himself, along with the period in which the work was written, augments one’s overall discernment of the passage. In the age he wrote, Dostoevsky must have seemed eccentric and outlandish; nevertheless, looking back on him from today with a literary understanding of modernism, he appears ahead of his time. His central premise, although difficult to determine amongst the satire, is humanity’s necessity for freedom and religion, specifically Christianity.
Dostoevsky, Feodor. Crime and Punishment. Ed. By George Gibian. W. W. Norton & Company. 3rd Edition. New York, 1989.