The Ideal Woman
Henry David Hwang’s M. Butterfly highlights the stereotypical woman and draws a picture of the “perfect woman.” The perfect woman’s character traits include submissiveness, passiveness, modesty, beauty, dislike for sex, gentleness, and quietness, according to Hwang’s characters. These traits are shown in Song, labeling her as a perfect woman. The reader later finds out that Song is not a woman at all; she is a man. This challenges the image of the ideal woman. All of the female characters have flaws, proving to the reader that the concept of realizing the perfect woman is not possible.
Hwang uses Song’s character to poke fun at the image of the perfect woman. To create the perfect woman, but not make her female is a slap in the face to the ideal woman. Hwang understands that no woman can be perfect, and reflects this by giving the perfect woman a huge flaw: she is a man! Hwang is trying to convey the idea that there is no perfect woman in existence.
The play defines womanhood as a passive state. Being a good woman in M. Butterfly means being a servant and not having any opinions. After being asked by Gallimard where he gets girls, Marc replies that they come “…on trucks. Packed in like sardines. The back flips open, babes hop out, we’re ready to roll.” This passage shows how Marc, and likewise, the common man, feels about women: he objectifies them. These women are shipped in just for him, and never say no. Marc says “They don’t have to say yes.” They do as he says and have no opinions of their own. This illustrates the concept of the perfect woman in M. Butterfly.
Helga, as a woman, falls quite short of the ideal depicted in M. Butterfly. She is not beautiful or mysterious. Gallimard says “...
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...their own thoughts, interests, and agenda.
The perfect woman cannot exist. All real women have flaws, as exemplified by Helga and Renée. The only real women are imaginary, created in literature or television. Song depicts the shell of a perfect woman, but inside she is a man. To be a perfect woman, she would have had to not only been a biological woman, but she would have had not be without motives. She would have had to truly submit to Gallimard, with no agenda. The ideal woman is only a concept imagined by men to satisfy their own desires. There is not, and will never be, a woman who does everything perfectly right for her man and to his liking. Song herself said it best: “…Only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” (pg 1302, Act II Scene VII) Only a man knows what he wants, and only a man could have fabricated the idea of Song, the perfect woman.
...ew ideal woman, the public has changed its expectations of a woman to coincide with the ideal. It is relatively uncommon to see a woman on a television show that does not work, and oftentimes they work at high positions such as doctors or lawyers. If she is married, she often has more say in the relationship than the man, a complete switch of earlier roles. These new ideals have mostly improved the public's view of women and improved women's view of themselves.
...s because Helga has not experienced inner happiness. Helga uses her ethnicity as a crutch of why her life has not panned out as it should and she indulges in her own self-pity that only fires her negative defiance. This personal factor has an effect on her outlook and attitude on life and causes her to make selfish and irrational decisions further more leaving her in sorrow and self-pity. When Helga taught at Naxo, she built inside of her a rage of anger and instead of using her disapproval as momentum in changing the world; she used it to fire her thoughts of unfairness and resentment, which she brings her to spiritual and physical defeat in the end.
In any culture women are often confined by expectations of womanhood. In both stories the female characters challenge those expectations. The main characters of In the Time of the Butterflies are all females who stand up for what they believe in and don’t give up. “’What if I can’t’ Dede’s voice shook. ‘Jaimito thinks
The first encounter with Helga Crane, Nella Larsen’s protagonist in the novel Quicksand, introduces the heroine unwinding after a day of work in a dimly lit room. She is alone. And while no one else is present in the room, Helga is accompanied by her own thoughts, feelings, and her worrisome perceptions of the world around her. Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that most of Helga’s concerns revolve around two issues- race and sex. Even though there are many human character antagonists that play a significant role in the novel and in the story of Helga Crane, such as her friends, coworkers, relatives, and ultimately even her own children, her race and her sexuality become Helga’s biggest challenges. These two taxing antagonists appear throughout the novel in many subtle forms. It becomes obvious that racial confusion and sexual repression are a substantial source of Helga’s apprehensions and eventually lead to her tragic demise.
...The Tale of Genji”, Murasaki Shikibu writes of Genji, the perfect man, and Murasaki, the perfect woman, which in fact to not act to define or identify the ideal man and woman of the Heian Court, but rather to act as a pastiche on the idea of idealness. These two characters in conjunction with the second chapter of the narrative, in which the ideals of women are discussed by men, create the definition of the ideal man and woman in the Heian court and then parody that made definition.
Song in M. Butterfly lives life as a false image to make herself happy. Song is an actor who plays the part of a lady in an opera. He allows a man, Gallimard, to fall in love with his character. He then uses this love affair to help his government receive classified information. When a...
The first encounter with Helga Crane, Nella Larsen’s protagonist in the novel Quicksand, introduces the heroine unwinding after a day of work in a dimly lit room. Alone. Or, is she? Although no one else is present in the room, Helga is accompanied by her own thoughts, feelings, and her worrisome perceptions of the world around her. Helga’s anxieties and fears are perhaps some of her most challenging adversaries. And while there are human character antagonists that will soon play a significant role in the novel and in the story of Helga Crane, such as her friends, coworkers, relatives, and ultimately even her own children, there are also enemies that Helga confronts who never say a word. These quiet yet taxing antagonists appear throughout the novel in many different forms. Physical and cultural settings, racial oppression, religious and educational institutions, even the concepts of marriage and childbirth emerge as massive obstacles for Crane. These problems are a substantial source of Helga’s apprehensions and eventually lead to her tragic demise.
The issue of cultural stereotypes and misconceptions thematically runs throughout David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly. The play is inspired by a 1986 newspaper story about a former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer, who turns out to be a spy and a man. Hwang used the newspaper story and deconstructed it into Madame Butterfly to help breakdown the stereotypes that are present between the East and the West. Hwang’s play overall breaks down the sexist and racist clichés that the East-West have against each other that reaffirm the Western male culture ideas. The stereotypes presented in the play revolve around the two main characters, Gallimard and Song. The play itself begins in the present with Gallimard, a French diplomat who has been incarcerated in a Beijing prison. He relives his fantasies for the past with his perfect woman and shares his experience with the readers throughout the remainder of the play. Upon Gallimard’s arrival in China, he attends the opera and meets Song, and Gallimard immediately describes Song as his “butterfly”. Gallimard falls in love with the “delicate Oriental woman” that Song portrays (22). He then buys into the Western male stereotype that Eastern women need protection by strong, masculine Western men. Gallimard ends up falling in love with Song and has an affair with her to fulfill the stereotypical idea of a dominant Western male controlling an Eastern woman. Throughout Gallimard’s relationship with Song, the readers discover that Song is in reality a male spy for the Chinese government. Song had manipulated his looks and actions to mirror those of the ideal Chinese woman in order to earn Gallimard’s affection. M. Butterfly’s main issue arises from the cultural stereotypes of the masculin...
Living with their traditional Chinese culture in American society, these eight Chinese-American women suffer the problems of cultural conflicts in compliance with their gender. Asian women were looked at as being "positive, subservient, compliant, quiet, delicate, exotic, romantic and easy to please" (Mulan). They are nicknamed "China dolls" or " lotus blossoms", which are sexually loaded stereotypes of Asian women. These stereotypes discriminate against women by degrading their worth as people. By men taking advantage of their obedience and submissiveness they are showing that these women are not valued and that they have no voice. Judith Butler responds to these roles by saying, "Gender is an act, a performance, a set of manipulated codes and costumes rather than a core aspect of essential identity". By the middle of this century, Chinese women had been playing this manipulative, subservient role for m...
Perfect: adj. ˈpər-fikt 1. Entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings, is the first definition you find on dictionary.com for the word (perfect). Is this actually possible to attain? Has anyone actually ever been perfect? Or is it all in the eye of the beholder? These questions are asked by almost every girl, as we dream to one day reach the unattainable. This is especially true at the tender age of fifteen, where nothing seems to be going right with our bodies and everything is changing in us. This poem stresses the fact that as everyone realizes how unrealistic this dream is, the knowledge makes no difference to the wish. Marisa de los Santos comments on this in her poem “Perfect Dress”. The use of verbose imagery, metaphors, and the simplistic approach are very effective in portraying the awkward adolescent stage of a young woman and the unrealistic dream of being perfect.
...ndon her children (1609); she has trapped herself by anxiously fleeing from free choices, making only reactionary decisions. Larsen describes Helga's reflection: “She had ruined her life[, m]ade it impossible ever again to do the things that she wanted” (1608) by making an inauthentic choice and compromising herself and her happiness.
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
Her imperfection was that she was too nice, to the point of causing her husband to feel jealous of the others she talked to. She always accepted peoples gifts to her with the same graciousness that she had used when her husband asked her to marry him (My Last Duchess, lines 32-35). The perfect wife would have held her marriage above all else, which she apparently did not. She did not seem to value ...
William Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides dialogue that portrays the social expectations and stereotypes imposed upon women in Elizabethan times. Even though the play has only one primary female character, Miranda, the play also includes another women; Sycorax, although she does not play as large a roll. During many scenes, the play illustrates the characteristics that represent the ideal woman within Elizabethan society. These characteristics support the fact that men considered women as a mere object that they had the luxury of owning and were nowhere near equal to them. Feminists can interpret the play as a depiction of the sexist treatment of women and would disagree with many of the characteristics and expectations that make Miranda the ideal woman. From this perspective, The Tempest can be used to objectify the common expectations and treatment of women within the 16th and 17th Centuries and compare and contrast to those of today.
Going back to her prologue, The Wife seems to be criticized for something different she does by each of her husband 's. She can easily be seen as violent, demanding, too controlling, too lustful, and many other qualities. The Wife argues that no matter what women do or don’t do, they will always be criticized, “Thou seyst that som folk desiren us for richesse,/ Somme for oure shape, comme for oure fairnesse/ And som for she kan synge and daunce/ And som for gentillesse and som for/ daliaunce,/ som for hir handes and hir armes smale” (lines 257-262). While she makes a great point, she interjects these opinion’s during her tale as well. Interrupting the flow of her story to display her opinions in this way can lose the audience 's focus of the true meaning of the story. The story itself does a great job of bringing the role femininity into play without The Wife’s interjections. In the beginning of the tale, right after the queen orders the knight to go on his quest she gives him some hints. “Somme seyde wommen loven bset richesse;/ Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse,/ Somme rich array. Somme seyden lust/ abedde/ And oftetyme to be wydwe and weedde” (lines 925-928). This shows that women want more than materialistic things, contrary to popular belief. While these things aren’t bad to have, it means nothing if they do not have the power over their significant