Androgynous Essays

  • Androgynous Hate

    1588 Words  | 4 Pages

    Androgynous Hate “Please proceed, only if you are prepared to confront Satan himself,” warns a Christian web site devoted to educating Christian youth on today’s hot-button issues such as pornography and pre-marital sex (Christian Family Network). But what the authors of this web page are referring to is not the abandonment of morals by today’s teens. They are naming a singular music artist to be a current incarnation of the primal evil; they refer to the man born as Brian Warner, but known

  • Androgynous Characters in Thomas Hardy's Novels

    645 Words  | 2 Pages

    Androgynous Characters in Thomas Hardy's Novels Androgyny may be defined as "a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes, and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned" (Heilbrun 10). In the midst of the Victorian Era, Thomas Hardy opposed conventional norms by creating androgynous characters such as Eustacia Vye, in The Return of the Native ; the title character in Tess of the d Urbervilles ; Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure ; and Marty South in The

  • Self Discovery and Noel Perrin's The Androgynous Man

    890 Words  | 2 Pages

    Self Discovery and Noel Perrin's The Androgynous Man Reading The Androgynous Man by Noel Perrin1 sparked a number of thoughts. Our father's sperm and our mother's ovum are both necessary for fertilization and conception. For every human being seen walking the face of this planet, this formula has taken place of necessity. Without both genders, there would be no single gender; everyone is part mom and part dad. Therefore, the hormones that dominate in each gender are present in both genders in

  • Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own

    1789 Words  | 4 Pages

    writing contains considerable male influence. The circumstances of Shelley's life, however, meet Virginia Woolf's basic requirements for the production of good fiction. Mary Shelley possesses a well-rounded education, encouragement, and an 'androgynous and incandescent' mind (Woolf 98). In A Room of One?s Own, Virginia Woolf suggests women produce so little literature because of the tremendous discouragement and criticism that female writers face. She discusses the effects of opposition

  • Gender in Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance

    1141 Words  | 3 Pages

    [what would be called today] science fiction. This novel illustrates the early break from even fresh ideas. The writing style allows for the "genderizing degenderizing" affect as well as nature of the self. Within most utopias, gender becomes androgynous in that the sexes are neither feminine nor masculine. Tasks and habits are usually equal for the two sexes and both are able to love freely. However, only half of these traditions hold true for this particular novel. Hawthorne's characters can love

  • Leslie twiggy Hornby

    1283 Words  | 3 Pages

    it go, she was the original waif, a 60’s phenomenon a superstar. She was Twiggy" (Vogue). Leslie Hornby was the revolutionary woman who changed the idea of beauty in the eyes of the fashion industry and the entire world. Twiggy exemplified the androgynous mod look that swept America as it had Britain and much of Europe in the 1960’s. She healthily maintained a 5 ft 6 1/2 inch 90 lb body. Based on her thin figure, a nickname of "Twiggy" was derived. Twiggy’s popularity not only produced many people

  • Loneliness and Isolation in Baldwin’s, Here be Dragons

    673 Words  | 2 Pages

    pace. In Baldwin’s “Here be Dragons” he addresses the issues of loneliness and isolation in many ways. In the end, he comes to the conclusion that everyone has a part of everyone else inside of him or her, much like a yin yang: “…we are all androgynous…because each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other-male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are a part of each other”(160). If we are all a part of each other, then we do not need to try to keep up with the

  • Rita M. Gross' Feminism and Religion

    4161 Words  | 9 Pages

    In her book Feminism and Religion, Rita M. Gross provides readers with an introduction to the need for, and benefits of, androgynous scholarship in the field of religious studies. Gross strives to make readers aware of the dangers of androcentric, Eurocentric scholarship. Moreover, she advances the claim that, “properly pursued, the field of religious studies involves study of all major religions found in human history” and an equal representation of both men’s and women’s religious experiences

  • Sin, Guilt and Shame in The Pardoner's Tale

    1375 Words  | 3 Pages

    its effeteness; he has "heer as yelow as wax/ But smoothe it heeng as dooth a strike of flex/ By ounces heenge his lokkes that he hadde...But thinne it lay, by colpons, oon by oon" (677-681). The pale, lanky qualities of his hair relate to his androgynous makeup, and the repetition of "heeng" ironically foreshadows his castration. Further hints of the Pardoner's being a eunuch, such as "A vois he hadde as smal as hath a goot/ No beerd hadde he, ne never shold have," are interspersed between description

  • Gender-Bending in She's Come Undone

    2029 Words  | 5 Pages

    women's issues? In this essay I will discuss the issue of "gender-bending" writers and discuss Mr. Lamb's use of such tool. The term "gender-bender" usually refers to a pop singer or a follower of a pop cult "...who deliberately affects an androgynous appearance by wearing sexually ambiguous clothing, make-up, etc. (Ayto and Simpson 81)" While authors are not included in this specific definition, we must not overlook the possibility that writers can fall under the category of being a "gender-bender

  • Humor and Tragedy in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

    652 Words  | 2 Pages

    George Meredith suggests, comedy is created when "The comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness" (15). Woolfe, however, goes beyond simply bringing men and women together as equals; she blends them together as one androgynous individual, the effect of which causes us to laugh at the artificial way in which society attempts to define gender. After Orlando's matter-of-fact reaction to discovering he is a woman, the narrator with tongue-in-cheek explains how reasonable

  • The Pros and Cons of Love

    737 Words  | 2 Pages

    logic begins by postulating that love is equivalent to desire. This statement is supported by Aristophanes’s speech in which he describes the origin of human nature. Zeus split the spheres of the three original types of humans: male, female and androgynous; to form the two sexes. Ever since the division of spheres, each individual has been constantly searching for his or her other half. Sex was invented by Zeus to allow for reproduction and to allow productivity; simply put, so that people would

  • The Last Good Country Essay

    2521 Words  | 6 Pages

    The Depiction of Nature in Ernest Hemingway's Unfinished Story, The Last Good Country Ecological criticism in the 1990s has declared many works, including Ernest Hemingway's novels like The Old Man and the Sea, and many of his nonfiction works and short stories as nature-oriented masterpieces. "The Last Good Country," one of Ernest Hemingway's later short stories, however, still remains to be reinterpreted as more than merely, "a metaphor for childhood innocence" (Werlock 131), and his usual

  • Flappers

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    gain the independence and social liberties that men had always possessed, they wanted to physically display their newly gained freedoms. Short hair, first as a bob, later as a slicked down “shingle” that curled above the ears emphasized the new androgynous look women were trying to obtain. These “modern” women asserted their independence by going out dancing, moving to the city alone, drinking even during prohibition, flirting and having love affairs. After gaining so much independence in World

  • Was Ernest Hemingway A Tragic Figure In Contemporary Literature?

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    seemingly inexhaustible.' She continued in the letter that he should replenish what he has withdrawn, and wrote out all the specific ways in which Ernest should be making 'deposits to keep the account in good standing.' His mother could be perceived as androgynous, which means having both female and male type qualities or even personalities. In a few of the books Hemingway wrote, he gives someone the impression that he hated his mother. He referred to her as a 'dominating shrew,' meaning she was selfish and

  • Aristophanes Views On Love

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sexual preferences are to emerge only as the human gains experience, enabling them to discover what their “original form” had been. Aristophanes has mildly insulted the previous speakers in two ways. By claiming that one of the original forms was androgynous, he has suggested that heterosexuality is at least as natural as male homosexuality – as is being a lesbian. In contrast, Empedokles in fact did hold to a theory of sorts based on fitness to the environment, the description at 191c strongly suggests

  • The Vedic Hymns and the Four Cosmogonies

    1248 Words  | 3 Pages

    hovers over the Waters, Hiranyabarbha enters the waters and fecundates them. This gave birth to Agni (the god of fire).[3] The second cosmogony can be found in a hymn, the Purusasukta. Purusa is represented at once as cosmic totality and as an androgynous being. Creation proper is the result of a cosmic sacrifice. The gods sacrifice Purusa. From his dismembered body proceed the animals, the liturgical elements, the social classes, the earth, the sky, the gods: "His mouth became the Brahman, the

  • How Is Heathcliff Presented In The Androgynous Woman

    1124 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Androgynous Woman Wuthering Heights is a fairly peculiar book which explores the complex notions of what it means to be feminine and/or masculine, written in 1847 by an English woman, Emily Brontë. This novel is a dramatic love story between passionate Catherine Earnshaw and the strange, unconventional Heathcliff. Heathcliff, a nameless “gypsy”, abruptly becomes a part of the prominent Earnshaw family after the master brings him into Wuthering Heights, their home. After a childhood spent together

  • Amy Gross's The Appeal Of An Androgynous Man

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “ The Appeal of an Androgynous Man” an article written by Amy Gross, she compares the characteristics of the masculine brute, to the humble androgynous man. An androgynous man is a man who possesses qualities of both genders. For example, an androgynous man would still have manly traits, but would also be more feminine than other males. In her essay, Gross claims that the androgynous man possesses closely similar traits, in comparison to herself. Gross finds it more difficult to communicate with

  • Who Is An Androgynous Figure In The Passion Of The Christ

    641 Words  | 2 Pages

    is. Throughout this movie the viewer discovers what the devil actually is, he is neither man nor woman. Satan is not a human. He can take on the shape and form of any being, but he is not true body and soul. However, Satan is displayed as an androgynous figure in The Passion of The Christ. I believe Mel Gibson tried to convey