Condemnation of a Patriarchal Society in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman was crafty. Taken at face value, her short work, The Yellow Wallpaper, is simply the diary of a woman going through a mental breakdown. The wallpaper itself is the arbitrary object on which a troubled mind is obsessively fixated. The fact that Gilman herself suffered from a nervous breakdown makes this interpretation seem quite viable. This explanation is, however, dead wrong. The wallpaper is not merely
Women Pressured by the Demands of a Patriarchal Society in Michael Cunningham's The Hours In Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Laura Brown, one of the novel's protagonists, is trapped by the responsibility of being a housewife and mother. Cunningham's story uses one of Virginia Woolf's works, Mrs. Dalloway, as a template to weave the lives of three women together in a narrative delicately split into three branching tales that echo each other. One branch of the story leads to a fictional account
The Corrupt Patriarchal Society of A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres tells a dark tale of a corrupt patriarchal society which operates through concealment. It is a story in which the characters attempt to manipulate one another through the secrets they possess and the subsequent revelation of those secrets. In her novel, Smiley gives us a very simple moral regarding this patriarchal society: women who remain financially and emotionally dependent on men decay; those able to break
Patriarchal Society and the Erasure of the Feminine Self in The Story of an Hour Critical readings of Chopin’s works often note the tension between female characters and the society that surrounds them. Margaret Bauer suggests that Chopin is concerned with exploring the “dynamic interrelation between women and men, women and patriarchy, even women and women” (146). Often, critics focus on the importance of conflict in these works and the way in which Chopin uses gender constraints on two levels
movement started, most of it is attributed to the past two centuries. However, women who are feminists have been around much longer. In Sophocles’s Antigone, the main character (Antigone) acts as a protofeminist by defying the authority of a patriarchal society and taking action according to what she believes is right in her heart. She even shows some characteristics of a modern feminist. Feminists today are viewed as raging, man-hating bitches, but feminism in its true sense simply advocates women’s
critics have given their attention to The Coquette for critical analysis and praise. These critics have focused on facets of the novel that were completely ignored until the last twenty years. The themes critics discuss include the injustices of patriarchal culture, societal attitudes, the depiction of an economy of vision, treatment of language and the role of the female circle. It is obvious modern critics have delved below the surface of the sentimental novel to extract meaningful themes and information
Conflict between Individuality and Conformity in The Bell Jar In Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood seems incapable of healthy relationships with other women. She is trapped in a patriarchal society with rigid expectations of womanhood. The cost of transgressing social norms is isolation, institutionalization and a lost identity as woman. The struggle for an individual identity under this regime is enough to drive a person to the verge of suicide. Given the oppressive system
controlled outright, by the men in their lives: fathers, uncles, suitors, husbands. And yet, there are women inhabiting Shakespeare’s comedic world who seem to enjoy a greater degree of autonomy and personal power than one would expect in a patriarchal society. Superficially, therefore, Shakespeare’s comedies appear to send mixed signals regarding the notion of female empowerment. Some women are strong and independent, others are completely submissive, and the behavior of either seems to be influenced
beloved, whom she doesn't know well. However, afterwards she decides to come back home, to her family: husband, baby and relatives. This story may look superficial, but is contains deeper meaning, and truths about roles of women, traditional patriarchal society, and attitudes toward feminism. "Yellow Woman" shows the role of a woman in a traditional, average family; narrator is a married young female raising a baby and living together with parents and grandparents. We may assume that she doesn't
think. After he calls for his sword his wife responds by saying, sarcastically, “A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?” representing that she is teasing him of his age, even a women in the patriarchal society she is set in. This would be extremely embarrassing for the leader of a family in that society, and would in most occasions not be tolerated. The “!” shows her confidence in saying this which would have been rare for a women. In Act 1 Scene 2, on the contrary to Scene 1, Capulet is calm
understanding the opposite sex. However, a close look at our language may show that there is more to the communication barrier between the sexes than meets the eye. I believe that the English language is very biased towards women. We live in a patriarchal society, an “order characterized by male dominance and the means of perpetuating that dominance”. Because of this, our language has been molded mostly by males, resulting in this “sexism in language” (Spender, 1980). This did not happen overnight. Instead
Katherine Mansfield’s "Life of Ma Parker" presents the plight of Ma Parker as a working-class woman at the turn of the century, in terms of her position in the sphere of the family and in the sphere of society. "Life of Ma Parker" is a story of a widowed charwoman. Like Miss Brill, Ma Parker is a very lonely woman, but their equally painful story is told quite differently, mainly because Mansfield supplies no background to account why Miss Brill’s Sunday passes as it does. As the title of the story
anything but words that represent the oppressive patriarchal society to which she is opposed, early criticism only evaluated her in these terms, focusing less on Addie’s first person narrative, and more on what other characters in the novel (the men) had to say about her. However, the changing social and political tides of the 1960’s and 1970’s gave rise to feminist criticism, which was at least partially able to break out of the patriarchal infrastructure, and evaluate her under a new
suffer from the unequal division of gender power in Woolf's society. Lily is also very much a product of society, yet she has new ideas for the role of women and produces one answer to the problems of gender power. Besides providing these examples of patriarchy, To The Lighthouse examines the tenacity of human relationships in general, producing a novel with twists, turns, problems, and perhaps a solution. Mrs. Ramsey is the perfect, patriarchal woman. She scarcely has an identity of her own. Her life
Subtle Feminist Assertions in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper " was originally shunned by the American patriarchal literary powers present before the turn of the century. Despite editors' hesitation, Gilman's determination eventually led to the story's publication in New England Magazine in 1892. It was not until the early 1970's, however, that the story was adopted by the feminist literary movement and viewed as the author undoubtedly intended. A popularly
from Fanny’s Portfolio Judith Fetterly describes the fiction of Fanny Fern as basically conservative due to the seeming resignation to the institution of marriage. She claims that Parton’s work is safe and makes only small challenges to the patriarchal institutions of her day. I do not see this in my reading of "Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio." I hear the voice of a woman who recognizes the problems with patriarchy and who does not flinch from revealing them. I found her writing to be bold
novels written by males; their female characters are always depicted as the stereotypical female: weak, indecisive and emotionally unstable. The feminist approach to analyzing literature provides an explanation for this phenomenon. In this patriarchal society, women are viewed as the weaker sex, inferior. This can be the result of socialization or some negative interactions with women in the past. Richard Powers employs this standard for female characters in his novel, Galatea 2.2, made evident through
'Surfacing' demonstrates the complex question of identity for an English-speaking Canadian female. Identity, for the protagonist has become problematic because of her role as a victim of colonial forces. She has been colonized by men in the patriarchal society in which she grew up, by Americans and their cultural imperialism, or neo-colonialism as it has come to be known as, and the Euro-centric legacy that remains in her country although the physical presence of English and French rulers have gone
contention as to the way in which the text can be read. The play originally was written for the Jacobean audience of Shakespeare's time, but since then has taken on many other readings. These new readings are produced to comment on issues in the society in which it is explored. Readings encompass a wide range of ideas - from the Dominant reading, the manner in which Shakespeare's audience would have perceived the text, to feminist ideals. The various readings are influenced by the context in which
MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM Maedchen in Uniform ( Sagan, 1932, 80’) is a film that was specifically design to represent a group of women living in a patriarchal society and the conflicts they encounter by simply being their naturally, nurturing selves. One major conflict involves the deep relationship that develops between a female teacher and her female student in an all girl boarding school that is operated like a strict military camp. It is heavily suggested that this relationship is a romantic one