The play “Mother figure” is a contemporary play written in the 1960’s about what it’s like to be a mother. In the 1950’s women were valued only as a stay at home mother, their life was dedicated to the children until the 1960’s when people started to question if that is what mothers should be doing. Ayckbourn explores political issues about mothers in a comical way; he exaggerates the mother of the play, Lucy, to give a hidden message about the political views. He expresses his views that women shouldn’t just be for looking after the children but they should have their own lives. These views however were unpalatable to some people, they wouldn’t want women to do anything but stay at home and look after the children. In addition they wouldn’t …show more content…
Lucy is always around children. She acts as the mother figure not just to her children but to everyone around her. Another occasion where she does this is when Lucy tells Rosemary off for fidgeting, like she’s a child. She is persistently checking on the children and looks untidy because she has no time for herself, “She is untidy, unmade-up, in dressing-gown and slippers.” this shows she is a devoted mother. I assume Ayckbourn is trying to deliver the message that being a mother is stressful and they can become withdrawn from the outside world. Rosemary is very dissimilar to Lucy. Lucy is assertive and the mother of the house, whereas Rosemary is timid and muted. In the play Ayckbourn makes Lucy stand up for Rosemary, in particular after Rosemary and Terry’s argument. “And don’t you dare come back until your ready to apologize, never mind him. He’ll be back.” This shows Lucy being supportive towards Rosemary. It shows she is not afraid of Terry and will make sure Terry can’t bully Rosemary into anything. I think Rosemary is very easily bullied into things; this is where Rosemary and Lucy differ. Lucy doesn’t allow Terry to bully her, whereas Rosemary does. Terry seems like the sort of person who gets his own way all the time, like an egotistical child. In a way I think Lucy treating the other characters like children has a result on the characters’ behaviour. For example Lucy treats Terry like a child; he throws a tantrum, like a child. “If you think I enjoy spending night after night sitting looking at you… (He throws the biscuit down)”a further example is “(Thirsty from the biscuits, he grabs her orange juice and drains it in one.)” Ayckbourn then introduces Terry, Rosemary’s husband.
To begin, in both plays the men dismiss the women as trivial. In Trifles, when Mrs. Wright is being held in jail for the alleged murder of her husband, she worries about the cold weather and whether it will cause her fruit to freeze which will burst the jars. After the women come across a shattered jar of canned fruit, they converse about Mrs. Wright’s concern about the matter. Mrs. Peters states, “She said the fire’d go out and her jars would break” (Glaspell 918). The women here identify with Mrs. Wright’s concern, because they understand the hard work that goes into canning as part of the demanding responsibilities women endure as housewives. The Sheriff’s reply is “Held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” (Glaspell 918). In other words, the men perceive the event as insignificant; they clearly see women as a subservient group whose concerns hold little importance. Likewise, the reader can relate to this treatment in A Dollhouse, when Torvald complains to Nora about spending Christmas time the previous year making frivolous ornaments instead of devoting it to family. Torvald says, “It was the dullest three weeks that I ever spent!” (Ibsen 1207). He believes her role i...
...n he tried to intimidate her earlier and that she would be so bold to his face. The criticism faced by the characters in the plays demonstrate the idea that women are inferior to men and should not speak out for themselves.
Another interesting note to mention is that Mrs. Jellyby is one of the few matriarchs within the Victorian age; her husband is described as a “nonentity” by Richard and literally has no voice, which consequently bequeaths Mrs. Jellyby with the power in the household (44). The dynamic of their relationship thus becomes a transgression of the Victorian feminine archetype also, in which the gender balance is traditionally firmly skewed toward the male spectrum. Through Esther’s interactions with the Jellyby children, the two mother figures are juxtaposed, which consequently works to highlight the maternal qualities of Esther. As Ada says, Esther “would make a home out of even this house” (46). These comparisons also help bring to light the image of the Victorian ideal in
The daughter alludes to an idea that her mother was also judged harshly and made to feel ashamed. By the daughters ability to see through her mothers flaws and recognize that she was as wounded as the child was, there is sense of freedom for both when the daughter find her true self. Line such as “your nightmare of weakness,” and I learned from you to define myself through your denials,” present the idea that the mother was never able to defeat those that held her captive or she denied her chance to break free. The daughter moments of personal epiphany is a victory with the mother because it breaks a chain of self-loathing or hatred. There is pride and love for the women they truly were and is to be celebrated for mother and daughter.
To sum it up both of these plays share the same broad message conveyed throughout the entire play. Which includes, women have the capabilities to do more than they show and are allowed to do. As well as the relationship men and women share is not constant, or the same, there are many different views on the relationship they share and many different variations that change as time progresses. Furthermore the rights of women also change with much time, and hard work by many women who have worked hard for their rights and future rights of all women. Some of this can lead to these two plays, giving new, bold ideas that were frightening for many during their times but helped for the push for a better tomorrow.
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
The White apron is a powerful play about socioeconomic problems and inequality in our community. In the play we are introduce to two main characters, the madam and the house cleaner. Secondary characters include the distinguish gentleman and swimmers on the beach. The play takes place on the beach during the month of March. In the beginning of the play, the author reminds us the readers the immediate difference between the physical appearances of the two women. We are also made aware that there are not only physical differences between the two women, but also that of social status and financial stability. The madam is a woman of her thirty; she has light hair and has a somewhat attractive face. We also know that the madam has a husband and a young son. Whereas the maid is in her twenties, she has a fair complexion, black hair, placid and pleasant face. She is from a lower social class.
The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.
...ses represent the physical absence of her mother. Implicitly, however, these objects symbolize the lost memories of her mother. The possessive nature of the “mother’s watch” shows that its loss was not welcome. In Morrison’s story when Twyla and Roberta connect many years after staying at the orphanage, Roberta suggests that Maggie, the “kitchen woman with legs like parentheses,” was black (Morrison, 245). Twyla then claims that Maggie was her “dancing mother,” meaning that she was “dead” and “dumb” in addition to being “nobody who would hear you if you cried in the night” (259). The grief Twyla experiences suggests that she felt as though no one cared, that no one had cared for her mother either.
The main idea showed in Trifles, the male character, and the empathy described by the females is why the author shows everyone that in every section of this play. Throughout the play, the women were being ignore and belittled by men. With their role, it is showing how back in the early 1900’s men were figured as gods. Women had to give all attention to the children, housekeeping and especially taking care of their spouse. Even though the women think very different as to what men use to think, they still maintain a close relationship in respecting the man 's job. According to Elke Brown, “ As a sheriff 's wife, she is married not only to Mr. Peters, the person but also to his profession”. The women are giving their world just so the men can be satisfied with the job they have and not cause any other problem other than their job. During the play, the men are only looking for hard concrete clues. They seem not to see the reality behind minor things. Mrs. Peters is directed by this belief until she remembers the stillness in her house after a child had died. This memory produces a dominant bond between her and Minnie 's experience of isolation and loneliness. The scene where exactly Mrs. Peters herself attempts to hide the box with the dead canary in it. She is well aware that this action that happens, which can apply to on the society and the way her husband wants the things done. Just because her husband stands
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
In the 1960’s women roles were changing they were getting more involved in the American society. While working as a journalist Susan Glaspell reported a case of a murder which influenced her to write the play Trifles. In the play, Trifles the women are being presented as weak and powerless, a murder has been committed by Minnie Wright. There are a total of five characters in the play, three of them are men and the other two are females. The males are the county attorney, sheriff, and a neighbor farmer. The women are Mrs. Peter and Mrs. Hale. The men are searching for clues to convict Minnie of the crime, while the women find the most important pieces to the crime. In the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, the author demonstrates feminist stereotypes, representations of genders during the era when women had less power.
In the 1950’s through the 1960’s women were not respected in there everyday lives, in the job field or in general. They did not have the rights they deserved, so during this time the “women’s movement” began. Women fought for their rights and fought for the self-respect that they thought they deserved. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the character Mama, expresses her feelings of pushing or extracting a new side for a woman. Her role explains that woman can be independent and can live for themselves. Through her behavior in this play she demonstrates that women can support and guide a family. Mama is in charge of the family, which is unusual, since men are traditionally the “head of a family”. Through Mama’s wisdom and dialect she expresses and portrays an image of pro-feminism. Mama’s experience in the play A Raisin in the Sun illustrates the expressions, the emotions, and the feeling with which Mama and women had to cope. She was able to characterize this through her passionate dreams, her control and her strong willed attitude.
This fact plays a crucial role in the mood of the play. If the reader understands history, they also understand that women did not really amount to any importance, they were perceived more as property.