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Gender changing roles
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In the short stories, Boys and Girls by, Alice Munro and The Birth Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, each author has shown similarities of two young women who seem to change their appearance or personality to conform to the desires of strong male figures in their lives. Topic Sentence: Both stories represent this by Georgiana’s eventual willingness to change her appearance and ultimately remove her birthmark that her husband found unattractive even after her lifetime of valuing it as a part of who she was in The Birth Mark, as well as in Boys and Girls, the main character’s goal of seeking attention and extreme need to be accepted by her father as a more strong and masculine child although she still showed personality traits of being weak and immature. A. Support 1. “Georgiana said he, has it never occurred to you that the …show more content…
As the consequences for her changing who she was she died from it. A. Support 1. “One time a feed salesman came down into the pens to talk to him and my father said, "Like to have you meet my new hired man." I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure. "Could of fooled me," said the salesman. "I thought it was only a girl"(Munro 141). 2. It represents her desire to be what her father wants her to be and the secret satisfaction she gets by making him proud. This quote shows how her father recognizes her hard work around the farm and that she is competent enough as a strong and boyish figure for him to express his pride in her to others. B. Support 1. “My legs were a little shaky and I jumped gratefully down into the hay. “Now you’ve seen how they shoot a horse,” I said in a congratulatory way, as if I had seen it many times before”(Munro 144). “Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did”(Munro 146). 2. It shows weakness in the personality that she's trying to build as a tough and masculine child, someone that her father wants and
She is encouraging his to do more that what he thinks he is capable of and to dream big. People will try to belittle and discourage him but he should stay committed and confident because he has great potential. I like this quote because I can resonate to having a person always trying to motivate me. My mom is constantly encouraging me and trying to instill confidence in me. This quote later becomes important when Werner decides to go to the elite school rather than becoming the predicted worker in the mines.
When Aylmer tells Georgiana that her so called “beauty” mark is in fact an “earthly imperfection”, she is immediately affected and overcome with a thought that had never occurred to her in all her life. Having always been told that the mark upon her face was that of beauty, she was angered and appalled shouting
Judith Fetterley argues that feminism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-Mark has an adverse effect on the women who are subjected to the male scrutiny. The article explains the stresses which the women encounter in their identity - which is the impression of the men’s response towards them and it highly varied. The article further demonstrates the consequences of which the women are confined in the man’s mind thinking, where they are objects of being examined, scrutinized, and experimentally analyzed. The author further comments that the story was written to be a feminist
The motifs of morality and imperfection are also included in the short story, “The Birthmark” to highlight the lack of recognition that is given to one’s morals in society. Although Georgiana is very moral, she is never able to reach complete perfection. However, Georgiana represents the general population. She is unable to reach perfection because perfection does not exist. The idea of perfection is promoted by society as a way to keep the population within their social classes.
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection,”(George Orwell) is a relevant idea pertaining to the theme, how striving for perfection in humanity is foolish. Aylmer is a late 18th-century scientist who recently retired so he could marry his love Georgiana. Georgiana has a small birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a small hand. Most men who liked her found the birthmark attractive. Some women on the other hand said that it messed up an otherwise flawless face. Georgiana did not have a problem with it until one day, until one day Aylmer says he does not like the birthmark. He feels as though Georgiana would be perfect and flawless if it were just removed. Georgiana is crushed, because Aylmer thinks the birthmark is ugly, so of course she now thinks she is ugly. For Aylmer, the birthmark is a symbol of human imperfection. Aylmer has a dream in which he tried to remove the birthmark on Georgiana’s face. The deeper he cut, the deeper the birthmark would go. Until it was, finally, all the way down to Georgiana's heart. In the dream, he keeps cutting through her heart to finally get it out. Georgiana is disturbed and upset by this dream. She decides that she will let Aylmer find a way to remove the birthmark to make his unhappiness stop. Of Aylmer already has been working this at his laboratory. He has set up a room for her to stay while he comes up with a solution to remove the birthmark. When the antidote is finished,
In “the Birthmark” Georgiana is a new housewife with her husband Alamer. When Alamer notices the birthmark on Georgiana’s cheek he becomes repulsed and disgusted. When Alamer first offers to remove the birthmark with science she refuses, "To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so." (Birthmark). Although, soon after she witnesses further the disgust her birthmark causes her husband she agrees full heartedly saying, “Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust, — life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life!” (Birthmark). Georgiana, at first, is highly against the idea of removing her mark, however she is so dependent upon what her husband thinks of her that eventually she is willing to remove the mark even if it costs her health and wellbeing. Even though it is stated that Georgiana has had lovers before who thought of her as beautiful despite the birthmark, she is still dependent upon what her husband thinks of her. In the article “Hawthorne’s, The Birthmark: Science and Romance as Belief” by Barbara Eckstein, it is explained how Georgiana is presented as a passive and obedient wife and she is willing to allow Alamer to tinker with her very nature through science because she believes he is doing so out of love. She is a willing participant because she believes it is what she must do to be a good wife. Similarly in “Rappaccinis Daughter” the woman Beatrice possesses a flaw that her lover tries to eradicate with science. Although, Beatrice’s flaw is not as harmless as Georgiana’s, because Beatrice’s flaw is her poisonous nature. Beatrice became poisonous through her father’s scientific research with poisonous plants, and when Giovanni sees her in the “garden of Eden” her
The story is about Georgianna and how she learns through Aylmer to hate her birthmark and therefore herself. In the beginning of the book Georgianna and her husband are talking about the birthmark and how she considers it to be something of a charm and then Aylmer tells her that maybe on another face it would be okay, but on a face as perfect as hers it’s hideous. This makes Georgianna very upset and hurts her deeply, it makes her think less of herself just because of a silly birthmark. Which before now and before her horrible husband brought an attention to it had been nothing more than what it is: a birthmark. She even begins to bring the birthmark up without even being prompted by her husband. When they are sitting together one evening
Throughout the years society has always seen several differences between female and male. Women are seen as objects, while men are seen as the dominant one. Gender bias usually affects female gender, which in this case, is Georgina. In “The Birthmark” the time setting is in the late 1700’s, which was a time that women were seen as objects. Women were determined around the time philosopher and scientist, all males, were controlling society. In this story Aylmer is pointing out that Georgina has a birthmark on her cheek, which Aylmer sees it as a “imperfection.” He tries to fix it be having it surgically remove her mark, in order to make her
The story would not exist without Georgiana’s birthmark; the small red handprint is crucial to her character and the conflict in the story. As her husband urges her to have it removed, we can see that he is unhappy with her imperfections and wishes her to be perfect both physically and spiritually. He wishes for her to be as beautiful as possible, “he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment
Alymer is an older scientist who marries a beautiful woman much younger then himself. Even though Alymer finds his young bride beautiful, he still says that she is “marked.” Upon Georgiana’s left cheek is a birthmark. The birthmark is small, red, and in the shape of a hand. Alymer believes that this mark takes away from her beauty; even though many other people, men and women alike, thought it to be charming; and those who did not, just “wished it away.”
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.
It showed understanding of the type of woman she is and her social role. It tells her that he is attentive to what she has and doesn't have, but wants.
Her only perceptible flaw is the birthmark on her cheek, a small, hand-shaped, crimson mark, though for many men it is not only an addition, but an essential part of her beauty, noting that “many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand,”(340). Not only does Aylmer find himself in the minority of disliking the birthmark, but he counters his assistant, Aminadab, who, if he were married to Georgiana, would “‘never part with that birth-mark,’”(343). The two characters contrast each other greatly, Aminadab being described as having “an indescribable earthiness that incrusted him,”(343), while Aylmer represents more of a scientific, intellectual archetype. This comparison gives us a clear defining statement that places Aylmer outside the natural realm of things, in how he acts and thinks, while the more natural, earthy characters like Aminadab and the other men who courted Georgiana love the birthmark and the wabi-sabi aesthetic that the birthmark represents. Aylmer’s distaste of the imperfect will only lead to pain for him and Georgiana and great loss for them
In the story, “Boys and Girls”, the narrator is not the only one coming to terms with their identity.
I believe that both of these stories speak volumes about the nature of man. It tells the story of two beautiful women who have flaws. In the Birthmark, Georgiana is described as very beautiful and sought after by many men despite the fact that she has a small hand shaped birthmark on her face. Her husband sees the birthmark as a flaw. In Rappaccini’s Daughter, Beatrice is also described as very beautiful. Her father, however, has used science to turn her into basically a poisonous plant. This describes many things to me. I feel like Hawthorne is trying to talk about how the eye of some people is never satisfied in The Birthmark. In Rappaccini’s Daughter, the father seems hell-bent on controlling and manipulating people in sadistic ways only