The United States Constitution states that the country values liberty, life, and happiness for all of its citizens. These three values shape the ideal American experience. Most view it as living freely, where all men, women, and races are created equal, and where oppression of genders and races does not exist. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the traditional view of this experience by illustrating how gender roles and racism change it, manifesting that it is not close to what the average citizen goes through, especially if he or she is black.
The rhetorical analysis of “A Left-handed Commencement Address” from the famous American author, Ursula Le Guin, known for her speculative fiction, sci-fi and fantasy works, presents the commencement speech at Mills College in 1983. Le Guin addresses the graduating class with motivating words by claiming that women are foreigners and are extremely excluded among the species we refer to as 'Man'. She reinforces her points that males should never tell women what they can and cannot achieve, and that they are capable of doing what men can do as all humans should be equals. Le Guin emphasizes the theme with the use of essay conventions, specifically through the purpose of encouraging people to succeed together in equality and through tone, as she
I remembered when I was young, there were plenty of movie that has girls play dolls and boys play football. These movies were popular among children that day until now, girls were meant to be soft and boys were meant to be powerful and strong. Then one day, I’ve watched a movie that has a girl play in the football team and I were surprised because it’s the first time that I’ve seen a movie that shows girl can be both femininity and masculinity. This movie has a huge impact on young children behaviour and has influenced children in constructing gender roles in the society. ‘Little Giants’ has shown the characteristic of the main character to be abnormal and changing the gender stereotypes in young audiences’ perspective.
All throughout modern literature many different types of critical perspectives can be found while reading. Of the different critical perspectives (such as; Cultural, Feminist, Historical, and Marxist) the Feminist critical perspective provides society with the most compelling view when reading literature. Through the Feminist perspective displayed in literature we are able to see things such as the discrimination and exclusion of women solely based on their gender, the objectification of women, the power and oppression that others hold over them, as well as the different gender roles and stereotypes that women face. In the play, “Othello” written by William Shakespeare as well as the book “Frankenstein” written by Mary Shelley, we are able to see the way the Feminist perspective is displayed, the way it allows readers to have a basic understanding of the struggles of being a woman, and why it provides the most compelling view when reading literature.
Both Neuromancer and Dawn are works of science fiction taking place in the future of our own world. In this way they both provide ways to look at our own society through a different lense. Both Gibson and Butler bring to light many of the problems of our own world through their literature. Two articles are highlighted as well: In her article, Razor Girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk fiction, Lauraine Leblanc addresses the issue of gender as a dichotomous system.
The Thousand and one nights offers a unique perspective on the roles of women in that society. The roles of women are really interesting because they are treated different in numerous circumstances. On one hand, they are shown to be powerless, and on the other hand, some are shown to have absolute control. Throughout the beginning of the story, the status of women seemed to go from getting brutal and wicked treatment by men, to their ability to fight back, and then they are revealed as somewhat heroic. There are some major differences in how men and women are portrayed in The Thousand and One Nights.
In the late 1800s society assigned to women a specific role to play. The role included bearing children, caring for them, and honoring their husbands. People saw women who took jobs outside of the home or who never married as deranged. Kate Chopin highlights the female duties of the time in her novel, The Awakening, through the use of foils Edna and Adele. Adele represents the model of how an ideal women of the 19th century should behave and feel.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a satirical novel written by esteemed Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981. Originally written in Spanish, the novel was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa in 1982. The novel, set in 1950s Colombia, outlines the events surrounding the Vicario brothers’ murder of Santiago Nasar, a man accused of taking the virginity of their sister, Angela Vicario. The novel is written in a pseudo-journalistic, non-sequential reconstruction of events by the narrator. The narrator is a journalist and old friend of Santiago Nasar returning to the small town in which the events of the novel take place, intending to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder.
Margaret Atwood’s novel "The Handmaid's Tale" is a dystopian work of fiction that explores the themes of power and oppression through the concept of "biopower" introduced by Michel Foucault. In this essay, the novel will be analyzed through three main aspects of biopower: control over women's bodies, the collective identity of the Handmaids, and the use of power to reinforce patriarchal structures. Through a close analysis of the novel, it becomes clear that biopower is the driving force behind the government of Gilead and its control over the bodies and lives of women. The novel is set in a dystopian society called Gilead, where women are divided into different classes based on their fertility.
Margret Atwood is a Canadian author who mainly writes about gender, power politics, the dangers of ideology, and sexual politics. She writes novels primarily within the genres of historical fiction, dystopian fiction, and speculative fiction within the gothic style. Her prolific work, A Handmaid’s Tale, is found within her plethora of creations. Through A Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the unbalanced power dynamics between women and men and their effects on culture and female gender roles. This theme is accomplished through the details of spoken and unspoken language, sexual and religious metaphors, and the characterization of Moira throughout the novel.
Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, argues that women are instruments of the patriarchy, that women know this, and that women allow the system of oppression to live on. Her fictions ask, “What stories do women tell about themselves? What happens when their stories run counter to literary conventions or society’s expectations?” (Lecker 1). The Handmaid’s Tale is told through the protagonist, Offred, and allows readers to follow through her life as a handmaid while looking back on how life used to be prior to the societal changes.
More recently, the awarded Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has also focused mainly on women’s issues and has been regarded as a feminist writer. In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, published in 1986 Margaret Atwood portrays a strongly feminist view of a dystopian society, in which women have been deprived of all their rights. Both of these writers are representatives of the female feminist writers who have let their footprint in our literary history, and each of them expressed her concerns on women’s rights according to the time they were living in. In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (1929) emphasizes the inequity of treatment for women throughout times that still persists in her society, and promotes her thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (p. 6).
The main objective of this study is to find out and compare the concept of magical realism on Harry potter and The Philosopher Stone and Matilda. Parents always want to see their children live in happily. But in these both the protagonists suffer out of their parents and people from outside. They also get help from their teachers and friends. They do anything through magic, adventures to save their life from the evil people and those who against them.
This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a
She finds that women are currently writing nearly as many books as men, on all kinds of subjects, such as economics and philosophy, “which a generation ago no woman could have touched“. So, to explore current novels and to see what kind of changes occurred in
