Laurel Ulrich’s A Midwifes Tale is a book over Marth Ballard who was a New England women living in America. Ulrich uses Marth Ballard diary entries along with other historical documents from the eighteenth century to show her audience the life of women specifically a midwife in the American society, and the sexual standards that were present during the eighteenth century. Martha Ballard the wife of Ephraim Ballard was midwife during the eighteenth century in Hallowell, who not only played the role of a midwife in the society, but also the role of a wife and a mother. Ulrich starts to book by talking about scarlet fever epidemic that had taken places in Hallowell during the summer of 1787. During the time of the fever and after the epidemic had ended, Martha played the role of an important member in the community, even though the social structure in Hallowell was giving more importance to male doctors.
In “A pair of silk stockings” by Chopin, a mother temporarily escapes from the daily worries and fatigue of the lower class to enjoy luxuries only available to the affluent upon the chance possession of a large sum of money. Pat Mora’s “Now and Then, America” on the other hand, is a short poem depicting a fiery will to be free, different, and “sane” amid those who succumb to the confines of society’s fashion, clothes, and behavior. Although both authors wrote about freedom, identity, and individuality, their attitudes toward these themes are very distinct. “A pair of silk stockings” carries a rather gloomy mood. The main character belongs to the lower class, and as a mother of quite a few children she must constantly budget and calculate where
In comparison to the movie, the play undermines male dominance by focusing on women’s efforts to solve their own problems. First of all, there aren’t even men in the cast of the play,
When comparing these two works, the time difference in which each was produced makes the largest impact. In the play the time takes place during the Elizabethan Age or the Renaissance Era. The clothes are very outdated to today 's modern fashion. In the Renaissance Era women dressed to “attract men” and especially unmarried women. Whilst
Overtime, the patriarchal system has been challenged and the defined gender roles are in the process of being eradicated. By presenting the plays protagonist Loureen, as an abuse victim that finds her voice and stands up against her battery, Lynn brilliantly illustrates that
Priestly depicts gender stereotypes to emphasise gender in a capitalistic, misogynistic and patriarchal society, in his play 'An Inspector Calls'. Priestly portrays women as emotional, commodified, materialistic and irresponsible to highlight the way that a misogynistic capitalist society operates. In a similar manner, Priestly presents men as arrogant, ambitious, dominant, and strong. By doing this Priestly aims to critique capitalism and the underlying implications and undercurrent of problems which capitalism brings to provoke a reaction in the audience to promote socialism. Priestly presents women as weak, emotional and irresponsible throughout the entire play by using Sheila to show the 'pink and intimate' safety bubble and facade which her family lives in.
It is common for people in everyday society to conform to society’s expectations while also questioning their true desires. In the novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the main protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess, "That outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions." In other words, Edna outwardly conforms while questioning inwardly. Kate Chopin, uses this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning to build the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period. Edna outwardly conforms to society’s expectations by marriage.
It can be said that society has always been quite judgmental, and at times misguided when it comes to women. The negative perceptions that society has towards females are often times directly related toward her actions. What a female does seems to degrade her identity and capabilities in the eyes of some men. In the poems “The Lady’s Dressing Room” and The essay “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, we can see both authors use of tone, form and style to develop their works. These poems are mainly driven by men’s attitudes towards women.
Much of the preservations in the play are for men who have even denied the women their privacy. Susan Glaspell shows women as weak and only able to do weak responsibilities such as housekeeping and staying at their
The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is largely based on stereotypes. The most prevalent one explores the difference between gender roles. Glaspell exerts the repression of women in the 1900s. During that time, women were highly looked down upon by men, and were only seen as the housekeepers and child bearers. This example is displayed throughout the play with the men, however, the women in this play prove that the stereotypes of gender roles held against them are completely wrong, which is shown through the characters, set design, and symbolism.
The setting, of the story "Three Girls" takes place in Broadway and Twelfth in New York. It was a cold evening around 6pm, in March. The second part of the story is set in a bookstore called Stand Use books, at Fourteenth Street in New York, because these two girls are a book lover and called themselves a poet. In addition, protagonist mentions, "a woman nearly my height, was tall for a girl, in 1956" (96). This shows that the story happened in 1956 and it was their first time to see Marilyn Monroe real in person.
William Shakespeare’s works, written primarily from the late eighteen hundreds to the very early sixteen hundreds, have long been the subject of academic debates and analysis. Potent with double entendres, metaphors, and social commentary, it is easy to apply queer theory to Shakespeare’s plays, notably Twelfth Night, written in 1601. Though Twelfth Night’s ending pushes its characters into traditional heterosexual romances and binary gender roles to satisfy the genre and placate conservative Elizabethan audiences, the characters in the comedy defy tradition by exploring homosexual love and expression of gender. The most apparent homosexual themes are present in the relationship between Antonio and Sebastian.
Laurence and Peabody are intelligent men with money who seem aware of the dangers within the feministic desires of the women provided from this scene where we get the men seen seemingly incapacitated from the night before as J. Laurence explains “we absolutely must make her think we are an easy proposition” suggesting an almost oblivious attitude to the fact that the women have already done this in getting them to buy them material things commonly associated with women. This scene shows the “intelligent” men of this era and yet the women have used both cunning and sensuality in order to make this worthless. J. Laurence oozes this idea of masculinity within this scene expressing “I belive I can make this girl transfer her affection from him to me” presenting the masculine idea of possessing this “alpha male” mentality of money, women and power, and yet when comparing this scene to that before, we see the men acting more composed and masculine than when in the presence of the women with J. Laurence standing tall with both hands placed on his hips. “But we’re not boys are
The play provides both comedic and mournful moments. In the end of the play, it is deeply revealing of the powerful bond the women share. Robert Harling uses conflict, mood, tone, and characters to portray this. The title suggest that women are delicate like
This play consists of a lot many themes. To cite a few: Rewriting the tale of Cinderella and Sleeping beauty, Class, language and phonetics and Independence. But in this paper, I would like to work on the feminist aspect of this play for this aspect, is the one which impressed me more. As this paper is based on Gender analysis I am restricting my analysis to the theme of Feminism in this play.
