ipl-logo

Shambleau By Cl Moore Summary

1500 Words6 Pages

C. L. Moore’s “Shambleau” is a story about gender relations that can be read as well as understood in many ways. To evaluate the short story “Shambleau” about how gender roles are played out in the story and how they subvert the generic expectations within the context of the story background. The story is set on Mars and talks about Northwest Smith, who falls for the shambleau. According to the story, the protagonist, Northwest Smith, is a space smuggler and adventurer who gets entangled in the intrigues of the native inhabitants of Mars. During his escapades, he comes across a mysterious, exotic, and dangerous woman who turns out to be the lethal Shambleau. The shambleau is a feminine extraterrestrial creature that lures men to doom by sexually …show more content…

L. Moore’s “Shambleau,” the shambleau is a figure of empowerment. On the surface, she is a seductive, mysterious creature that attracts men to her. While she employs agency in enticing others to respond to her, her dependence and fear, as well as her reliance on Northwest Smith for safety, complicate her character. When Smith intervenes to prevent harm to her, Shambleau’s behaviour seems more a product of instinct than intent. This nuanced characterization is highlighted in the language Moore uses: “When she saw him standing there, tall and leather-brown, hand on his heat-gun, she sobbed once, inarticulately, and collapsed at his feet, a huddle of burning scarlet and bare, brown limbs” (Wesleyan 112). Furthermore, Shambleau proves to herself, in times of peril, that women are not weak or submissive by nature. Although there are many instances where Shambleau is threatened, she succeeds in her adversity with courage and will against all odds, employing agency in multiple unexpected ways. In this way, Moore demonstrates how his character subverts stereotypes about women as helpless victims; he implies that they can also rescue themselves from any danger that may threaten them through means that are within their reach. Overall, Moore’s characterization of Shambleau as a multifaceted and profound entity reveals the significance of acknowledging the varied experiences and abilities of women in resistance to stereotypes and in favour of a more intricate comprehension of gender

Show More
Related

Personal Identity In Roseanne's The Secret Scripture

1341 Words | 6 Pages

She is determined to tell her own story, and won’t let anything get in her way. While most women in these time periods may not be powerful, these characters fight to live their lives the way they want to, despite being held back by

Read More

Women In Budge Wilson's 'The Leaving'

946 Words | 4 Pages

There are women all around the world who are being continually treated as objects, and the majority of them are being forced to live lives that aren’t their own, lives that were devised for them. Elizabeth, a woman in the short story, “The Leaving” by Budge Wilson, was treated her entire life like a maid; she even began to believe that her only purpose was to wait on her family and get the daily chores done. Not once in her entire life was she ever thanked for the hours of labor she completed from day to day in order to benefit her family. On the other hand, Samia from the short story, “Another Evening at the Club” by Alifa Rifaat, was forced to go along with an arranged marriage, the man she married being wealthy and from a well-known, high-reputation family. However, during this marriage, Samia makes a mistake by accusing an innocent girl of something that Samia later realizes she did herself.

Read More

Spotty Handed Villainesses By Margaret Atwood

482 Words | 2 Pages

The imaginative story written above is an exploration on the ideas and concepts based on Margaret Atwood’s discursive text ‘Spotty Handed Villainesses’. It explores and addresses the ideas of ‘female bad behavior’ and challenges the idea that there are good and bad women, not both in this world as well as how society has created standards and a status quo around what a good or bad woman looks like. Margaret Atwood uses many techniques throughout her speech, including narrative voice, metaphors, tone, rhetorical questions and more. These language techniques can be seen throughout the many texts we have done in Module C: The Craft of Writing.

Read More

Similarities Between 'Barn Burning And A Worn Path'

2152 Words | 9 Pages

1) Throughout our course, there have been some incredible and powerful women characters and writers. From Granny in “Jilting of Granny Weatherall” to Delia in “Sweat”, all of their stories had powerful connotations and influences in the readers. First of there was Phoenix from “A Worn Path,” she is the protagonist of this tale and is described in a lively way by the way she moves. Welty said, “Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with odor like copper.” The rag in her hair, her skin, and even the wrinkles on her face are deeply expanded upon in the story and accentuate her character.

Read More

Gender Roles In Zora Neale Hurston's Sweat

1115 Words | 5 Pages

However, the most powerful depiction of Sykes’ sexism is the decision he makes to attempt to kill Delia with a rattlesnake, “As she was stooping to pass under his outstretched arm, he suddenly pushed her backward, laughingly … she nearly fell upon the box in her stumbling” (383). Sykes knows how afraid of

Read More

Diction And Irony In Margaret Atwood's Siren Song

674 Words | 3 Pages

The beautiful mythological creatures use their “irresistible” song to “force” men to leave their ships and from there, they helplessly become victims of the Sirens. The application of irony and diction help emphasize just how tempted men can be by a woman even to the point where they put themselves in danger. Atwood verifies that the sailors, and men in general, are so enticed by women that they will ignore their natural instinct, connecting back to Steve Marboli ’s quote, “Temptation is the feeling we get when encountered by an opportunity to do what we innately know we shouldn't” (Steve

Read More

Sexism In Trifles By Susan Glaspell

1611 Words | 7 Pages

There is no question that women have struggled over many years to be seen as equals by their male counterparts. Years of struggle and oppression continued throughout time, but the oppression took different forms over the course of history. Susan Glaspell wrote, “Trifles” which explores a woman’s status in society during the 1920s and the political leanings that perverted society at the time. The play demonstrates how women were subjected to mental abuse and viewed as intellectually inferior as dictated by American society and politics. “Trifles” exposes how political leanings in the government favored and enabled a patriarchal society as well as displaying how the Women’s Rights movement was beginning to combat these prejudices.

Read More

Sandra Cleófilas And Girl Summary

821 Words | 4 Pages

The role of women in society has become a question of interest for writers for some centuries, since these have traditionally been depicted as mere objects of pleasure, that also were responsible for the household chores, as well as nurturing and taking care of the children. Furthermore, the way women were represented was completely opposite to men, as if gender determined one’s personality, intellect or skills. Women were seen as the weak ones, too emotional, incapable of reasoning and dependent on the males of their family (and afterwards, their husbands). On their behalf, men were the rational and intelligent part of the relationship, strong and the leaders. This opposition is clearly represented in the stories “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, two authors that focus on the female character and approach the topic exposed before.

Read More

Like Water For Chocolate Essay

850 Words | 4 Pages

The novel provides an insight into the atrocities that some members of the female cast are subjected to on a daily basis. By focusing on the themes such as self-growth, violence, and passion, as well as how they influence decision-making among the affected individuals, the book is a relevant reading to supplement the knowledge on women and gender

Read More

Misogyny In The Scarlet Letter

996 Words | 4 Pages

When analyzing the characters of the Handmaid's Tale and the Scarlet Letter through the feminist lense, sexism has become so internalized that women work to maintain the system through prejudice and belittling one another for not fulfilling orthodox gender roles.

Read More

Willmore's Double Seduction: A Streetcar Named Desire

956 Words | 4 Pages

Florinda’s next threat with rape, the third indication of rape in the play, is instigated by Blunt, who can be described as a male avenger against femininity. Blunt is an example of the seduced from Willmore’s seduction model. In Blunt’s humiliated response to Lucetta’s actions, he decides to take

Read More

Theme Of Fantomina By Eliza Haywood

1650 Words | 7 Pages

In addition to that, Haywood’s commitment to targeting women’s different social roles, demonstrates the ceaseless sexual exploitation of women. Haywood describes Fantomina by stating, “besides the Alteration which the Change of Dress made in her, she was so admirably skill’d in the Art of feigning, that she had the Power of putting on almost what Face she pleas’d, and knew so exactly how to form the Behavior to the Character she represented.” (11). The author is explaining how Fantomina is a talented actress who can assume any role to get the attention of Beauplaisir for temporary sexual pleasures, until he loses interest in her. In the beginning of the story, she assumes the role of a prostitute to gain an insight on sexuality.

Read More

Analysis Of The Dinner Party By Mona Gardner

849 Words | 4 Pages

A young women states that women have grown out of the “jumping-on-a-chair-at-the-sight-of-a-mouse-era” and that they are much better in a crisis. The colonel argues that men have more self-control in a crisis than women. Mona Gardner uses the colonel, the American naturalist and Mrs. Wynnes to show that all genders can show equal self-control in a crisis. The colonel represents a living, breathing, stereotype when it comes to men and women.

Read More

Social Issues In Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

826 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More

Role Of Women In Literature

1495 Words | 6 Pages

These themes can be clearly seen in the short stories Chopin’s “The Story Of An hour”, Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Hurston’s “Sweat”. These pieces of literature strongly portray how women are seen in instances

Read More

More about Shambleau By Cl Moore Summary

Open Document