Another example is a short film I first saw in my play analysis class. A slightly unconventional example I think, yet, I feel it goes with the argument that has been built. Salvador Dali in 1929 released a film called Un Chein Andalou, and the particular scene that I saw in class was of a man dissecting the iris of a young woman’s eye. The scene brings forward the idea that female sight is not central. Furthermore, it also reinforces the fact that men are not just the audience but also seem to have the controlling hand in running the show; everything from the writing to the directing.…
Revolutionary Women Summary Generally, when we read about the American Revolution we hear about all the heroic deeds of men like George Washington or Paul Revere. What we don’t often hear about is the many heroic deeds women performed as well. I read the book Women Heroes of the American Revolution, by Susan Casey which told the story of 20 different women. There were lots of women involved in the revolution, whether they quietly resisted the British, spied on them for American militia, or actually joined the men in battle.…
Frith’s Feminist Façade Considered an epic feminist text, Melika Burke pierces through the illusion of female freedom underpinning Year of Wonders to reveal its underlying paradox. Geraldine Brooks’s Year of Wonders (2001) is one of the most grievously misinterpreted and misunderstood texts of the twenty first century. Brooks’s (2009), who proudly identities as a “modern western feminists”, intertwines her experience as a Middle Eastern war correspondent where she observed the emancipatory potential of women with the historical scaffold of the 1665 Bubonic Plague to create a feminist utopian heroine: Anna. This rich exploration of the female identity has elevated the novel to an erroneously distinguished position by depicting the text as quintessentially feminist. Cultural Critic Lee (2012) encapsulates this prevailing interpretation by praising the “[s]trong feminist consciousness operating through Year of Wonders”.…
“Adversity: an adverse and unfortunate event or difficulties in circumstances.” Generally, when people are unhappy, they will seek for change. There can be very many differences in the ways people try to find or replace that unhappiness, with something that makes them happy. Whether that change could result in dominance of power or an overall result in one's views. People just want to obtain authority, but for what?…
Many social movements arose in the 1970s as challenges to the hegemonic ideologies, or the status quo of the society. However, many of these counter-hegemonic social movements failed to include minority women in their conversations because they lacked intersectionality, or the ability to provide comprehensive analysis of social issues through the inclusion of race, class, and gender. In “La Femenista”, Gomez introduces and defines sexist racism as the social and economic oppressions imposed upon the Chicanas, maintained and reinforced by the misrepresentation of the Chicana women being “passive, apolitical and illiterate” in comparison to the “politically active, educated Anglo women” (Gomez 183). Gomez further critiques the problematic approaches…
The campaign for women’s freedom to vote became a very controversial matter between genders, which then grew into a campaign for women who required to receive the same rights as men. Marinetti’s supremacist rendering of futurism exposed a rather misogynist organization, deeming a woman inclusive government to be detrimental to the entire male sex. Mina Loy, highly influenced and inspired by Marinetti’s prominent and influential radicalism, in regard to futurism, took his artistic approach to craft her own appeals through her written work. The funny thing about Mina Loy is that she liked a lot of things feminists and futurists stood for, but she did not consider herself to be either, because there were parts of both movements that infuriated and repulsed her. Her manifesto critiques the feminist movement’s inability to establish their own position, shedding a new light on feminism.…
The selection, Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay contains very powerful essays about different feministic topics. The author is a what she considers a ‘bad feminist’. “Anytime I remember how I once disavowed feminism, I am ashamed of my ignorance” (Gay xii). She was always a feminist, but she was never vocal about her ideas. Gay realized that this was wrong, and slowly started to progress, and started to be more vocal about her ideas.…
Elizabeth Stanton sparked the initial feminist movement in the United States in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. However, the racial turmoil that approached the United States during the coming decades caused the tabling of gender inequality. The Progressive era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought the resurgence of the Women 's Rights Movement. The organizations involved in the first wave of feminism focused on women 's suffrage and succeeded in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment signified both the end of a 72 year battle for women 's suffrage, as well as the end of the first wave of women 's rights.…
The book Feminism for Everybody by the author Bell Hooks gives a clear idea to the reader about what feminism is, the history of the feminist movement, and what people think of feminism. The way the author has written this books gives the readers a different perspective on the feminist theory. What feminism? To answer this question, we must first establish a commonality in language: namely, what is feminism? Feminism could be defined as a person who supports females, or as a movement that would end sexism, and oppression.…
Feminism isn’t just equality amongst men and women; it can be used to illustrate social, economic, cultural, even political movements. In the novel An Untamed State, men see women as powerless in a country like Haiti where men take advantage of women. The role of feminism is switched when the women display this nature of taking advantage of men emotionally. An Untamed State show that women hold both emotional and social power which is more important than physical dominance that a man can have. Physical actions stem from feeling and emotional reactions, so if women possess that, then they are in complete control.…
Prose Assignment 1 Accusations of Conrad’s misrepresentation of women continually perpetuates feminist criticism of his work: his ‘man’s world’ texts are notorious for their exclusion and simplification of female characters, leaving them on the periphery of his fiction. ‘The Secret Agent’ may break this assumption. Significantly, Conrad self-declares the novel ‘Winnie Verloc’s story’ , thrusting a ‘female, working-class protagonist’ into the androcentric spheres of both Victorian London and literature. Considering this, I intend to evaluate Conrad’s claim this is ‘Winnie Verloc’s story,’ analysing her presentation in perhaps the most essential part of the novel – the pages preceding Verloc’s death. These pages signify a fundamental shift…
The Resilient Relevancy of Feminist Standpoint Theory Nancy Hartstock’s (1983) Feminist Standpoint Theory possesses resilience worth noting. Published in the early 1980’s, it emerged from a volatile intersection of politics and culture and economics, the era of Reagan and Thatcher and The Invasion of Grenada, Reaganomics, the rise of laissez-faire neoliberalism and trickle-down economics, Star Wars SDI Program and the outbreak of AIDS, the failure to pass an Equal Rights Amendment and the Sex Wars. During this time Hartstock turned to a Marxist definition of class and proletarian standpoint theory to fashion a gender-specific political analysis that sought to understand patriarchal power dynamics and impacts from the vantage point of the marginalized…
Laura Bier’s novel, Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminisms, Modernity, and the State in Nasser’s Egypt, was published in 2011 and delves into feminism and state feminism during the Nasser era in Egypt. Bier analyzes the secular nationalist projects that emerged in the 1950’s and the myriad of events that led Egypt to reassess women’s role in Egypts society. The novel is split up into five main parts: the historical roots of State Feminism, the construction of the “working woman”, legal reform in personal status laws, regulating reproduction, and State feminism and the Third World. I believe that this was a strength of the novel because it provided an important timeline and overview of the most important moments and reasonings for some of the…
Nasserism and the revolution of 1952 came to Egypt with a number of changes, and not just through land reform, voting rights for women, and the nationalization of the Suez Canal. The new era that followed the 1952 coup did not only affect politics and the economy. In tandem with economic reform and social justice movements, Egyptians faced a change in the collective mind of the nation, the relationships of individuals, new morals and values, and growing national identity. In The Open Door, Latifa al-Zayyat highlights how the political revolution changed the personal lives of Egyptians. Her novel fills the holes that are often left empty by purely historical discussions.…
The moral philosophy of feminism is a big part of today's world socially. Women feel that they are not treated the same as men on a social level considering that men do not receive the same consequences that women do when they do not accept their traditional gender role. In “Feminist Criticism” an article by Lois Tyson from 2006, Tyson talks about what traditional gender roles are in today's society. She compares the ways in which men and women are seen in society and how women can be seen as “bad girls” meaning they don't accept their gender role. The traditional roles are seen as girls are emotional and weak while men are strong and rational.…