The Secret River Gender Analysis

Improved Essays
enlightenment, transforming the savages to the civilised: "weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways".
Gender – the representations of gender in these texts are overtly patriarchal, men are ruling society, women have little to no say. In The Secret River, Sal is transported with her convict husband despite not actually having committed the crime herself. Women have stereotypical, traditional gender roles such as cooking, cleaning, sewing and making clothes and raising the children. Will’s wife Sal is the voice of moral reason among the ruthless men.
In Heart Of Darkness, women are the objects upon which men can display their own success and status (e.g. Mr. Kurtz’s African mistress) and Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of naïve illusions, to blame for the evils of the world.
In The Pearl the male is the leader of the household. He is dominant, he is the decision-maker, and
…show more content…
In The Secret River, both cultures believe that they are entitled to the land for ownership purposes however, the Aboriginal Australians don’t feel the need to build fences or otherwise. Aboriginals maintain they have ownership of the land as they were there first. Whereas the white European colonisers believe they have ownership of Australia because they’re British and Britain technically ‘owns’ Australia as a penal colony.
The River Thames, London, England - In Heart Of Darkness, representations of the River Thames present with positive connotations of calmness and tranquillity, associated with feelings of home, identity and culturally belonging. The narrator (from whom the story is told) displays the upmost respect towards this setting and life at sea: “and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Is defined as the land without owners. The British colonization had the belief that the Aboriginal landers could not trade for their lands with them or put a price for it. The Aboriginals thoughts were the first who settle on determined land owns it, and the land is sacred, is where their rituals and ceremonies took place, Land for Aboriginals means everything, their homes, their ancestors, their food, their heritage. Is the name used to refer to the Aboriginal and Torres islander people of Australia originally or by descent.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In chapter six From Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass , Douglass focuses on how slavery has affected not just the slaves, but also the slave-owners themselves. In addition, he explains how slavery changes people behaviors. Also, he talks about women. He analyze White women in general and then talks about Sophia specifically. He think that all people are victims in slavery, but they are different in the degree of suffering.…

    • 1212 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Renoir’s boats can easily be mistaken for sailboats, a traditionally peaceful vehicle of the water. However, at a closer glance the sailboats become small orange boats with light reflections behind them. Nonetheless, the boats add to the composition’s tranquil…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As Australians we are proud of our culture we deem fair and just. Yet we often forget the prosperity of Australia was in great part the result of dispossessing the Aboriginal people of their lands. The Aboriginals lived peacefully, their culture and society sacred and complex. The land, a fundamental component of their spirituality and identity. However with the arrival of the British, Australia was declared Terra Nullius, a land that belonged to no one.…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The irony in this story is the role of these women portrayed is twisted. Ideally, Western cultures allow women to be liberated and gain independence, Sarah, on the other hand, did not fit under this description. “Roya was wrong: it wasn’t Paul who had broken her heart. Her heart had come already impaired.” (211)…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Born in a family of Mexican immigrants, Sandra Cisneros discovers her niche in the American literature by writing from her experience as an immigrant growing at the confluence of two cultures. Until her teenager years, Cisneros’ family moves back and forth from Chicago to Mexico, making her feel not integrated in either culture. As Robin Ganz declares, Cisneros “derived inspiration from her cultural specificity and found her voice in the dingy rooms of her house on Mango Street, on the cruel but comfortable streets of the barrio, and in the smooth and dangerous curves of borderland arroyos” (1). In her short story, “Woman Hollering Creek”, Cisneros describes the life of a Mexican woman, Cleofilas that marries a man from “el otro lado” in the…

    • 1002 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Racism In The Secret River

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be reworked, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” The acknowledgement of history is vital in an individual’s progression to remedy past mistakes. “The Secret River” illustrates a narrative about 19th Century Australia, whilst simultaneously making comment on the treatment of Indigenous Australian’s at the time. The racist attitudes of the white settlers in the story can also be seen as the foundation of contemporary-day Australia’s casual racism. “The Secret River” articulates a vivid image of the unjust atrocities that the Aboriginal people encountered.…

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Australian indigenous people lived on this land for up to 60,000 years before Europe discovered the country and claimed settlement. The ingenious people lived their own lives, spoke their own language and had their own lifestyle. They believed they belonged to the land. They lived semi nomadic lifestyles traveling seasonally letting their previous land to re-flourish. This all changed in 1788 when the British claimed settlement.…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    From the very first page of Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water it is clear that his novel is focused on more than just one social issue. Though the most prominent one is that of the indigenous culture in Canada, there are many others hidden in plain sight throughout the book. The one, aside from culture, that seems the most prominent is gender. As he weaves in and out of different narratives, it seems obvious that King has something to say about gender; more specifically women. And yet, while he seems keen on bringing out the topic of gender it is almost as if he’s contradicting himself with his characterization.…

    • 1801 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Erauso Gender Inequality

    • 2083 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Gender inequality is defined as men being favored by society. Generally, men are superior to women and are physically strong and do not substantiate to society, unlike women. Also, men have more freedom than women. During the year 1492, Christopher Columbus explores the New World. No one could stop him since men are limitless.…

    • 2083 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    11-15-12 Gender Roles Essay Adventure Time is an animated cartoon in the Cartoon Network. The series follows the adventures of Finn, a 14-year-old human boy, and his best friend Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo. I chose to write about a specific episode called Princess Cookie which raises many questions on the relevant gender roles issues in this society.…

    • 669 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Creating Ambiguity in Natural Spaces: The Ecological Queering of Gender in Cereus Blooms at Night and Small Beauty I argue that Small Beauty and Cereus Blooms at Night establish ecological spaces as ambiguous in order to deconstruct preconceived limitations around the natural, and further explore — and encourage the exploration of — queer subjectivities, particularly genderqueer subjectivities, in an organic context. SMALL BEAUTY IN THE CONTEXT OF ORGANIC TRANSGENDERISM Nicole Seymour, a queer theorist who preaches the importance of “organic transgenderism,” Both novels establish transgenderism as a natural state, one that does not necessitate excessive explanation from transgender characters, or even narrators. In Cereus Blooms at Night, Ambrosia Mohanty’s transition to Otoh Mohanty, from male to female, is described as a “flawless” transformation, one that angularized his body and “tampered with the flow” of female hormones. Mootoo emphasizes the ease of the transformation even in other’s eyes: “… the child walked and ran and dressed and talked and tumbled and all but relieved himself so much like an authentic boy that Elsie soon apparently forgot she had ever given birth to a girl” (110).…

    • 1899 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness follows a young man named Marlow during his travels through the Belgium Congo. Throughout the novel there are countless mentions of the native Congo people being inferior to the white man along with many mentions of the white man’s abuse of the natives. The seemingly constant symbols of light and dark can be interpreted to represent the complicated relationship between the two races, however there is a lot of ambiguity in the specific scenes. Contrary to this ambiguity however, the painting by Mr. Kurtz in the manager’s office and the native warrior woman create clear boundaries as to the mentality of the two groups of people. The warrior woman appears to be the native people’s response to the white man’s…

    • 1364 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    It can be said that within the core of every human being, lies a certain amount of darkness. While this is true, it can also be said that this internal darkness can only surface given the right opportunity and within the right environment. However, once this darkness does manage to emerge, its force is powerful enough to destroy the very part of us that makes us human. This darkness and evilness of man is a prominent theme reflected in the setting, plot structure, and characterization of Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness and Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray.…

    • 1792 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness spins a dark contrast between two different worlds. These worlds being the civilized life of Europe against the savage wilderness of colonial Africa. Running parallel to the contrast in worlds is the contrast between Kurtz’s lovers who he has taken up in each of the world 's. The lines of gender and wilderness in The Heart of Darkness are somewhat blurred as the protagonist time and again personifies wilderness into a living, female role. This serves to be ironic as Marlow’s view towards women is that of a negative context. Often times painting women as naive and their purpose is to serve man.…

    • 1425 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays