Women's Gender Roles

Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s conveys the transition in women’s roles throughout the 1940’s in America. In this sense, the protagonist, Holly Golightly, effectively demonstrates this notion in her pursuit of wealth through her sexuality, which communicates the shifting paradigms in the roles of women from the “family” woman to the early beginnings of the modern “independent” woman. Similar to Betty Freidan’s analysis of the unhappiness of women, Capote also relates the notion of power to gender relations in portraying Holly’s control over men through her appearance, which denotes both men’s greatest injustice and downfall in imposing body standards for women. Likewise, throughout the most of human history, the general basis of gender relations lies in the objectification of women as well as their response to these marginalizing attitudes. Furthermore, these attitudes are merely a symptom of the greater societal issue, which is widespread tolerance and, even, promotion …show more content…
This is a significant transition since it conveys women as somewhat equally free members of society. However, Rousseau’s argument that women rely on physical love “to establish their empire” (Rousseau, 448) or, in other words, to reign dominance over men. From a historical standpoint, there is an improvement in the perception of women in the sense that they are not solely blamed for the fallible flaws in society. Instead, in Rousseau’s time, men blame women for contributing to social flaws intentionally, such as promoting inequality though gender dominance. Likewise, often attributed to the rising objectification of women, this viewpoint implies that women’s greatest power in society is sexual manipulation, rather than societal contribution. Although Rousseau places more power into women’s hands, he assumes that they use that power to aid women