There are several components to a person; each one affected by different things: relationships, family history, gender, race and ethnicity, and a surrounding society. It is also these components that create a character in literature, which explains why characters can seem so relatable. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, characters are lost in an array of parties, clubs, and events that have no purpose. Life in the 1920s seems glamorous and wonderful; however, it is the underlying…
Animation and live action are two very different types of films, each kept in a different world and rarely cross over into the other. Cartoons and the animated characters that are crafted for them live in a world that defies logic, normal limitations, and have their own physical laws; it is a world only limited by the imagination of the artists and their tools. The real world, one that people are more familiar with, knows the restrictions and limited possibilities of what a person can do in this…
In the world of fairy tales, the ‘Cinderella story’ often portrays its protagonist as being beautiful and innocent, granting her the ending of ‘happily-ever-after’ with her Prince Charming. Unmatched beauty and subservient innocence have become a virtue for women, a societal expectation. This ideal for women is unfortunately what has been emphasized both in fiction and in contemporary society. In both Roman myths and modern day fairy tales, beauty is an advantageous and essential characteristic…
The novella Carmilla is much more complicated in its message and connection to queerness within the horror genre. On the surface there is a kind of innocence in the relationship that Laura and Carmilla share. It doesn’t seem to go much beyond light physical intimacy, but the scenes are described in a romantic way by the Laura, such as when she states of Carmilla, “And when she had spoken such rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently…
The Fatal Book Both Dorian and Des Esseintes also explore the fineries of clothing, and décor, but more so they strongly draw upon the study of jewels. Dorian wears a dress coated in over five hundred pearls. He could spend an entire day going through his collection of stones of silver, topaz, amethyst, ruby, opal and sapphire. He then explores more exotic jewels and silks that he procures from all over the world. He fills his home with these wonderful treasures and uses them to distract himself…
The films Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, and The Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero, both feature female characters in subordinate roles to their male counterparts. Double Indemnity features Walter Neff underestimating his lover Phyllis’s power and continually patronizing her, calling her “baby” almost exclusively. The Night of the Living Dead features Helen, who is constantly put down by her husband who never values her opinion. Both films use elements of…
Throughout the paper I will be examining women’s femininity during the Victorian Era from the 1830s to the 1900s. From the start of the Victorian era the perfect woman as an ideal of femininity was relentless. Women were expected to be prim and proper, as well as pure and hygienic. Women were slaves to fashion, yearning for men’s approval; they had to suffer from heavy crinoline cages on their hips to restricted corsets clinging to their rib cage. I will further my research of how femininity was…
For whatever reason, writers tend to categorize female characters more strictly than they do male characters. Generally using the “Big 8” archetypes, women are placed into confining molds with little to no room for variation. Whether they play the role of the sweet, virginal Innocent or the plain and wise Sage, women, especially when written by male authors, rarely exhibit the same complex personalities as their male counterparts. Even worse, authors sometimes pervert these archetypes,…
I argue Lady Audley’s portrait is crucial to the movement and culmination of Braddon’s novel. Its symbolic implications are multivalent: as Lynette Felber writes, ‘[the portrait] protests the power and authority of the male gaze; it anatomizes fetishistic desire; and it raises questions about the construction of women and their sexuality in Victorian society’. Structurally, the portrait heralds the fate of Lady Audley by revealing her dual nature, by implicating a significant secret, and by…
he still recognized him as an experienced detective that did not deserve his fate. Furthermore, letting Brigid escape from the authorities would tarnish his reputation as a detective and hinder his business. By not playing into O’Shaugnessy’s femme fatale ruse, Sam Spade submits himself to a masculinized objectivity, where cold-blooded reason prevails over romance (Men Alone 84…