Jane Austen

In the novel, Madame Bovary, Flaubert explores hand gestures to establish the nature of the characters and the power of the relationships between the characters. With the description of the character's hands, Flaubert presents Emma and Rodolphe’s personas. Flaubert also foreshadows the character's future actions or their demise and empowerment over others. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert altars hand description and movement to further enhance the story of the Bovary’s. Through the detailed repetition…

Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. Mrs. Mallard is fighting oppression through not having the same rights as men in this period of the 1890s. Women didn’t have the right to vote while also having arranged marriages for which they can’t choose their own husbands. An analysis of “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, uses the themes of death, freedom, and irony to show the struggles women faced in the 1890s. The first theme in “The Story of an Hour,”…

Understanding Gender Norms in Gilead with Feminism and Politics in the Handmaid’s Tale: Jill Swale examines the political and historical context of Atwood’s novel Readers of dystopian will recognize many of the themes and features of Atwood’s novel: war, surveillance, oppression, lack of freedom, underground movements and rebellion. In Jill Swale’s examination of the social and historical context of the novel, she comments on the idea that the novel is and “amalgam of trends” (Swale) that have…

The reading questions and discussion boards were particularly important in helping me analyze and research especially for my RA. For example, this particular question made me ponder upon several things until I researched and found something interesting to use for my RA. “George Cruikshank – “Cinderella and the Glass Slipper” Q: The stepmother is portrayed as proud, selfish and extravagant which makes her unjust and cruel, in contrast to Cinderella whose “disposition was even better than her…

In her novel, The God of Small Things, published in 1997, Arundhati Roy succeeds in creating an unorthodox narrative through her refashioning of the English language. Through the novel’s unexpected events, Roy presents the melancholy predicament of untouchables as well as the struggle of a woman in pursuit of romantic love in a patriarchal society. In this analysis, I will demonstrate how the reader reacts to Roy’s art of storytelling and how her unconventional style illuminates the novel’s…

“You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.” - Michelle Obama. The quote connects to the novel Purple Hibiscus by the main character, Kambili, who uses adversity to elicit talents. In the novel Purple Hibiscus, Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie writes about a young girl named Kambili who lives with a religious and strict family and starts to find herself by visiting her…

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850-bestselling, romance novel, “The Scarlet Letter” centers around adulteress Hester Prynne, doctor-tormentor Chillingworth and Minister Dimmesdale. Hawthorn effectively uses irony to develop his characters by writing their reactions opposite to what is expected of the audience; Hawthorn is effective in this because Hester, Chillingworth and Dimmesdale’s reactions are consistent throughout the entire novel. Hawthorne’s use of irony developes Hester’s toughness,…

One keeps turning to the point that Woolf is a realist; the new method is to represent the real world as it is perceived in a culture which is a state of flux following the Great War. Woolf’s motive in writing this novel wasn’t just to present to us the confined life of a high-society housewife, or to explore homosexuality or feminism, but to take the reader on a psychological journey that takes postmodernism and…

Kamala Markandaya occupies a prominent place among Indian English novelists. She won international fame and recognition with a publication offer very first novel, Nectar in a sieve in 1954. When she started writing novels, the themes hunger and degradation, human relationships, east – west encounter had already been dealt with by a number of Indian/English novelists. But Kamala Markandaya provides variety and vividness to these themes. In her all the novels these themes are reflected in the life…

Allie Finkle's Rules For Girls is a series of novels by Meg Cabot the New York Times bestselling author that is best known for writing over 80 novels in the children's, young adult, and adult genres. Meg was born in Bloomington, Indiana but lived in Carmel, California and Grenoble in France before she moved to New York after getting her fine arts bachelors degree from Indiana University. She worked fro a decade at the New York University where she was assistant residence hall director an…