Lesbian feminism

Gender roles appear to be directly related and shaped by sexuality in August Strindberg´s novel, It essentially depicts how females may initially defy social norms but will eventually give in to their sexual desires hence become inferior again. In Miss Julie the female and male roles are questioned constantly, and ultimately Strindberg humiliates women that attempt to transcend their conventional gender norms through Julie. The interactions between Miss Julie, a high class female and Jean, her…

In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, she attempts to throw the reader into an alien environment by using various literary devices throughout her writing. She wants the reader to not only imagine the life of being a slave but instead she wants the reader to feel that they are living within the character’s shoes living the experience for themselves. Some of the literary devices Morrison uses in her writing is point of view, symbolism, and diction to portray the environment in Beloved to seem unknown…

The nineteenth century was a large feminist movement as women pushed against their “roles in society.” Women were beginning to act contrary to “expected” beliefs and actions. To expose and respond to this social inequality, many women took to writing- novels, letters, pamphlets, and speeches. Overall, literature during this time often focused on the conflict between women and society. Henry James was an American author often regarded as an important figure in the literary culture of the…

Women’s rights and their social status, one of the most controversial yet concerned topics that keeps raising the society’s attention. Ever since the existence of inequality between male and female had been discovered, people had never stopped reflecting on it. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, gender bias, along with racial discrimination, are tied together to serve as the major themes of the story. By using the perspective of a misfitting tomboy Scout, Lee vividly painted out the…

emphasized a woman’s obedience to her husband. Ibsen acknowledges the fact that in 19th century life the role of the woman was to take care of the house duties by raising the children and attending to her husband as the protagonist of the play Nora Helmer does. During the play Nora rebels against these cultural norms, she abandons herself from her husband and her children when she finally finds herself as an individual. Throughout the play Nora Helmer’s character presents an inauthentic identity…

Repressive Sexuality: The Bell Jar depicts Esther’s relationship with herself, to be a “surveyed self” (Gentry, 47). It shows how self can operate in relation to body image and sexuality through idioms of “the fashioned self” (Pelt, 15) and Esther’s confrontations with sexual orientation in The Bell Jar. It links Esther’s identity process with that of the broader organizations of patriarchal power within American society. Esther seems to be in conflict with the idea of sexuality. She…

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…

In Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman uses the relationships between characters in a feudalistic system to illuminate gender, social, and power inequality by reversing the thematic roles generically given to males or females to promote equality and reduce prejudice stemming from inequality in society. Furthermore, common role placement is usually riddled with inequality, so role reversal is used to identify those places of inequality and create a vision for how society could be with multiple strong female…

The book “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women” by Naomi Wolf explains the forced standards of beauty on women. Naomi explains how the amount of power gained by women can affect the more beauty standards they also gain. Naomi puts these standards in six different categories: Work, Culture, Religion, Sex, Hunger, and Violence. She does state that the book is not so much about the women, but more so about men’s power and industrialization. Naomi explains the beauty myth as…

Kylee Wong Professor Emrich ENL 3 November 27, 2017 Mariam’s Voice Was Too Powerful In a time and place in which women were encouraged to conform to the classical “chaste, silent, and obedient” model of femininity, supporting independent thought in women was seen as potentially transgressive. In 1613, Elizabeth Cary addresses this topic in her play, The Tragedy of Mariam. The author shapes a complex network of deceit and betrayal between characters, and represents a theme of women’s voice.…