Patriarchy

“Perfect,” that is what people what to be. Nowadays, people are obsessing over the fact to be perfect. Both stories “The Falling Girl” and “They’re Not Your Husband” presents how society has standards that everyone should want to attain and how it is glorifying by the ways Marta and Doreen introduces with societal pressure, how they alter their self-image, and what they are left with from the culmination on striving for perfection. First, both female characters face societal pressure and realize…

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,”…

"Compare representations of woman in Byron's" she walks in beauty" and Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" Most critics agree that six main poets represent the Romantic-era, among which is William Wordsworth and William Blake. They were the oldest pioneering figures who were leading the literary movement. The younger pioneering figures of poets include Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. During the early nineteenth century, Lord Byron was a so…

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…

Rationale I decided to write a diary from Lenina’s point of view, one of the main characters of A Brave New World, which takes place in a utopian society that is divided in five castes (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon). In this society people can’t have babies, families or feelings. Lenina belongs to the Beta’s caste which means that she is a shallow product of a materialistic society, but in her diary we can see her struggling against her caste. On her diary Lenina wanted to be loved by…

For example, when power is captured at the micro-level of society, this captures how power in institutional and cultural practices produce individual domination (Sawicki, 1991, p. 22). Although Foucault has been extensively criticised for making few references to women and to the issue of gender in his work, Foucault’s focus on the relations between power, the body and sexuality have made a significant contribution to a feminist critique of essentialism (Diamond & Quinby, 1988, p. 167). However,…

The concept of power is one of the strongest themes within Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale, given that power dynamics and authority are an immense part of what dictates female oppression. While having written a dystopian fiction novel, Attwood accurately captures the struggles of women surviving within an establishment that refuses to value their word or worth in a way that is acutely relevant. While looking through the lens of Machiavelli’s maxims, each of Attwood’s female characters…

Rece Pellersels Art History 261 An Analysis of Lilian Zirpolo’s Interpretation of Primavera It’s no question that Sandro Botticelli’s painting Primavera (Spring) has an emphasis on the femininity of women in the renaissance. In Lilian Zirpolo’s essay “Botticelli’s Primavera” she discusses the many different aspects that it served as a lesson to women in medieval society. In this essay I will discuss key points analyzing Zirpolo’s argument on the work’s femininity and function, comparing and…

Turning the Tables: Exploring How Perceived Female Powerlessness can be a Survival Tool or Cause Submission in a Patriarchal Society Hisham Matar’s novel In the Country of Men presents a young woman and mother, Najwa, who is surviving in a world ruled by men. Scheherazade, the protagonist of Richard F. Burton’s The Book Of The Thousand Nights And A Night, faces a similar predicament of trying to be successful in an intricately oppressive society. Examining the lives, choices, and actions of…

Compliance and docility in women are the appropriate terms to describe eighteenth century England, a male dominated society. It is interesting to observe how feminine self-assertion, as well as women’s rejection of marriage, have been immediately attributed to sexual promiscuity, and that female’s refusal to conform to the laws established by society corrupt their reputation as pure women. Many studies, books and articles written on the subject have shown how women are rendered…