Suffragette

What is feminism? According to Amy Kesselman in Illuminating How Identities, Stereotypes and Inequalities Matter through Gender Studies, Feminism by definition is “the belief women have been subordinate to men as well as to commitment to working for freedom in all aspects of social life”. Women have gone down a long, winding road when it comes recieving their rights. The feminist movement first stemmed all the way from the 1890’s when women joined efforts in prohibition. Women, during this time…

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common stated aim: to define, establish, and defend equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women. In early civilizations, women were treated as property and looked at as materials. That was the true oppression, when women were literally a possession a man can receive or give. Nowadays, women can be, and are, very independent and self-reliant. At least that is how America is. In many other parts of the world…

Women’s drive towards growth as persons is thwarted by our society's prescriptions concerning gender’, told by Annis Pratt, is a dilemma unilaterally faced by Tess Durbeyfield and Esther Greenwood. Both female protagonists fall victim to societal pressures, including: restraint, expectations, judgement, suppression, pressure to conform and double standards that all impair their development and label them as fallen women, fallen from the grace of God. It is Hardy and Plath’s challenge to present…

In both Victorian and contemporary literature the subordination of women leads to the breakdown of mental stability due to the patriarchal society and the social pressures that are attached. In who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Albee’s use of symbolic elements is given contemporary edge by the presence of social issues. Thus, as a parallel to the failure of communication within marriage there is a division created between the lifestyles of the two couples. The only way for George and Martha to…

The social and cultural status of women saw a marked transformation during the First World War. The jobs left empty because of men joining the military needed to be filled, and the many women who lived in England were to be the ideal replacement. As the minimum wage for women was originally much lower than that of men, it was also saving companies money by employing women. Throughout the course of the war trade unions lobbied to change this with some success. The First World War saw extensive…

Feminist literature. This term is applied to a number of works in the category of critical and social theory of feminism, which addresses sex differences from the perspective of equalizing men and women 's places in society. Feminist literature challenges the concepts of gender by making readers question how we use language in our everyday lives and how this could affect our perceptions of men and women. It originated with what is now known as first wave feminism, coinciding with the women 's…

Women played a vital role in evolution of the Enlightenment Era. The women of the Enlightenment were the creators of feminism, they gave birth to the Women Liberation Movement. Female activists like Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges broke ground for modern feminists like Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes. To this day women are still fighting to break the glass ceilings holding them back, such as the current wage gap. Women of the enlightenment began the over three-hundred-year…

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances”. This is a hard lesson that many people learn throughout their lives. Author Danzy Senna exemplifies this with her characters in her novel Caucasia. The story is about a mixed raced family living in 1970’s Boston, Massachusetts. Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a Black father, Deck and a white mother, Sally. Both parents’ are on different sides of the Civil Rights Movement. The…

First ladies have been referred to as “footnotes of history,” reflecting the public’s limited view of their position in the White House. Only a handful of first ladies have achieved great fame while many of equal or greater influence have been allowed to drop into obscurity. Two of the most famous first ladies are Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy, who made major waves in their respective political and social spheres; however, before these two first ladies made their impact, their…

On July 28, 1914 the First World War began in Europe. It lasted three years before the United States joined the fight in April of 1917. It is no question that the few years of United States involvement were greatly impactful on American society. Additionally, the three years before American involvement were impactful on American society. The First World War, or the Great War, had a large effect on the American people and American society, specifically in fashion. Women’s fashion dramatically,…