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How do gender roles play a part in literature
Gender roles in literature
How do gender roles play a part in literature
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Maria Concepcion was originally written by Katherine Anne Porter in 1930. This story is about a young, strong woman who is trying to make her way in a man’s world. The reader can infer by the names of the characters and the town that this story takes place in a village in Mexico. The opening of this short story strongly suggests the expectations for the rest of the story by describing Maria Concepcion’s temperament and how it contrasted with what was socially acceptable in that time.
In the first paragraph of Maria Concepcion, the author describes the social order of men and women in the story’s setting. Maria resisted taking a break from walking due to the cactus needles she would get in her feet (208). The pain from the needles is not the reason she opposed taking a break. The deciding factor was that her husband and her husband’s boss were waiting on Maria to bring them their food (208). Maria Concepcion lived within a
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She already, at eighteen, had a “good reputation with the neighbors as an energetic and religious woman” (209). She was a devout Christian. Considering that her piety was the source of her good reputation, it is safe to assume the people in her village were also religious. Communities as such could pose as an obstacle for a strong, independent woman, as it was religiously customary for the woman to be submissive to her husband.
Maria Concepcion’s personality contrasted with the social standards at the time. Porter wrote her as a hard worker that was not unfamiliar with physical labor. Maria walked barefoot to the camp her husband worked at, carrying a sack full of live fowls for them to eat, and from there to the market to sell (208). She also had her own money as the villagers knew that if she wanted to purchase something, “she could bring out a sack of hard silver coins for the purpose” (209). It was uncommon for a woman in this time period to have her own money, separate from her husband’s
Maria did not merely buy her clay and materials in a local art supply, for in her pueblo culture and village, there weren?t any. Instead, as her ancestors did for numerous years before her, she learned how to harvest and collect the materials she needed to produce her work form then earth and surround lands of her village. Kilns were hand made and fired. Clay was dug from the ground and prepared in the same manner it had been taught and passed down from her ancestors. Glazes and finishing materials were also produced by hand (Peterson 48).
Men of all professions had gone, such as lawyers, physicians, miners, mechanics, merchants, senators, and gamblers (Wilson). Most of the men had abandoned their jobs and family to try their luck in finding gold. Luzena had went with her husband and brought along their two kids. She had remembered that “the travelers were almost all men” (Wilson). Since there were virtually no women to tend to the men’s needs, men often interacted with women they didn’t know. “A hungry miner, attracted by the unusual sight of a woman” had paid Luzena five dollars for a biscuit that she had made (Wilson). Thus, women became cooks, prostitutes, and owners of hotels. Luzena had a hotel called ‘El Dorado,’ where she had “twenty miners eating at my table.” (Wilson). That was how women typically made money, by providing services that are outside of mining, the ones essential for life, like eating. Luzena had also recalled a ball taking place in Nevada City, where “there were twelve ladies present and about three hundred men” (Wilson). This really portrayed the gender imbalance and demonstrated competition among men for even a dance with the
Barrera 2 Selena Quintanilla-Perez was an artist in the Tejano music industry that contributed to revolutionizing the style of music in the United States today. The Tejano music genre originated from Texas, but it may be called Tex-Mex because of its Mexican background. Selena absolutely loved her fans, so she went to great lengths to keep her fans happy. (Angelfire 2) Her rise to stardom was also very successful thanks to the support and persistence from her father.
Known as the “Queen of Tejano” and the “Mexican Madonna”, Selena Quintanilla-Perez was the adored Latin singer who sadly did not get to live to see all of the success of her career. One of her most famous quotes is, “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever but to create something that will (PhilosIblog, 2014).” That is just what Selena did and she made sure that her legacy would live on for years. Selena surely left a her mark in this world with the help of her family, in her short lived 23 years. Selena was an amazing singer, she even made it very far in a genre of music that was dominated by men. Selena Quintanilla-Perez is an influential person because of her loving personality, her music career, her determination to succeed in a genre that was only men, and her success with her music that will never stop playing even if she is not here.
The person that I chose for the Womens History Month report is Maria Mitchell, who was a self- taught astronomer. She discovered Comet Mitchell and made amazing achievements throughout her life. Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818 on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket to William and Lydia Mitchell. When Maria Mitchell was growing up in the Quaker community, few girls were allowed to study astronomy and higher mathematics. Even though the Mitchell's weren't rich Maria's father, a devoted amateur( most astronomers of that time were amateurs) astronomer, introduced her to mathematics and the night sky. He also encouraged her toward teaching and passed on a sense of God as in the natural world. By the time Maria was sixteen, she was a teacher of mathematics at Cyrus Pierce's school for young ladies where she used to be a student. Following that she opened a grammar school of her own. And only a year after that, at the age of eighteen she was offered a job as a librarian at Nantucket's Atheneum during the day when it opened to the public in the fall of 1836. At the Atheneum she taught herself astronomy by reading books on mathematics and science. At night she regularly studied the sky through her father's telesscope. For her college education even Harvard couldn't have given her a better education than she received at home and at that time astronomy in America was very behind as of today. She kept studying at the Atheneum, discussed astronomy with scientists who visited Nantucket (including William C. Bond), and kept studying the sky through her father's lent telescope.
The Women of Colonial Latin America serves as a highly digestible and useful synthesis of the diverse life experiences of women in colonial Latin America while situating those experiences in a global context. Throughout, Socolow mediates the issue between the incoherence of independent facts and the ambiguity of over-generalization by illustrating both the restrictions to female behavior and the wide array of behavior within those restrictions. Readers of varied backgrounds will come away with a much deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities that defined the lives of the diverse women of the New World ruled by Portugal and
Over the past few decades, research on women has gained new momentum and a great deal of attention. Susan Socolow’s book, The Women of Colonial Latin America, is a well-organized and clear introduction to the roles and experiences of women in colonial Latin America. Socolow explicitly states that her aim is to examine the roles and social regulations of masculinity and femininity, and study the confines, and variability, of the feminine experience, while maintaining that sex was the determining factor in status. She traces womanly experience from indigenous society up to the enlightenment reforms of the 18th century. Socolow concentrates on the diverse culture created by the Europeans coming into Latin America, the native women, and African slaves that were imported into the area. Her book does not argue that women were victimized or empowered in the culture and time they lived in. Socolow specifies that she does her best to avoid judgment of women’s circumstances using a modern viewpoint, but rather attempts to study and understand colonial Latin American women in their own time.
As she tours her hometown, one can see the horrendous circumstances in which her community thrives in, for example, to get from one side to the other they must cross a makeshift bridge where the water has begun to change color such as black, green, even beginning to foam. Numerous health problems have arisen due to the toxic waste that is being dumped into the streams that therefore leading to runoff when it rains such as sores developing on feet and legs, weakened immune system, spots that appear on the limbs, etc. Lujan, a third world feminist (could also be known as an environmental feminist as well) exposes the unsanitary environment in which she lives in, desiring a greater community where her children can live in without the worry of diseases or the contamination of their water sources. Though she was not always a promotora/advocator it was not until Lujan came face to face with a sign inviting women to participate in a health survey furthermore learning about the health risks that she made the decision to be outspoken about the cause. She took workshops to help her better apprehend labor and women’s rights in order to promote laws and speak out against illegal acts conducted by businesses. Therefore, it only makes sense that women would be the most outspoken group of the maquiladoras since they make up eighty percent of the
Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth chapter, namely the domestic abuse scene, functions as a pivotal point in the Mother Tongue as it helps her to define herself.
Women in Latin America were expected to adhere to extreme cultural and social traditions and there were few women who managed to escape the burden of upholding these ridiculous duties, as clearly shown in “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. First, Latin American women were expected to uphold their honor, as well as their family's honor, through maintaining virtue and purity; secondly, women were expected to be submissive to their parents and especially their husbands; and lastly, women were expected to remain excellent homemakers.
Sandra Cisneros’ novel, The House on Mango Street, examines various key issues within established social systems. As a bildungsroman story, not only is there much growth and development experienced by the character, but from the reader as well. This is because the novel challenges false preset notions that one may have of the main character’s culture. In tearing down custom barriers and voicing out painful truths, there is a deeper understanding of Latina culture in the United States of America. Sandra Cisneros empowers the women who are living in a patriarchal society and her main character, reinforced by her name, Esperanza, gives women just that, hope.
Porter develops María Concepción into a round character by contrasting her attitude in the first part of the story to that the end of the story. María's transformation from a passive, laborious, and religious woman into a hateful, revenge oriented, and dominant woman becomes obvious through her actions. Her daily routine includes carrying "about a dozen living fowls, [and a] food basket to the market" (Porter 140-141). María was silent when she saw her husband run off with another woman. She "did not stir nor breathe for some seconds," instead she watched from a distance (Porter 142). María Concepción's religious faith was one of her stronger traits. "She was a good Christian. She had paid for the license which permits people to be married in the church. She had given money to the priest before she and Juan ...
In Latin America, women are treated differently from men and children. They do lots of work for unexplainable reasons. Others for religious reasons and family orders and others because of the men involved. Women are like objects to men and have to obey their orders to either be rich or to live. Some have sex to get the men’s approval, others marry a rich man that they don’t even know very well, and become slaves. An important book called Chronicles of a Death Foretold is an example of how these women are treated. Purisima del Carmen, Angela Vicario's mother, has raised Angela and her sisters to be good wives. The girls do not marry until late in life, rarely socializing beyond the outsides of their own home. They spend their time sewing, weaving, washing and ironing. Other occupations include arranging flowers, cleaning up the house, and writing engagement letters to other men. They also keep the old traditions alive, such as helping the sick, comforting the dying, and covering the dead. While their mother believes they are perfect, men view them as too tied to their women's traditions. The men are afraid that the women would pay more attention to their job more than the men. Throughout the book, the women receive the respect they deserve from the men and others around them.
She had a rough time with her family, including her family issues. Furthermore, she coped while she wrote her life story to become a book author, so she can become famous when she told her severe life story in Sao Plato. Another woman, Bom Jesus de Mata coped by with her baby, Zezinho because he was an only baby to give love. In the reading, “That when I decided to go to Ferreiras to find work picking vegetables” (2). She liked to pick vegetables while she happened not to do well with her two husbands in the past, but she met her third husband, which they put her work with him. She coped by working and picking vegetables. The last woman, Jacinta Vegas, cope by working at “the Regatta Club down by the beach. It’s very exclusive club” (1). She did clean the bathrooms, work in the cloakroom as an attendant, and watch over the people’s cases and clothes when they are in the wash. She likes that job because it gets her pay in $2 a day, however, she works for twice a week. Nevertheless, “For three months during the summer I have work every day, and on top of that, I get an annual bonus of twelve dollars” (1). These women like to cope when they are poor by working because they received more money than they started their
...Halevi-Wise, Yael (1997). Story-telling in Laura Esquivel's Como Agua Para Chocolate. The Other Mirror: Women’s Narrative in Mexico, 1980-1995. Ed. Kristine Ibsen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. 123-131.