Feminism is defined as supporting the Equal Rights Amendment. Feminism interests in the “equality and justice for all women” and “seeks to eliminate systems of inequality and injustice” for all women (Shaw and Lee 10). The Equal Rights Amendment was presented into Congress in 1923 from the failure in referencing women and citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment. If the Equal Rights Amendment passed, women would have the same equal rights as men. Women would also not be separated or singled out by other men. In the book Cat’s Eye, written by Margaret Atwood, Elaine Risley, who is the main character in the book, is an artist living within the Second World War to the late 1980’s, and participates in the modern art movement. Due to childhood bullying and being victimized by girls her age, Elaine’s adult life is different than others. In Cat’s Eye, Elaine finds her identity by going back in time willfully and accepting the past, along with the people, to embrace the women she was and is. Elaine is an independent woman artist. This independence eventually contributes the successes Elaine achieves as a painter. It does cause Elaine difficulty in interacting and founding relationships with other women. In spite of what she believes, Elaine’s symbolization of her isolated experiences in each of her paintings speaks to other women. Her artistic career proves that, through art, women artists can open up and be creative and create opportunities for themselves and other women. In the beginning of Cat’s Eye, Elaine returns to her previous hometown, Toronto Canada, after being called for a retrospective show of her artwork. According to spectators, Elaine’s paintings that she created are feminine, making Elaine a ... ... middle of paper ... ..., Alice. "What Little Girls Are Made Of." The New York Times. N.p., 5 Feb. 1989. Web. Osborne, Carol. “Constructing the Self through Memory: Cat’s Eye as a Novel of Female Development.” Frontiers 14.3 (1994):95. ProQuest. Web. Richelle, Lorren. "The Story Girl: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood." The Story Girl: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. BlogSpot, 16 May 2011. Web. Sharpe, Martha. “Margaret Atwood and Julia Kristeva: Space-Time, the Dissident Women Artist, and the Pursuit of Female Solidarity in Cat’s Eye.” Essays on Canadian Writing.50 (1993): 174-189. ProQuest. Web. Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print. Vickroy, Laurie. “Seeking symbolic immortality: visualizing trauma in Cat’s Eye.” Mosaic [Winnipeg] 38.2 (2005): 129+. Academic OneFile. Web.
Alice Neel's most talked about painting, a Self-Portrait of herself, shocked the world when she painted herself in the nude at the age of 80-years-old. Neel, a 20th Century American Portrait Artist, painted models for over 50 years before turning the attention to herself (Tamara Garb). Neel wasn't a pinup girl and had depicted herself as the complete opposite (Jeremy Lewison). Unlike Neel, women avoided self-portraits of themselves, and nude self-portraits barely made it to canvas (Tamara Garb). Because of these reasons alone, Neel's Self-Portrait attracted scrutiny (Jeremy Lewison). Though Neel declared the painting to be frightful and indecent (Ibid), it still directed its focus on femininity, and the challenges women had to endure in our
Picture a child sitting in front of a television watching the Wizard of Oz. To them, it is an assortment of magical beings, a land filled with wonderful places, with varieties of different colors. They do not picture it as something with far more meaning than just a plain fairytale. On the other hand, gender/feminist critics have been able to analyze the Wizard of Oz as well as Wicked, in order to find a more elaborate meaning behind the story itself. They have discussed what lies behind the story when it comes to the issue of sexism and masculinity towards the book itself as well as the characters. There are many concepts as well that help to further explain feminism and gender criticism. The four concepts that will be discussed later on are gender, feminist writings, patriarchal society, and gynocriticism. These concepts will then be reviewed as to how they play a part in the book Wicked.
Brown, Betty Ann. 1996. Expanding Circles: Women, Art and Community. New York: Midmarch Arts Press.
In the sixties and seventies, the feminist art movement emerged that began to challenge the inequalities that faced women artists. This movement coincided with the feminist movement as a whole, that women across the country were taking part in. Many female artists including Judy Chicago, Hannah Wilke, Eva Hesse and others began to rethink art making and attempted to raise consciousness regarding womenís issues. Many of these women began to focus on their work on sexuality and acknowledging the fact that they were women and artists. This forceful and radical approach was instrumental in gaining the acceptance of females in the...
The formal education of women artists in the United States has taken quite a long journey. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the workings of a recognized education for these women finally appeared. Two of the most famous and elite schools of art that accepted, and still accept, women pupils are the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (the PAFA).
Brooks, Gwendolyn. “Sadie and Maud.” Literature for Life. Ed. X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, and Nina Revoyr. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 354. Print.
Trace the development of the bullying. How convincing are the situation and Elaine's feelings are portrayed.
At first glance, the poems The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake, and Barbie Doll, by Marge Piercy appear to have no tangible similarities. However, upon further analysis and interpretation, they can be seen as somewhat akin. In these two poems, the harsh treatment of children, the use of imagery, and children’s self-image in the poems are comparable. The differences between the two poems include the time period in which they were written, the background of the characters, and the characters’ reactions to the problems that they are faced with. Although the surface level information in the poems Barbie Doll and The Chimney Sweeper is easy to contrast, if one dives a little deeper,
Emerson, David. “Innocence as a super-power: little girls on the hero’s journey.” Mythlore 28.1-2 (2009): 13lt. Literature resource center.web.17oct.2013
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, feminism is defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism is a major part of the short story, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, which is a story that portrays women’s lack of freedom in the1800s. Women had no rights, and had to cater to all of their husband’s needs. The main character in “The Story of an Hour” is a woman who suffers from heart trouble, named Mrs. Mallard. When Mrs. Mallard was told about her husband’s death, she was initially emotional, but because of her husband’s death she reaped freedom and became swept away with joy. The story is ironic because Mrs. Mallard learns her husband was not dead, and instead of exulting her husband’s sudden return she regretted abandoning her moment of freedom. An analysis of “The Story if an Hour” through the historical and feminist lenses, suggests that the story is really about women’s self-identity in the 1800s male-dominated society, and how it caused women’s lack of freedom.
In Rossetti’s poem “In an Artist’s Studio”, she illustrates a man in the art studio surrounded around his canvases. On each of his canvases, he has painted the same woman in different positions, as depicted in, “One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans” (Rossetti 104). This man continuously paints the same women, each time depicting her differently as demonstrated, “A saint, and angel…” (Rossetti 104). Similarly, in McKay’s poem he illustrates for the readers, a dark skinned, half clothed woman dancing. Both of these poems focus on how men view women, and how men idealize women for their beauty, or some other desirable part of them. Both of these poets express that men do not appreciate the wholeness and complexity of both of these women. McKay’s idealized woman is also a woman of colour, which may lead into a discussion of race gender, and sexuality. In Rossetti’s poem, the artist “feeds upon” (Rossetti 104) the object of his affection, “not as she is, but as she fills his dreams” (Rossetti 104). Also, McKay’s narrator idealizes her physical beauty and describes how everyone “devoured” her beauty, even though “her self was not in that strange place” (McKay 18). The main difference is that McKay’s narrator sees his desired woman as having “grown lovelier for passing through a storm” (McKay 18), whereas Rossetti’s artist uses his art to wash away the pain-and by extension, the
Elbert, Sarah. “Reading Little Women.” Temple University Press (1984): 151-65. Rpt in Novels for Students. Ed. Elizabeth Thomason. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 144. Print.
Feminism is a body of political movement and social theory primarily based on and motivated by the experiences of the sexes. While generally providing a critique of social relations, proponents of feminism also focus on analyzing gender inequality and the promotion of women’s rights, interest, and issues. However, having the major goal of developing into an equal society between genders. We have evolved, but our views on gender roles have not evolved.
Ruth Handler and her two young children, Barbara and Ken, were merely sightseeing in Lucerne, Switzerland, when Mrs. Handler first saw the doll she herself had been trying to create (Lord 29). In the window of a small gift shop was an eleven and one-half-inch tall plastic doll with a slender woman’s body and a long blond ponytail. Her name was Lilli (“Bad Girl” 1). She had been created from a cartoon character in a West German tabloid similar to the National Inquirer (Lord 8). Dressed provocatively, and with a seductive look in her eye, Lilli had become a “popular pornographic gag gift for men” (“Bad Girl” 1). Excited to see her long-time idea a reality, Mrs. Handler bought three of the dolls and hurried home to begin work on her own doll (“Bad Girl” 2). It was 1956, and within three years, Mattel Creations began marketing the “teenage fashion model” as “a new kind of doll from real life” (Tosa 30). The new doll, deemed “Barbie”, was named after her own daughter Barbara, who’s many years of play with paper dolls had actually inspired her to begin designing the three-dimensional adult doll (Lord 30).
Perrault, Charles. "Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper." . N.p., 8 Oct 2003. Web. 1 Oct 2013.