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The history of the portrayal of women in literature
Portrayal of women in literature
Gender and its roles in literature
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In Karen Russell’s short story St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves Claudette, the main character, and other teenagers are being raised in a home where they learn how to adapt to human society. Some girls accomplish this task while other girls fail. The wolf girl Claudette truly is conformed and successfully adapts to human society. Claudette proves this by her relationship with her other sisters along with her relationship with herself. To begin, Claudette struggles in many situations to try to adapt from the wolf society to the human society. Firstly, on page 226 Claudette says, “ I clamped down on her ankle, straining to close my jaws around the woolly XXL sock. Sister Josephine tasted like sweat and freckles. She smelled easy to kill.” In this example, the human society is foreign …show more content…
In addition, on page 235 Claudette says, “Lick your own wounds,” I said, not unkindly. It was what the nuns had instructed us to say; wound licking was not something you did in polite company.” In this example, Mirabella, a sister in the house that is shunned, gets cut and no one will lick her wounds because the girls are supposed to be acting in a manner that portrays to human society. Claudette would have licked Mirabella’s wounds, but the nuns told her not to and she's supposed to be adapting to human society. Finally, on page 234 Claudette says, “When she tried to steal the bread out of my hands, I whirled around and snarled at her, pushing my ears back from my head. I bit her shoulder, once, twice, the only language she would respond to.” In this example, there is a conflict between Claudette and Mirabella. Mirabella tries to steal bread out of Claudette’s hands. The only way that Claudette can get Mirabella to stop and calm down is to act upon the way that Mirabella knows best which is the wolf ways. Claudette then bites Mirabella’s shoulder which is another struggle that Claudette faces.
The first document is a political cartoon showing Miss Columbia’s School House from 1894. This cartoon is a reflects the perception of others attending Miss Columbia’s School House because inside the school everyone is misbehaving and running around. Many believe that if one country is governed by another, it is an uncivilized nation. In the cartoon there a female and a male standing outside asking can they come in. the female represents Canada and the male represents Hawaii. The male figure is holding a British flag, imply that Britain once ruled Hawaii. The female teacher who’s supposed to be taking care of the children is a representation of America. The author is portraying America as a skilled and civilized country.
...d longs for her elder sister and mother. Frances is a good person – at heart – and is always looking out for her younger sister. Moreover, even though she has different views that her father and will always do the opposite of what is expected of her, it is seen that this insecurity is caused by James indeed. Frances feels that in order to gain security in her life, she must perform these actions. She feels compelled to live her life the way she does. Frances’s naughty and mischievous behaviour can be viewed as a weakness she possesses, and she longs to correct these weaknesses by her actions. She is not a role model by any means, but she is by no means the Devil’s advocate. A sincere heart – compelled by circumstances – does its best to make the situation turn out for the better than the worse, and Frances, through her love for her mother, inevitably does just that.
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, by Karen Russell is the story of a pack of human girls who were born of werewolves. They are taken from their families in the wilderness and brought to a St. Lucy’s. It was here that they were to be civilized. The process of civilization involved stripping them of their personal and cultural identities and retraining them in a manner that was acceptable to the human world. This is a close analogy to the Residential Schools of Cultural Assimilation for native Americans from 1887 to the early 1950’s.
In the second epigraph in the short story “St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By wolves’’ by Karen Russell discusses how it’s not easy going from a wolf to being a human. The girls must work hard and try their all to make it. They feel like they don’t belong there, it’s like going from a small school to a big school. They day dream of their old way of life. They feel uncomfortable and depressed.
Which is caused by the narrator having a male perspective. The narrator does not give the women and credit or redeeming qualities. All the women follow a general stereotype. If they tried to break away from the stereotype, they would me more important and influential characters. Paquette, a chambermaid in the Baron’s castle, is described as “a pretty and obedient brunette” (5). She is identified obedient not because of her job as a chambermaid, but because she is willing to exploit her soul and body to the men around the castle. In regards to the old woman, she doesn’t even have an actual name, which does not matter since is ugly and useless. The old woman has the mindset that she is; an object; a mistake; a disgrace. That her time has passed as a beautiful useful woman. All the rape and abuse has physically affected her and she is out of luck. In fact, she is lucky if men talk to her, or even look at her without
Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” The story is about a group of girls that are raised by a family of wolves. They have lived in caves all their lives and do not know how to behave and interact like humans. They had no authority in the cave and were treated as a pack. There was no compromising or respect because everyone was treated equally. With this being said they are sent away to St. Lucy’s church, and the girls are taught how to adapt to a new environment. The girls are unsure how to act in the new environment, “It was impossible to make the blank, chilly bedroom feels like home. In the beginning we drank gallons of bathwater as part of a collaborative effort to mark our territory… we couldn’t mark our scent here it made us feel invisible” (Russell 270). The transformation is tough as they learn to become more “civilized” in society and abandon their old habits and family values. The setting helps to display how different the girls acted before they got moved to the church. The cave was their home and that’s all they knew. They were unaware of the outside world and who they truly
Grace King's The Little Convent Girl is an excellent example of post-Civil War realism incorporating a trick-ending. In this local color short story, King methodically lures the reader into a false belief that her story is about an insignificant and nameless young girl who, after twelve years seclusion in a convent, is exposed to the fervor and excitement of a steamboat trip down the Mississippi River. The success of Ms. King's trick-ending is achieved through three basic elements; 1) de-emphasizing the importance of the main character, 2) tidbits of information followed by wordy misdirection, and 3) a false climax.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys gives new life and identity to Bronte’s Bertha Mason as the protagonist Antoinette Cosway. The novel opens to Antoinette’s narration, “They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said”. In those first sentences, Antoinette faces issues of identity within two cultures. She distinguishes herself from the white people, referencing that in that society there is a hierarchy of power among the white creoles. Her rank limits her ability to claim whiteness, for she is the daughter of a now impoverished family. However, in noting Christophine, who serves as the only mother-like figure hints that Antoinette’s beliefs are shaped by those of the black society she...
To begin, it is clear that Claudette is facing some struggles as she transitions from her lycanthropic culture to humanity. First of all, Claudette finds it hard to “be civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt” as she says, “We tore through the austere rooms, overturning dresser drawers, pawing through the neat piles of the Stage 3 girls’ starched underwear, smashing lightbulbs with our bare fists.” This shows that Claudette is having a hard time acting like humans when she has been raised like a wolf
In the stories “The Boarding House” by James Joyce and “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, it’s ironic how different these two stories plots are, yet they are dealing with the same problem. The protagonists let their social status and the opinions of others come between their relationships instead of basing their decisions on modesty and love. In “The Boarding House,” Mr. Doran is one of the boarders and he is having an affair with a young woman named Polly, the owner of the boarding house’ daughter. He has to decide whether or not to marry Polly in order to save this perception people have of him. In “Desiree’s Baby” Armand marries an orphan woman, “She was nameless… What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?”
Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” The content of this quote embodies A Doll’s House and The Glass Menagerie because of the sexual control in both the plays. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee William, the characters, although from different time periods, face the hardships of sexual control through the men they admire. Nora is written as the naive protagonist of A Doll’s House, who embodies the themes of the novella as she matures throughout the play. Nora learns that her husband, Torvald, uses her as a doll for his own pleasure and does not truly care for her. In The Glass Menagerie, Laura, the main character, is also
Whether one would like to admit it or not, change is a difficult and not to mention uncomfortable experience which we all must endure at one point in our lives. A concept that everyone must understand is that change does not occur immediately, for it happens overtime. It is necessary for time to pass in order for a change to occur, be it days, weeks, months, or even years. The main character, who is also the narrator of “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, realizing that “things felt less foreign in the dark” (Russell 225), knows that she will be subject to change very soon. The author makes it evident to readers that the narrator is in a brand new environment as the story begins. This strange short story about girls raised by wolves being trained by nuns to be more human in character is a symbol for immigration, as the girls are forced to make major changes in their lives in order to fit in with their new environment and adapt to a new culture.
Red is the prison’s head chef and Norma is her sidekick. Both women are in prison due to the pressures of their husbands to maintain a certain role. Red’s husband was involved in the Russian Mafia thus making her conform to the roles of a “mafia wife” that is to be quite, be helpful, and above all be respectful. Red eventually is forced to be a drug mule for the mafia landing here in jail for life. Norma on the other hand was involved with a cult leader who forced woman to marry him to make the cult larger. Norma is a mute character due to the continuous oppression by this man leading her to a complete psychotic breakdown and pushing her husband off a cliff to his death landing Norma in jail for life. Both women were once fighting for basic human rights within their own lives. Both were never looked to as an influence in a highly oppressed patriarchal society. They were women who were forced to play the historical roles of the “lady of the house.” De Beauvoir writes, “We can see now that the myth [of woman] is in large part explained by its usefulness to man. The myth of woman is a luxury. It can appear only if man escapes from the urgent demands of his needs; the more relationships are concretely lived, the less they are idealized” (1271). Simply, these women were oppressed to play the historical role in their home life in order for their husbands to feed his needs. They are just a pawn in the
In the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Abe Portman was the pinnacle of mystery and the inhibitor of fascination with stories that he told his young grandson, Jacob, about his life. In the story, Abe Portman dies, this action is what leads to the entire plot, played out by Jacob. For the story to progress Abe needed to relinquish life. If Abe had never died, he would have never told Jacob where to find the island he lived on, Jacob would have never known the truth about his grandfather, his grandson would not have found people who accepted and cherished him, likewise, Abe dying gave Jacob a sense of working towards bringing forth the truth about Abe. The death of Abe turned over a new leaf for his grandson. That fresh start
The first thing that the reader will notice regarding gender is the title of the play “A Doll’s House”. This reveals to the reader, Nora’s and possible Torvald’s status within the play. Nora is unable to be herself as she is not seen as an equal in her marriage. Instead, she is something to be admired and flaunted. This need for her to be something that Torvald can show off. Both Nora and Torvald are living lives based on illusion. Torvald has made Nora his perfect little doll so that he can look good. She thinks that he is a person with incredible strength, she becomes disillusioned with him at the end of the play when he exposes himself as just a man. This paper will look at the way that society’s expectations of gender roles are perceived