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Essays on women in literature
Essays on women in literature
Gender roles throughout literature
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In “The Wife’s Story”, author Ursula Le Guin weaves an intriguing tale of a wolf turned human. Le Guin shows readers that not everything is as it seams. Ursula develops her characters to misguide her readers into believing that the characters are all humans at the begging of the story. Throughout the story readers start to realize that certain aspects of the characters do not match up.
Ursula writes about a young woman’s view on a tragic event that occurred to her family. “The Wife’s Story” starts out by giving us a brief history of our two main characters, and describing them with human qualities. For example, the wife describes her husband as “a good husband”, when you think of a husband you typically think of a human couple. Ursula also
In “The Yellow Wall-paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the unnamed female protagonist is going through a rough time in her life. (For now on, this paper will refer to this unnamed character as the “the narrator in ‘Wall-paper,’” short for “The Yellow Wall-paper. The narrator is confined to room to a room with strange wall-paper. This odd wall-paper seems to symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard must also deal with conflict as she must deal with the death of her spouse. At first there is grief, but then there is the recognition that she will be free. The institute of marriage ties the two heroines of these two short stories together. Like typical young women of the late 19th century, they were married, and during the course of their lives, they were expected to stay married. Unlike today where divorce is commonplace, marriage was a very holy bond and divorce was taboo. This tight bond of marriage caused tension in these two characters.
This story represents the suffering induced by the isolation. In the time period on which this history was reflected, it was socially tolerable for wives to be
Marriage, often thought of as a sacred union of the utmost importance, is portrayed in both A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, as a minor issue rather than a key part of the lives of the main characters. Marriage is unimportant to both main characters Pechorin and Clara. Lermontov uses Pechorin?s refusal of commitment, while being an object of desire and passion, to illustrate that men should keep their independence from women to protect their power. On the other hand, Allende uses Clara?s priorities of spirituality and children above her husband and marriage to suggest that women?s power does not depend on men.
Would one expect to be dumbfounded after finding out towards the end of a story that all the characters are actually not human, but yet the author makes the whole story seem humanized? The following occurred in “The Wife’s Story” by Ursula K. Le Guin, who focused her short story on a husband, wife, and their two children, but no names are given. The wife is telling her story about what happened with her husband. Ursula formats her theme as being misleading as she plays with the readers mind but then reveals the truth towards the end of the story.
In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. The relief, however, is short lived. The shock of seeing him alive is too much for her bear and she dies. The meaning of life and death take on opposite meaning for Mrs. Mallard in her marriage because she lacked the courage to stand up for herself.
Immediately, the narrator stereotypes the couple by saying “they looked unmistakably married” (1). The couple symbolizes a relationship. Because marriage is the deepest human relationship, Brush chose a married couple to underscore her message and strengthen the story. The husband’s words weaken their relationship. When the man rejects his wife’s gift with “punishing…quick, curt, and unkind” (19) words, he is being selfish. Selfishness is a matter of taking, just as love is a matter of giving. He has taken her emotional energy, and she is left “crying quietly and heartbrokenly” (21). Using unkind words, the husband drains his wife of emotional strength and damages their relationship.
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
In an interview with DeathRay Magazine, Ursula Le Guin is asked, “What do you think the purpose of story is in human society? She replies, “I think we tell stories to each other to remember who we are as a people, and to find out who we are as individuals. Our stories carry our memory as members of the human community, information we need to find our way through life (Ursula K. Le Guin).” Among Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story collection, is a famous novella called, The Matter of Seggri, which perfectly embraces her passion and understanding of the human condition. Her stories explore the fictional future and imaginary societies. Published in 1994, The Matter of Seggri, Le Guin delves into the dystopian society of Seggri. She utilizes multiple narrators to tell their stories of the world of Seggri, giving the reader a detailed picture of life in this female dominate the world. In this society, women have power men, nearly sixteen women to one man. Women have all the power and men are basically only good for “fucking” and staging fighting games. At an early age, Le Guin was destined to become a storyteller. Given that her father was an anthropologists, her body of writing was greatly influenced by the ones who surrounded her. Her works are crafted with thoughtful detail through the use of imagination and elaborate description. As a feminist, Le Guin utilizes an alternative framework throughout the novella, portraying the women with all the strength and dehumanizing the role of the male. Le Guin effectively goes against conventional genre of real life where the male plays the dominant role. Regardless of gender, sex, and status in society, the message that Le Guin conveys to the reader, is that the human condition is alive a...
In Simone de Beauvoir's The Woman Destroyed, the reader is given a deep psychological portrait of a women's failing marriage. Not only does Beauvoir show us the thoughts and confidences of one beset by inner turmoil, she also portrays for us the marriage as it appears from the outside. The main character in The Woman Destroyed is the narrator Monique. She has been married to her husband Maurice for over twenty years and is trying to keep herself emotionally together after the realization that he is having an affair. Other characters the author introduces are the couple's two daughters, Colette and Lucienne. Colette has recently married and moved out of her parent's house. Lucienne, the younger of the two children, has moved to America to live an independent life from her family.
“The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter is a feminist and gruesome retelling of the fairy tale “Little Red Riding-Hood”. The story involves a werewolf, who represents a sexual predator. The werewolf is used as a symbol for both danger and desire. It also involves a young girl who does not fall victim to the fear of the wolf that she is surrounded by. She embraces her newfound sexual power and serves as symbol of sexual desire/power and female strength.
...the young girl prior to meeting the wolf, how the young girl strays from the ideals of femininity once she meets the wolf, and last, what is inherently not feminine as represented by the wolf and his masculine characteristics. The wolf does not naturalize masculine characteristics within the reader because he still acts somewhat like a wolf, he is used as a tool to further naturalize the ideals of femininity, by standing in stark contrast to them.
The Wife of Bath’s tale tells about the alteration of an old woman into a beautiful woman. The moral of this tale is that true beauty lies within one’s self. The foul woman may have been representing the Wife, in that she is able to display all of her true beauty of her youth, if her true love comes along; in the Wife’s case, it is Jankyn, her fifth husband and only true love. With Jankyn by her side, she is able to transform into a faithful and loyal wife, just like the old woman.
Many intriguing characters in literature are devised from the apprehension women have encountered with men in the institution of marriage. Although portrayed differently, marriage is perceived as a constraint to the protagonists. This has been presented very well in “The Way Up To Heaven” penned by Roald Dahl who blatantly critiques the accepted societal roles of women in the mid-twentieth century and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin who highlights a woman’s plight in the 19th century. This is not only painted through the events of the stories, but also through the way each protagonist evolves into a dynamic character. The two main characters in these stories show many similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problem to gain independence.
The bleak tone of this story takes a particularly sad and disturbing tinge when the wife illustrates a scene from early on in her marriage where she tries to get her husband to satisfy her desire and provide her with mutual satisfaction, only to have him rebuke and reprimand her. In fact, the husband responds in such a particularly brusque and hysterical manner that the reader can see how traumatized the wife would have been at ...
Marriage is defined as the legally recognized union of two people as partners. Although partners, husband and wife are not always treated equal under marriage. The roles between husband and wife has been questioned in literature since ancient times. Texts such as “Medea” by Euripides and “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen focus on the idea that unequally in marriage leads to tragedy. This idea is supported through protagonists, Medea and Nora, and their experiences in marriage including sacrifice, betrayal, and moving on.