August Wilson's The Piano Lesson is governed by solid male characters who see ladies in a negative light. They are viewed as articles to be vanquished or as scheming and misleading. The ladies of the Charles family repudiate this by being solid and free, giving the play a women's activist undercurrent basically through Berniece.
Boy Willie:
"All you want to talk about is women.
You ought to hear this nigger, Doaker.
Talking about all the women he gonna get when he get up and here.
He ain’t had none down there but he gonna get a hundred when he get up here (1.1.851).”
Lymon spends a vast segment of the play concentrated on ladies and considers them to be protests at the outset. Doaker sees them as gold diggers after their cash. Doaker had stated:
“I ain’t thinking about no woman.
They never get me tied up with them.
After Coreen I ain’t got no use for them.
I stay up on Jack Slattery’s place when I be down there.
All them women want is somebody with a steady payday (1.1.857).”
Willie Boys' treatment of Grace likewise demonstrates that he doesn't see ladies with uniformity and regard. He nitpicks Berniece, who is the female authority of the family unit, and regularly speaks condescendingly to her.
Berniece remains against Willie Boy when he needs to offer the piano and doesn't yield.
…show more content…
On the off chance that her better half wasn't dead she most likely wouldn't be as resolved and frank, she would presumably assume the part of a devoted spouse. Be that as it may, I think her dissatisfaction goes further than that. I think, covertly, she wants to be a kid. I feel that is the reason, in Act 2, Scene 5 she tells Maretha “Be still, Maretha, if you was a boy I wouldn’t be going through
A main theme in this small town’s culture is the issue of gender and the division of roles between the two. Not uncommon for the 1950’s, many women were taught from a young age to find a good man, who could provide for them and a family, settle down and have children – the ideal “happy family.” As Harry states after singing the showstopper “Kids,” “I have the All-American family: A great wife, 2 wonderful kids and a good job.”
There are many similarities in the relationships between men and women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House. The conflict in each play is the result of incorrect assumptions made by the males of a male-dominated society. The men believe that women focus on trivial matters and are incapable of intelligent thinking, while the women quietly prove the men's assumptions wrong.
“Disrespect towards women” occurs many times during the play. In my opinion, women should not be disrespected just as much as men shouldn’t and especially not the way that they show this in the play. One case of disrespect
Males have always fiddled with the lives of women for years, they play it well and society is the audience asking for an encore, it is society that says it’s okay. They take advantage of their circumstances and the other gender has to endure the harsh results from that. Janie, a black woman in Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God and Edna, a white woman in Chopin’s “The Awakening” live in two
Instead, women were expected to be merely a hardworking wife in the house. However, Benjamin Rush, advocates for the education of women in his essay addressed to The Visitors of the Young Ladies’ Academy in Philadelphia. With his audience consisting of females attending an academy, he focuses the subject of his speech on the support of education of women. In order to appeal to his audience, he calls men who may oppose the “elevation of the female mind” as having the “prejudice of little minds”. To end his speech to the The Visitors of the Young Ladies’ Academy in Philadelphia, he promises to “correct the mistakes and practice of [his] sex”. He also assures to demonstrate that “female temper can only be governed by reason” and that same reason is “friendly to the order of nature,…to
In “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell and “A Dollhouse” by Henrik Ibsen, the authors use symbolism to shed light on the way woman were once looked down upon by men. In both plays the woman face similar derisive attitudes from the men in their lives. Women are treated as property, looked down upon and only useful in matters pertaining to cooking, taking care of children, housework and sexual objects. The women’s marriages, socioeconomic and social status are completely different, but both women reach their emotional breaking point, and grow so discontent with their situations they are willing to take drastic actions.
At the end of the play, the male characters actively fail to get rid of Sutter using their methods of Christian exorcism and violence; “There are loud sounds heard from upstairs as BOY WILLIE begins to wrestle with SUTTER’s GHOST…. BOY WILLIE is thrown down the stairs. AVERY is stunned into silence” (106). From the beginnings of their lineage the males of the Charles family to properly resolve conflict as the women have sat in the back resulting in greater struggles. Bernice realizes this as, “She crosses to the piano. She begins to play… With each repetition, it gains in strength.... The sound of a train approaching is heard. The noise upstairs subsides” (106-07). Taken out of direct application to the play and assessed with society one can assume Wilson believed women to be equally powerful and capable on their own compared to men as none of the living male characters actively attributed to the final resolution as Bernice did. Without her Sutter’s ghost, would continue to haunt them or anyone who the piano was given
Mrs. Hale feels a natural responsibility to defend and protect Minnie Foster Wright through her connection as a fellow woman and housewife. Upon her introduction to Minnie through her home, Mrs. Hale finds an immediate connection. She understands Minnie’s life as a homemaker and a farmer’s wife and is quick to defend her when her skills as a wife and woman come into question. When the men recognize Minnie’s lackluster cleaning of kitchen towels Mrs. Hale retorts “[m]en’s hands aren’t as clean as they might be” (Glaspell 160). She asserts her loyalty to Minnie and notes that men are not always perfect or without blame, without “clean hands”. As a woman, Mrs. Hale easily sees herself in Minnie’s place and comes to her defense as if she were defending herself. It is easier to share her loyalty with a woman so much like her than it is to be loyal to men that act superior and do not understand the challenges of being a housewife. The men find a woman’s chores as petty, nothing but “trifles” (Glaspell 160).Scholar Karen Stein argues that it is these commonalities that create the responsibility of everywoman to defend one another (Ortiz 165). Mrs. Hale sees herself in every...
A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, both have central themes of search of self-identity within a social system. This is demonstrated by women characters from both plays breaking away from the social standards of their times and acting on their own terms. In most situations women are to be less dominant than men in society. These two plays are surprisingly different from the views of women in society and of the times and settings that they take place in.
Many female writers write about women's struggle for equality and how they are looked upon as inferior. Kate Chopin exhibits her views about women in her stories. The relationship between men and women in Kate Chopin's stories imply the attitudes that men and women portray. In many of Chopin's works, the idea that women's actions are driven by the men in the story reveals that men are oppressive and dominant and women are vulnerable, gullable and sensitive. Chopin also shows that females, like Desiree and Eleanor, undergo a transformation from dependent and weak to stronger women free from their husbands by the end of the story. In the short story 'Desiree's Baby,' Kate Chopin reveals her idea of the relationship between men and women by showing instances of inferiority and superiority throughout the story. In 'A Point at Issue,' there are many instances where the idea of hypocrisy and the attitudes that the main characters display and how their actions affect each other's lives, show the impact that men have on women's lives.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men, society, and within a woman herself. Even though these stories were written during the 19th century when modern society treated women as second class citizens, in “The Storm” and “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin illustrates how feminine power manifests when the female characters are able to discover their freedom.
There are however some sexist elements in the story, but just because there are certain characteristics of sexism in a play does not mean the play in itself is sexist and demeaning towards women.
Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine comment in the Introduction to Shakespeare: Othello that sexism is a big factor in the play:
Cady Stanton and Kate Chopin are both recognized as essential figures in the crusade for gender equality and women’s rights. Stanton and Chopin emphasized the significance of transforming the belief that a woman’s sphere of influence should extend no farther than the home that she is required to care for. Correspondingly, in both Cady Stanton’s “The Destructive Male,” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” patriarchal society is portrayed in a negative manner, with emphasis being placed on the subordinate roles of women. To begin, within her address, Stanton highlights the manner in which females were largely incapable of determining how society would be governed. According to Stanton, this lack of influence was the result of the fact that
...e this unfair life for Donald to come out ahead in the end." Donald had invested the one hundred dollars the Pete gave him on what Pete thought was extremely outrageous then got worried when he felt Donald would do something to out smart him.