As stated in my previous answer, Michelle Cliff’s novel Abeng is a coming-of-age story and a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica. The main character in this novel is Clare Savage, who is a light-skinned, twelve-year-old, middle class girl growing up in Jamaica during the 1950s. Throughout the novel, Clare tries to find her own identity and place in culture while also dealing with her gender, sexuality, British imperialism, her race/ethnicity, social class, etc. Abeng is a novel that tells multiple stories within one whole story. Throughout the novel, Clare is faced with many issues regarding how she feels and sees herself in relation to how restricted her society is on gender, race, and social class norms. For the quote above, we are dealing with how Clare’s parents are reacting to her taking the gun and killing Miss Mattie’s bull and the fact that it is unacceptable because she is a female.
One morning, Clare woke up with the intention to go and kill the wild-pig that she knew her boy cousins and uncles had been trying to kill for years. However, that was not what happened. Clare and Zoe saw a guy on her grandmother’s land which freaked her out so she fired the gun in the air, but it turned out that she had just killed Miss Mattie’s bull. By Clare taking the gun, she was trying to prove that she could be like her boy cousins and that she can perform and act the same way the male population can. During Clare’s first years of her life, she had always been denied to partake in certain actions and situations unless it was a female gender norm. She knew she was being objectified by society, her parents and family because she was a woman which made her want to prove to herself and them as a whole that...
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...She fired the gun because she felt as though she was at harm and risk with the man being that close to her and Zoe. Additionally, what right did he have to be on her grandmother’s property; the protection mode kicked in.
Clare struggles with her identity throughout this whole book. She knew how restricted the gender roles and norms were in the society she was growing up in, but that did not stop her. She was determined to gain power and independence because she did not like knowing that other people had power over her when she was just as capable as they were to perform and partake in certain actions. By Clare taking the gun and having the intention to kill the wild pig, she was trying to find her (agency-?) and identity while also challenging patriarchy. However, Clare’s actions made her parents and family question who she was and what she may be becoming.
Teenage rebellion is typically portrayed in stories, films, and other genres as a testosterone-based phenomenon. There is an overplayed need for one to acknowledge a boy’s rebellion against his father, his life direction, the “system,” in an effort to become a man, or rather an adult. However, rarely is the female addressed in such a scenario. What happens when little girls grow up? Do they rebel? Do they, in a sudden overpowering rush of estrogen, deny what has been taught to them from birth and shed their former youthful façades? Do they turn on their mothers? In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Possessive,” the reader is finally introduced to the female version of the popular coming-of-age theme as a simple haircut becomes a symbol for the growing breach between mother and daughter through the use of striking images and specific word choice.
Clare longs to be part of the black community again and throughout the book tries to integrate herself back into it while remaining part of white society. Although her mother is black, Clare has managed to pass as a white woman and gain the privileges that being a person of white skin color attains in her society. However whenever Clare is amongst black people, she has a sense of freedom she does not feel when within the white community. She feels a sense of community with them and feels integrated rather than isolated. When Clare visits Irene she mentions, “For I am lonely, so lonely… cannot help to be with you again, as I have never longed for anything before; you can’t know how in this pale life of mine I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I o...
Savagery versus civility, gender roles, and revenge are all timeless themes that are still applicable to today’s society and students. Savage war and hate crimes are both examples of modern day savagery. Gender roles are being bent now more than ever with the transgender and queer movements; revenge will always be about retribution or greed. In Hannah Dustan’s case, particularly in Whittier’s version, she was as brave and strong as any man, protecting herself and avenging the death of her baby.
In the short story Doe Season, by David Michael Kaplan, the nine-year-old protagonist, Andrea, also known as Andy, the tomboy goes out on a hunting trip and endures many different experiences. The theme of coming of age and the struggle most children are forced to experience when faced with the reality of having to grow up and leave childhood behind is presented in this story. Many readers of this story only see a girl going hunting with her father, his friend Charlie, and son Mac, because she wants to be one of the guys. An important aspect of the story that is often overlooked is that Andy is going hunting because she doesn't want to become a woman because she is afraid of the changes that will occur in her body.
The contrast between how She sees herself and how the rest of the world sees Her can create extreme emotional strain; add on the fact that She hails from the early 1900s and it becomes evident that, though her mental construct is not necessarily prepared to understand the full breach against Her, She is still capable of some iota of realization. The discrimination encountered by a female during this time period is great and unceasing.
Unrealistically, the narrator believes that she would be of use to her father more and more as she got older. However, as she grows older, the difference between boys and girls becomes more clear and conflicting to her.
Taylor is young girl who leaves her home state Kentucky and ends up living in Arizona with a woman Lou Ann, but alongside her travels, she was given an Indian child she named Turtle. Lou Ann has a child of her own and together the two women learn and adjust their way of living, excluding male figures. She makes the girls fend for themselves and build strength confidence within them throughout the proceedings of the book. For instance, when Taylor first arrives in Tucson with Turtle she is clueless and helpless because she knows no one. However, during her journey she formed a family including various women: Lou Ann, Mattie, Esperanza, Edna, and Virgie. They all aid or support each other with whatever they do. Virgie and Edna take care of the children for Lou Ann and Taylor when they go to work and Mattie gave Taylor a job when she was in dire need. Even though Kingsolver is trying to show how the women are independently strong, she still demonstrates how defenseless they can be and how the women have no control over it. This feeling is shown in this excerpt when Taylor says, “How can I just be upset about Turtle, about a grown man hurting a baby, when the whole way of the world is to pick on people that can’t fight back?” (Kingsolver 229) Through this Kingsolver is trying to convey that women in the world can be helpless when compared to male figures because some men wrongfully hurt women. She goes on to explain how they are not taught how to respectfully treat a woman. The 21st century world has a peculiar way of enforcing standards on the genders, and in today’s society those standards are definitely not the same for each other and Kingsolver shows this through her
She creates an ideology about how black girls face barriers that undermine their well-being. They are completely ignored by national initiatives, unlike white females who have an upper hand because of power and privilege, simply because of their whiteness. In America, people of power should help young girls of color, overcome discrimination and sexism against them through the use of national initiatives. They need to focus more or equally on initiatives for girls of color rather than just for boys or global programs like ‘Let Girls
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
Scout's narration and the character's dialog prove that Alexandra is characterized by her traditional values while Miss Maudie is characterized as a modern woman. The issues of gender roles are still a large part of society today and it affects a majority of adolescents because they feel the need to conform and ignore their individualism and that is why this novel is still relevant to society today.. The lessoned to be learned here is to be comfortable in one's own skin and don't listen to negative feedback if it is not constructive.
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.
As Roseanne Barr once said “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” Women throughout the ages have come to know the struggle of finding a voice through an abundance of society given stereotypes and gender roles. Most of these conformities are forced upon young girls at an early age, and often set a precedent as how to act in society. These oppressing social norms may seem inescapable, however through strength and feminist ideals women can overcome these degrading barriers. The literary works of “The Rules of the game” and “If I should have a daughter” are from different time eras and present opposing parenting styles, however, both pieces convey the achievability of becoming an independent women and the ineffectiveness of traditional female stereotypes no matter the time period.
Dinah is born into a society where all women are expected to put their feelings aside to conform to and satisfy the man and his children. She is trapped from the very beginning in a chauvinistic and male-dominated worl...
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...