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Gender role in literary
Gender role in literature
How is gender represented in literature
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Language constitutes a necessary factor in the analysis of a female voice. Femininity in writing can be discerned in a privileging of the voice: writing and voice are in fact woven together. The speaking woman is entirely her voice for she physically materializes what she is thinking: she signifies it with her body. Woman, in other words, is wholly and physically present in her voice and writing is no more than the extension of this self- identical prolongation of the speech act. What we find is that by adopting a feminine mode of writing Anita Desai is trying to create a feminine textual space, for the woman occupies a space in this world and this allows the existence of a female utterance which has been ignored and suppressed in male literature.
Is Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone, "qualified" to write a first-person narrator in a female voice? After all, as a man, what does he know about women's issues? In this essay I will discuss the issue of "gender-bending" writers and discuss Mr. Lamb's use of such tool.
Stated by Lacan, women are not able to enter the world of symbolic and language. This is because women lack the phallus; the symbol that sets language to recognition. “ In patriarchal structures, thus, women is located as other (enigma, mystery), and is thereby viewed as outside (male) language. The implication of this message is severe because it becomes dominant in the hollywood cinema. The film is a form of narrating and sending a message to the public. In this case ‘real women’ are rarely shown and
Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Although all women were effected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or private sphere, a servant tending to the needs of the family. Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and pure even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. Religious piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to insure the passivity and docility of women. Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a deviation from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377).
Sharon Kinoshita describes four "widely divergent assessments of the female voice in the work of Marie de France," (265). While some critics believe Marie's feminism lies inherently in her writing style, others believe Marie made strategic moves to reveal her femininity. Each differing opinion holds true in some instances, but fall apart in others. Regardless of the differences of opinion regarding Marie de France's feminism, I can agree with most critics when they say Marie is one of the most celebrated female poets of her time. Marie de France will continue to be celebrated for years as a poet who wasn't afraid to show her female voice.
Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my topic is going to cover language analysis of the text and who women reading and writing differs according to the discourse analysis within linguistic, psychology, case studies audiences and surveys. The book would be helpful, particularly the last three essays that discusses gender, public speaking, the question of politeness and impoliteness in public speaking. Mills’ analysis is not complete without including the idea of global notions of both women and men, to see whether women and men write and read in the same way globally. Therefore, an update would enrich the book’s discussion section. Although, Mills addresses the class and race theme in language and public speaking, I will only look into the role of language that plays a part in doing or reducing gender in literary, non-literary texts and in conversation.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
`Plays and Poetry by early modern women are primarily concerned with negotiating a position from which women could speak. A concern for ideas of gender, language and silence is, therefore, central, though its expression is sometimes open, sometimes covert.' Discuss with reference to Aemilia Lanyer and / or Elizabeth Cary.
It is the purpose of this essay therefore to demonstrate that there is a profound influence in the use of sound and language in relation to the discrimination of women. By showing that the manipulation of sound and language in regards to the films’ narrative structure is responsible for this apparent persecution, a clearer understanding should be gained as to why the figure of the female is observed in this form.
There is much debate in feminist circles over the "best" way to liberate women through writing. Some argue that a female writer should, in an effort to recapture her stolen identity, attack her oppressive influences and embrace her femininity, simultaneously fostering dimorphic literary, linguistic, and social arenas. Others contend that the feminization of writing pigeonholes women into an artistic slave morality, a mindset that expends creative energy on battle and not production, and inefficiently overturns stereotypes and foments positive social change; rather, one should lose gender self-consciousness and write androgynously.
Through her writing, she acted as a precursor to the first wave of present day feminism that still shakes the flaw social constructs of our patriarchal system. She uses metaphors to illustrate allegorical imagery that when analyzed is rooted into the problems that women faced of the 1900s. And a thorough investigation and criticism of the bias that still holds true to today involving narrative constructs and their character gives readers the boons of an objective view of literary work. Women have experienced the worst that men have to offer and through their obstinance of the past, have become stronger and stand taller today than ever
The term ‘Ecriture Feminine’, literally meaning ‘feminine writing’, was coined by Helene Cixous. To understand the idea of Ecriture feminine, it is necessary to understand Lacan’s idea of the Symbolic: according to Lacan, a child’s entry into the Symbolic is an entry into the system of language, which always precedes the individual and is centered on the phallus. Cixous built upon the idea that the woman is excluded from Lacan’s Symbolic and she never enters it, therefore a woman’s lived experience can never be expressed through the language which gives meanings that are phallic in nature. Moreover, since the woman does not exist inside the symbolic, she is less controlled by the phallus. Cixous argues that since the woman always occupies a position of otherness and does not accept any symbolic function, therefore, she is free to create and express her own experience in all its depth and intensity by rejecting the dominant male form of expression. A female experience, according to Cixous, transcends the rational and is incomprehensible. Therefore, the male mode of expression with its strict sentence structure is not capable of expressing it.
One of the most powerful nuances of any writing is the dialogue within the story. In literature, it is all too often that characters live only in the jaded voice of the author and never truly develop as their own, or are not strongly opinionated in a manner which contrasts the opinions of the writer. It is also unfortunately true that the women depicted in most male-authored literature do not often sound realistic, or how most women one would speak to in the course of the day tend to sound. All too often, women are depicted on a lower level of speech than men. For instance, Dickens and Arthur Miller both apparently subscribed to this notion, as the women in their stories were usually more passive, and not as elaborate as men in their speech, however, James Joyce did not see things in the same light. The most developed female character in Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is one who speaks with dignity, passion, and the female tact which is all too often ignored in the characters of women. Joyce's Dante Riordan's words and thoughts are true to those of literate twentieth century women.
Women’s writing, particularly in The Golden Notebook is about the fact that women are assessed from a completely different point of v...
However, partly due to their biological sexual difference and the socio-cultural surroundings to which they belong, the consequences of these above mentioned social evils are much more on women, especially subaltern women. Giving voice to such oppressed subalterns, the gendered subaltern (women of the deprived sections) and Indian women in general, Gayatri Chakvarty Spivak says: “For if, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.” During her analysis of Sati she concludes her essay “can the subaltern” with her declaration that “the subaltern cannot speak” (Ashcroft, Griffths, and Tiffins 218-219).
Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing.