Rachel often addresses her thoughts to God. How does she imagine Him (Her
or It)? Does Rachel's concept of God change during the course of the
Novel? Explain.
Rachel Cameron, the heroine of "A Jest of God", is not simply as an
individual literary character but as a psychological portrayal of women
of Rachel's time and inclination. Even we can easily find someone who has
the same problem Rachel has in the friends of us, or maybe in an early
morning when we get up; stand at front of the mirror; we will suddenly
have a idea, "I am Rachel too."
She has a common Cameron heritage. She is a gawky, introverted spinster
schoolteacher who has returned home to Manawaka from university in
Winnipeg, upon the death of her alcoholic undertaker father Niall
Cameron, to care for her hypochondriac mother May. Nevertheless, the
family resemblance is obvious: their shared Scots Presbyterian ancestry,
which Laurence views as distinctively Canadian, provides an armour of
pride that imprisons her within their internal worlds, while providing a
defence against the external world. To overcome that barrier between
personalities, she must learn to understand and accept their heritage in
order to liberate her own identities and free herself for the future. She
must also learn to love herself before she can love others. Rachel
receive a sentimental education through a brief love affair: as a result
of learning to empathize with their lovers, she learn to love herself and
the people she lives with. Laurence's emphasis is, as always, on the
importance of love in the sense of compassion, as each of her solipsistic
protagonists develops from claustrophobia to community.
The beginning of "A Jest of God" extends beyond its Canadian perimeters
in Rachel's branching imagination, both into the fairytale dream world
which gives depth and pathos to the disappointment and despair of her
present and out into a wider world in time and space than the grey little
town of Manawaka. The first lines of the novel tell us everything basic
to Rachel's mind, her temperament, and her situation.
The wind blows low, the wind blows high
The snow comes falling from the sky,
Rachel Cameron says she'll die
For the want of the golden city.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She is the queen of the golden city.
They are not actually chanting my name, of course, I only hear it that
way from where I am watching the classroom window, because I remember
myself skipping rope to that song when I was about the age of the little
girls out there now. Twenty-seven years ago... (p. 1)
The reader is engaged in sympathy with Rachel by the sadness of the gap
Sandra Cisneros writes a memoir through the eyes of an eleven year old. Turning eleven happens to be a tragic day for the main character, Rachel. Through various literary techniques such as hyperbole, simile, and syntax, Rachel is characterized. Rachel is a fresh turning eleven year old who finds herself in an awful situation on her birthday. Forced to wear a raggedy old sweater that doesn’t belong to her, she makes it defiantly clear her feelings towards the clothing item, and we see this through use of hyperboles. Rachel describes the sweater as ugly and too “stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.” This extreme exaggeration demonstrates the fire within Rachel. She is a defiant and pouty little girl who out of stubbornness has to defy the sweater in her mind. “It’s maybe a thousand years old”, she says to herself in act to degrade the filthy red sweater even more. The sweater to Rachel has become an eternal battle of ages. She is torn on whether or not to stand up and act bigger th...
The author’s use of Rachel’s perspective is important because it establishes a connection between the reader and the character. Noting that Rachel is eleven years old justifies her childish point of view that is expressed all throughout the piece. The entire story focuses around Rachel’s teacher trying to give Rachel back a sweater. Since Rachel’s considers the sweater ugly, she believes that she will be made of for it. For example, when Mrs. Price put the
Throughout the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Mariam and Laila are constantly having their inner strength challenged from birth to death. They both had different lives growing up, but they both lived in the same society, meaning that they both dealt with the disrespect from the Afghani culture.
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by Carol Karlsen is a novel about the witch trials responsible for many female executions in colonial America. During these trials, many women were burned, hung, or exiled. The men of the time held comparable confidences to their fathers, spouses, and children. They were bound and determined to do away with ladies that emerged or were distinctive. The men got careful about ladies being as savvy as men and held gatherings just went to by only men on subjects that only they believed they would understand. The most apparent reason that the ladies were abused was because of the men being trepidacious of the ladies getting indulgent of their puissance. The men took this as a risk that the ladies were attempting toheir surmount, or that they were to assume control over the Puritan, male driven culture.
Anna Julia Cooper’s, Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress, an excerpt from A Voice from the South, discusses the state of race and gender in America with an emphasis on African American women of the south. She contributes a number of things to the destitute state African American woman became accustom to and believe education and elevation of the black woman would change not only the state of the African American community but the nation as well. Cooper’s analysis is based around three concepts, the merging of the Barbaric with Christianity, the Feudal system, and the regeneration of the black woman.
Within the first few pages of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius laments his circumstances from the confines of a cell. Lady Philosophy arrives to soothe him, but she soon discovers that her former charge suffers from a deep-seated existential crisis that simple sympathy will not cure. In order to fulfill her dual role as teacher and healer, Lady Philosophy incorporates both an extended appeal to Boethius’s poetic sensibilities and a Socratic approach to introspection. The empathetic qualities present in both of these educational methods help her correct the prisoner’s misery because they allow her to gradually overcome Boethius’s initial resistance to advice. Although he ultimately proves to be an eager student, Boethius finds it difficult
It takes a village to raise a child, whether that child be a motherless caucasian girl in Alabama, or a poor black child living in squalor in a foreign land. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee describes the experiences of Scout, an impressionable young tomboy. Scout is without a real mother; she looks to women in the Maycomb community to help her define what it means to be female. Her concept of womanhood develops as she interacts with several women who foster her welfare and growth. The most influential women in Scout’s life are Aunt Alexandra, Miss Maudie, and Calpurnia. Other female characters, including the ladies of the Missionary Circle, influence Scout’s conceptualization of womanhood, but not always in a nurturing, helpful way .
Janet Adelman’s work considers Shakespeare’s plays as a progression of maternal presence or absence, where each play can be considered as a repeated cycle of “doing and un doing”, written in response to the play before it. In the case of “The Winter’s Tale” Adelman infers that the drama’s initial focus on the results of distrusting women, as resembled by Leontes’ uncontrollable jealousy is a response to Shakespeare’s previous work Cymbeline, where male authority is recovered by distrusting women. Thus, by refuting the outcome of the previous play, Adelman shows that Shakespeare takes an alternate perspective with the role of the female in The Winter’s Tale.
states that men are to work and make money for the family. A woman's goal was to
In history, women have been at the mercy of corrupt and oppressive societal forces. In Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, this is truly evident. Both Hurston and Hawthorne focus of the oppression of women in society, also with the central theme of female repression presented in both plots. As works of literature, the two novels convey these concepts in symbolism. Throughout Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, both authors engage the use of symbols to represent oppression that the female characters faced.
The pay gap is even in Washington, D.C., there is only a ten percent gap ,but the Equal Pay Act should be enforced by the president. On average, women get paid 21 percent less than a male a year. The number may not sound big, but there is a $10,762 gap between men and women. The lowest place in the United States is Louisiana, where women are paid 35% less than the men. The women get paid $16,796 less than the men. This is a huge problem because the EPA is not working fast enough. Even having the same education and same working hours, the women get paid less by higher percentages. The amount of money that women get with the same education, skills as men, the men still get paid more than the women that are working the same job. With an advanced education men get a way higher pay than women with the same set of the skills. Women with the same education skills and learning processes get paid on average $433 less than a man in a week. With the need of women needed to be equalized, the institute for women's policy research believe that women will full have no pay gap between the men and women in 2059 or in 43
In the recent article of 2016, “What is the Gender Pay Gap and is it Real?”, the authors Elise Gould, Jessica Schieder, and Kathleen Geier give an ample amount of statistics that prove that women are paid less than men; for example, a woman was paid less than a man of the same education, experience, and occupation. In Kevin Miller’s article “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap,” he states that full-time working women get paid 80 percent of what men are paid (Miller). According to the two articles mentioned above, factors such as age, stereotypes, and ethnicity can be the cause of the gender wage gap. In the 2016 article of “Four Ways the Gender Pay Gap Isn’t All It Seems,” author Simon Maybin claims that the gender wage gap does not exist
Throughout history, society has been predominately patriarchal. The male is seen as the primary authority figure. This system is often displayed in many family structures and there is nothing wrong with patriarchy; however when it leads to kyriarchy, it becomes an issue. Women, past and present, are often viewed as second rate citizens. Over half the work force around the world consists of women and yet they are paid 77 cents to a dollar of what a man earns (Shane). Women have a voice and deserve to be heard. When analyzing works such as “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemmingway, the poem “Stations” by Audre Lorde, and “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, one can observe the common theme of women finding their voice, discovering strength and standing up for what’s right.
Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero is a novel that takes place near Cairo, Egypt and is mostly written in the point of view of a girl named Firdaus. Growing up, Firdaus was physically and emotionally abused by her father and occasionally her mother as well. As she got older, she began to be sexually abused by her uncle along with many other men she would be introduced to throughout the story. However, these forms of abuse are not subjective to Firdaus. Quite a few women are introduced in this text and almost every single one of them mentions or hints that they’ve experienced abuse as well. Early in the novel, Firdaus reflects on her childhood and the relationship between her mother and father: “...he would beat my mother, then have his
The wage gap has been a national issue in the United states for decades. While it was first officially recognized in the 1960s by the Equal Pay Act, it is still a huge issue today. The Equal pay act of 1963 stated that employers cannot discriminate against employee’s salaries based on gender. Although this act did set the precedent for equal pay, it did not solve the problem completely. Today a woman earns eighty cents for every dollar a man earns, a wage gap of 20% (NWLC, 2017). This gap also increases for women of color. A To every dollar a white man makes, an African American woman makes 63 cents and a Hispanic woman makes 54 cents. This issue is affecting women in 98 percent of professions (NWLC, 2017). Education is not the only solution