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Representation of women in literature
Representation of women in literature
Oppression of women literature
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Peering through the bushes, Catullus gazed upon his beloved. She sat in her garden, holding her delicate sparrow in her lap, unaware of Catullus. “Oh to be that bird!” sighed Catullus. “To be held by those perfect hands! If only I were Clodia’s sparrow!”
Hearing Catullus’s ramblings, Clodia jerked up and snapped her eyes on him. “What are you doing here?” she hissed. “You can’t be here. My husband could find you,” Clodia scolded Catullus as he emerged from his hiding spot. “I could not stay away, my love!” exclaimed Catullus, gazing upon Clodia adoringly. “A day without you is a day wasted. You are the ‘bright shining lady of my love!’ My heart would stop beating if I am apart from you,” he declared as he approached Clodia and sank to the
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“You are being ridiculous. Leave now,” she commanded. “If I want to see you again, I will let you know.” “Whenever you call on me, I vow to come, my love. Jupiter himself could not keep us apart! I await your summoning with the utmost impatience and yearning. However much time passes until I see you will be too long. Farewell!” cried Catullus as he planted a sloppy kiss on Clodia’s cheek. “Bye,” muttered Clodia, wiping her cheek and watching Catullus stroll away. She stroked her sparrow gently. “This is getting out of hand,” she murmured. In order to protect her status as a married woman, Clodia resolved to end her relationship with her dreamy poet. She would not call on him again. After some time, he would surely realize that she no longer has any interest in him. If he is such an expert in love and romance, then surely he would know when it ends.
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Catullus paced in front of Clodia’s house nervously. She had not contacted him after he had seen her three days ago. “She must have fallen ill” reasoned Catullus. Unable to stay away, Catullus had come to her house at night. Now he debated whether to approach despite the annoyance she had expressed during his last visit. Lacking both restraint and common sense, Catullus stopped his pacing and dashed toward her home. He then clambered over the wall into the central
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Can’t you take a hint? I didn’t call on you because I cannot stand this any longer. I cannot stand you coming here unannounced and reciting silly love poems to me. This relationship was never about love, you fool,” snarled Clodia as she glared as Catullus. “You’re saying that...you don’t love me?” murmured Catullus, his face falling. “How could I love a ridiculous poet like yourself? A true man is strong and influential rather than emotional and pathetic. That is the man I need,” claimed Clodia while Catullus slowly stepped away. “I...I feel as if my heart is shattering” gasped Catullus, placing his hand on his chest. Clodia snorted and began to walk back into her home. “Why don’t you write a poem about it?” she taunted over her shoulder as she disappeared. For a while, Catullus remained rooted to the spot, unable to move. Slowly, he stumbled towards the wall and pulled himself over it. He then spent the rest of the night, wandering the streets and asking himself what he did wrong to drive away the love of his life.
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“I just don’t understand!” cried Catullus to his friends Aurelius and Furius while they wandered the market in the forum.“I gave her everything. I loved her ‘as none will ever be loved,’” (Catullus
“It was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mourning notes without promise, devoid even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro, down its whole length, without stopping, without resting. She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the glittering circlet.
He turned his head toward me and peered at me through swollen eyes. “I begged her not to go with him,” he said quietly. “Do you hear me, I begged her!”
He does so ,primarily, by examining the attitude of the speaker: a man who is unlucky in love and overcome with cynicism because of his experiences. The speaker’s defining characteristics are exemplified by the first line of the poem: “What is indifference, do you ask of me?”(line 1). The speaker is in a dialogue with another individual, who is implied to be the woman who snubbed him given his contemptuous tone. Having the dialogue be between him and his former object of affection provides an opportunity for The speaker’s pressing the question back at his former lover with the phrase “ do you ask of me?” is challenging the tone, which reveals haughtiness-the speaker sees himself as well-acquainted with indifference( more than he would like to be) and The speaker sees this individual as insensitive to ask the question, given her unspecified, but assuming injurious actions towards him. The second line, which reads: “O well I know the meaning of the phrase”( line 1-2) further elucidates the speaker’s attitude. The phrase “ O Well”, carries a weighty, long-suffering tone. In spelling “Oh” in it’s more dramatic form “ OF”, the speaker evokes images of Shakespeare's character, Ophelia, crying out: “O woe is me” in Hamlet. This archaic spelling characterizing the speaker might be dismissed as melodramatic, but nonetheless, establishes just how upset he is with his old lover and how robust the bitterness is that consumes
“If there were some women quite unlike her who made herself available to everyone, who always had some man that she had openly designated as her lover…who even kept young men and made up for their fathers stinginess by paying for them” (Pro Caelio 38, pg 144). Clodia was known throughout Rome for having many sexual relationships outside of wedlock with countless men of Rome. She is even considered by many to be the famed Lesbia, the lover of the famed Roman neoteric poet Catullus. Cicero is setting the stage for his denouncement of Clodia by styling her as a women that is a direct contrast to what a Roman women should be. We are given countless examples of the perfect Roman women: Rhea Sylvia, Lucretia, and Virginia to name a few. While not directly referred to by Cicero the stories of these women would be common knowledge in Rome and the fact that Clodia’s life style contrasts these aforementioned women would be obvious. Cicero then goes even further and accuses Clodia of being not simply a prostitute but a crude person, someone with overt and offensive sexual desires : “her embraces, her kisses, her beach parties, her boating parties, and her dinner parties all declare her to be not simply a prostitute but a lewd and lascivious prostitute at that” (Pro Caelio 49, pg 148). This is Cicero attempting to
...a woman through his words, he knows not true love and since he knows not the love of Roxane, she is unworthy of his love.
Throughout history, the story of womankind has evolved from struggles to achievements, while some aspects of the lives of women have never changed. Poet Dorianne Laux writes about the female condition, and women’s desire to be married and to have a home and children. She also seems to identify through her poetry with the idea that women tend to idealize the concept of marriage and settling down and she uses her poetry to reach out to the reader who may have similar idyllic views of marriage or the married lifestyle. Though Dorianne Laux’s poem “Bird” reads very simply, it is actually a metaphor for an aspect of this female condition.
In one of Shakespeare’s most masterful pieces, he depicts a tragic love story in which love conquers all…but at what cost? The truth is in this play, love is the victor, but with horrible consequences. Love lives on, love survives, but only at the loss of life. Not only in this play, but in many other Shakespearean works, the constant theme stands that any kind of marriage or deep emotional bond which is solely based on love ends tragically. Othello’s passionate love for Desdemona is the same passion that causes him to end her life. Antony, under the suspicion that Cleopatra has died, tries to commit suicide to only find out soon after that she is alive and in hiding, but all in vain for the fatal wound has already pricked it’s victim. Shakespeare constantly relates love with tragedy, stating that love is in fact fleeting and impermanent. The only way for love to live forever is if it dies young.
In poem number five; Catullus is expressing his love for Lesbia. He says that their love that they posses is internal and how he is so fond of her kisses. After reading this poem you get the idea that they kiss very often and their kissing is the symbol of their love. This is relevant to today’s society with young couples starting a relationship. Once the relationship starts to become intimate, then they couple start to kiss more often and devote their love to one another. Although in no place in the text does it say if they were in a relationship or even married, you could infer that they were very intimate with each other.
"He had never loved his mother, but had always known that she loved him. And that had always seemed right to him, the way it should be. Her confirmed, eternal love of him, love that he didn't even have to earn or deserve, seemed to him natural(79)."
Assignment 1: Explication from Hamlet (1.3.111-137) (“My Lord, he hath admired me with love”. [end of scene]. Ophelia and Polonius have a father-daughter discussion toward the end of Act 1 where Polonius, concerned that he is father, warns his daughter Ophelia of becoming too involved with Hamlet. This warning comes just as Laertes, brother and son, bids farewell. Laertes has just warned Ophelia himself of getting involved with Hamlet—this is the first time the audience has been alerted to the romance.
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
Another instance in which his anguish at her abandonment is connoted is when the “house [echoes] with desertion” (Carter 50). Despite the fact that the house is rather grand and is beautifully furnished, there fails to be the reverberations of any sounds that would deem the dwelling alive. Rather, it is only the sounds of emptiness which engulfs the house. Comparatively, the mindset of the Beast is st...
She does not spew out all the reasons why she loves Othello or say that she is unavoidably attracted to him as she could have. Instead, she picks a practical reason –
“Everything in the world is love,” from Maria his mother. (Dictionary of Scientific Biography. p. 291.)
In the “Love Poems of Catullus”, Catullus illustrates his emotions throughout his poems. Like many people, Catullus hopes to find happiness through love. This paper will reflect five critical viewpoints: 1. Hope and Fulfillment, 2. Disillusionment and hate, 3.