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The portrayal of women in literature
The portrayal of women in literature
The portrayal of women in literature
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It is evident that Gallimard was, at a conscious level, aware of Song’s true identity. He repeatedly begs her to “come back and become Butterfly again” (page 63), revealing how Song’s biological sex isn't a concern if it means his fantasy would be a reality. For Gallimard, all he wants is to maintain his pure fantasy of Song as the Perfect Woman. He states how he “knew all the time somewhere that [his] happiness was temporary, [his] love a deception. But [his] mind kept the knowledge at bay. To make the wait bearable” (page 88). Gallimard’s initial outright rejection of the reality of Song could be cause of the societal implications that stemmed from the scandal of their relationship. The present Song interacting with Gallimard, which is still
The Song at the Scaffold, by Getrud von Le Fort, takes place in France during the French Revolution. It is the story of Blanche de la Force and her journey to understanding the meaning behind her unusual fear and discovering her vocation in life, and ultimately a story of bravery and heroism. After a traumatic birth, young Blanche is forever scarred, and her external expression of this ordeal is an irrational fear at nearly anything. She grows up timid and afraid, unable to muster any sort of courage, although she often attempts to overcome her fear. Later, she joins a Carmelite Convent, and it is here her journey truly begins. It is also at the Convent that she meets Sister Marie of the Incarnation, the novice mistress. Although Sister Marie is protective of Blanche, even she eventually becomes impatient and annoyed at Blanche’s feebleness and often perplexing fear. Sister
While reading Amazing Grace, one is unable to escape the seemingly endless tales of hardship and pain. The setting behind this gripping story is the South Bronx of New York City, with the main focus on the Mott Haven housing project and its surrounding neighborhood. Here black and Hispanic families try to cope with the disparity that surrounds them. Mott Haven is a place where children must place in the hallways of the building, because playing outside is to much of a risk. The building is filled with rats and cockroaches in the summer, and lacks heat and decent water in the winter. This picture of the "ghetto" is not one of hope, but one of fear. Even the hospitals servicing the neighborhoods are dirty and lack the staff that is needed for quality basic care. If clean bed sheets are needed the patients must put them on themselves. This book is filled with stories of real people and their struggles. Each story, though different in content, has the same basic point, survival.
Religion continuously proves itself as the most resilient institution alive today; men live in its shadow, die in its honor, and torture in its name. More often than what followers would like to admit, several churches are notorious for persecuting individuals with different mentalities, as well as sexual and social behaviors. Despite the injustice, a blossom of hope continues to bud in the frigid environment. Individuals from religious factions realize that it is faith and acceptance, not conformity, which makes their institution strong. Flannery O’ Connor was a woman who saw the hate and intolerance of some religious practices and sought to change it. Her short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a call-to-action for society because it conveys the importance of acceptance through its characters and resolution.
Each person brings a special quality and gift to life that creates an individualistic style to the world that we live in. The poem Perfection Wasted was written by John Updike in the year 1990; this poem accentuates the flair that can never be replaced when a loved one dies. One way to better understand a poem is to paraphrase it into your own words. Paraphrase of Perfection Wasted:
“From Lieutenant Nun,” a memoir written by doña Catalina de Erauso, tells an intriguing story of a young Spanish female and her advantageous journey through Spain and the New World. Her family intends for her to become a nun but, that is not the life she seeks for herself. Therefore, she breaks away from the convent in hopes of finding somewhere to make her fortune by passing as a male. Catalina’s story is noteworthy because it gives readers another perspective of exploration focusing on self-discovery during the seventeenth century emphasizing how passing as a male is the only thing that secured her ability to explore. In the memoir, Catalina repeatedly reminisces about clothing and, whether she consciously or unconsciously does so, she allows the reader to see that this is an important aspect of her exploration. Throughout Catalina’s journey, clothing plays an increasingly important role not only in her travels but, also her personal life because it symbolized ones status, role, gender and privileges.
Song in M. Butterfly lives life as a false image to make herself happy. Song is an actor who plays the part of a lady in an opera. He allows a man, Gallimard, to fall in love with his character. He then uses this love affair to help his government receive classified information. When a...
Maria Semple’s book, Where’d You Go Bernadette is about a daughter's search for answers as to where her mother disappeared to. As a reward for Bee’s perfect grades, she request a family trip to Antarctica. Her father, Elgin Branch, is a very important man to Microsoft and is rarely home. Bernadette Fox, Bee’s mother, is a former architect that won a MacArthur grant and stays in the house whenever she can do to her agoraphobia. She avoids leaving the house by having her virtual assistant, Manjula, who claims to work for a company out of India, make her calls, reservations, and orders. The book is told through various documents, which mostly emails but sometimes have accounts written in Bee’s point of view. Bernadette will slowly be pushed over
...te Gallimard to aid her country in gaining political advantage contradicts the Western view of the East as politically old-fashioned and vulnerable. Gallimard’s concluding words as he succumbs to his fate- “My name is Rene Gallimard- also known as Madame Butterfly” - signifies the subversion of the Western ideology of Orientalism by switching the stereotypes of the East and West between Song and Gallimard.
The first thing I noticed about Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” is that it is utterly dripping with sexual imagery and symbolism. Our heroine, if you will, seems to be a woman with normally restrained passions and a well-defined sense of propriety, who finds herself in a situation that tears down her restraint and reveals the vixen within. I wonder if it was intentional that the name Calixta makes me think of Calypso – the nymph from Greek mythology. If half of the sexual symbolism I found in this story was intentional, Chopin was a genius. I was quite taken with the sexual imagery of the colors mentioned: white, and red. There is also mention a place called Assumption, while there’s nothing written on it in the bible, I believe it’s the popular opinion of those of Christian faiths, that Mary (Jesus’ mother) going to heaven was called “The Assumption.” Again, I cannot accept that as merely a happy coincidence, I believe its mention in the story was intentional. Finally, we have the storm, so central to the theme of the story that it was named for it. In this work, as well as others by Chopin, there is a recurring theme of infidelity, or women behaving in ways that society generally doesn’t accept, women behaving badly, if you will, I cannot help but wonder if Kate Chopin used her writing to express desires that she would not otherwise have expressed.
When Did You See Her Last is a mystery/autobiography written by Lemony Snicket about his noteworthy childhood. It is the second book in a series called All the Wrong Questions. In this book the main character, Lemony Snicket, is visiting a fading town called Stain’d-by-the-Sea with his chaperone, S. Theodora Markson. While in the lobby of a run-down hotel they are staying at, they receive their next task: to find a young scientist named Cleo Knight, who had disappeared from her house. On their way to investigate, Snicket saw a broken down Dilemma, the type of car Miss Knight drove. After researching at the library with his favorite librarian, Dashiell Qwerty, and one of his associates, Moxie Mallahan, he realized that this case was much more
Looking at the metaphor M. Butterfly, one is able to extract a vast spectrum of ideas which Hwang suggests, for example: East vs. West, man vs. woman, sexuality, power relations, race, gender, class, stereotypes, fantasy… etcetera. Now, from a mathematical point of view the metaphor has many variables in the equation, making the problem much more difficult to solve. In other words, Hwang's butterfly metaphor is too ambitious and the audience can have a head full of themes that don't seem to connect to each other. For example, a secondary metaphor which feeds into the butterfly metaphor is when Gallimard says; "I knew this little flower was waiting for me to call, and, as I wickedly refused to do so, I felt of the first time that rush of power-the absolute power of a man" (Hwang, 32). This example implies a power relationship as the tenor and the vehicle is Song, but the number of themes that this metaphor suggests is too many: Power relations, stereotypes, east vs. west, and man vs. woman, race...
Loss. Grief. Mourning. Anger. Disbelief. Emotions are in abundance when a loved one passes away. People need to find a way to cope with the situations and often need to express themselves by writing their feelings down in order to get them out. This is exactly what Paul Monette does in his book of poetry title “Love Alone” in remembrance of his companion Rog. Through writing his poetry Monette describes his emotions and the events that occurred during Rog’s battle with AIDS. By Monette’s transitioning through different emotions, the reader begins to understand the pain the author is dealt. Touching upon Kubler-Ross’ five stages of death including denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, Monette transitions to Rog’s decline in health. Using different fonts and no punctuation, the lines are interpreted by the reader using instincts to know when to begin and end a sentence. Evident in the poems “The Very Same”, “The Half-life”, and “Current Status”, Monette gives a description of loss that makes the reader tingle.
A Good man is Hard to Find" focuses on Christianity being filled with sin and punishment, good and evil, belief and unbelief.
On their Gold and Platinum album Lynyrd Skynyrd produced a song titled Free bird. It is a very popular song that turned out to be a big hit all over the country. It was written by band members Allen Collins and Ronnie VanZant. I think that this is a very good song with good lyrics that display a lot of meaning.
On May 29, 1851, Sojourner Truth gave her most famous speech at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. Truth, being born a slave and escaping to her freedom, was both a women’s rights activist and abolitionist. In a male-dominated society, Truth wanted to gain awareness for the inequalities of women and African Americans during the time period. She makes several claims how African Americans and women are not inferior to the white male population. By targeting those males, Truth portrays them as antagonists and thus gives the women and the African Americans something to focus their struggles on. Sojourner Truth attempts to persuade her audience to support the women’s rights movement and on subtler terms, to support the need for African American rights, through her authoritative and hortatory tone combined with the use of anaphora, juxtaposition, indisputable facts and informal and emotionally appealing diction.