Gender Analysis of Anna and the King
If you are not the lead elephant, the scenery never changes. (Moonshee, Anna’s servant)
One of the main issues in “Anna and the King” is the differences between men and women. What is less obvious is that those differences are of two types: the existing inequality of the social status of men and women, and the ways in which men and women try to deal with (end or prolong) this inequality.
First of all, let us observe the structure of the Thai society. Men occupy the dominant position in all aspects of life from top to bottom of the Thai social structure. The King rules the society, and men enforce all the laws and government regulations (we see no women participating in the King’s council or in any government office). In addition to that, the ritual and custom behavior point to the humiliating position of women in Thai culture. According to Prince Chulalongkorn, men never apologize to women. The body language of the relationship between the two genders in the movie indicates that a woman always bows in the presence of a man and usually stays bowed until he dismisses her. All these customs, laws, and regulations separate Thai society into two unequal classes: men and women.
In the situation of inequality, there is always a group of people who are not satisfied with the life around them. We will call them the agents of change. Although, the women in Thai society are very submissive, we can observe the attempts to change their life and/or social status. For example, the slave woman acts directly. She pays money to her mistress to buy her freedom (i.e. to change her life). She is acting according to the law that “bond-servants have the right to buy their own freedom.” However, her a...
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...country to change: the King. He invites the “imperialistic” teacher to teach his eldest son. Why? In the letter confirming Anna’s employment, the King says that he wanted Siam “to take its place among the nations of the modern world.” As a man and as a king, he acts very carefully. He wants to ensure that in his country “no man is above the law.” He does not make any extraordinary changes, but he allows Anna to teach his children anything she wants (he knows Anna’s liberal position). His decision determines the future of Siam: his son abolishes slavery, institutes religious freedom and reforms the judicial system.
In conclusion, we should say that it does not matter how big the social separation between men and women is and how unequal their statuses are – there are always ways to make that gap smaller, but this requires efforts on the part of both men and women.
In addition, Britain’s societal transformation augmented women’s role in society, and according to Braybon in “Women Workers in The First World War,” “A completely different pattern of life was established. for women” and that society had “prevailing attitudes towards women as workers” (Braybon 16). The newfangled life given to women gave most women an enormous surge in recognition throughout society, as people valued women a lot more after they became the backbone of the production of nearly all British goods. Concurrently, King underscores this point in her novel, as throughout the novel, Mary is never discriminated against simply for being a woman. In preceding years and throughout history, society typically perceived women as naturally inferior to men, and women’s occupations were limited to taking care of the family and domestic occupations.
When Anna Close is first introduced in the novel, As We Are Now she is referred to as Mrs. Close. From what I gather, this was to represent a sort of formality between her and Caro because they were not yet acquainted. Not only this, but it also seems that it was Harriet and Rose's way of manipulating Caro to fear the worst out of Harriet's replacement. Caro knew better than to expect someone who would actually care for her, because of this she was surprised beyond belief when she met Anna.
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This essay asks to discuss some of the ways in which differences and inequalities persist over time, suggesting that they are not static, continuing to be made and remade by the actions of people and society. With Inequality being defined as ‘‘The unequal distribution of valued social resources within society or between societies including money, housing, power, health and education”. whilst Differences is defined as “contrasts between groupings of people such as those based on gender, class, age, sexuality and race, including things people value and the variations between them including their physical, behavioural, attitudes and preferences”. (Blakeley and Staples, 2014 p 25). However, it is noted not all differences will lead to inequalities,
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