In Billie Holiday’s I’ll be Seeing You there are references to childishness and comfort. When the lyrics talk about the “The park across the way” and “The children's carousel” it relates to the motif of adults being childlike. Bucky’s is immaturity is shown in his love of sports, his lack of desire to be respected, and his consumption of junk food. Although some adults have and/or do these things they are still associated with growing up. Additionally, it seems as if Billie Holiday is comforting the other person [presumably male] just as Marcia comforts Bucky. Billie is constantly telling the receiver of this song, “I’ll be seeing you,” and Marcia makes Bucky come to see her. This reversal of typical gender roles as a parallel to I’ll be Seeing
You is enforced by the fact that Holiday is a woman.
Could one trip across the Atlantic ocean change all the gender roles? How could that happen? In “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle,” you will see how many different gender roles change in the book. In the first place Charlotte changed more into a sailer instead of a young lady. Next Charlotte wore boy clothes. Finally, Charlotte did some of the crews jobs that usually do and joined the crew. To conclude you can see Charlotte’s gender role changed throughout the book multiple times.
Sandra Cisneros short story “Woman Hollering Creek”, has many allegories about culture, morality, and gender roles.
Characters in both The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Puberty Blues act as gender stereotypes, but sometimes they do not match to the gender stereotypes. In The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, a female character, Olive, shows women stereotypes, such as being emotional, childishness, and waiting for a man who she loves. On the other hand, a man character, Roo, represents manhood, for instance, being a cane-cutter and Lawler shows Roo fighting with Barney (72-75). In Puberty Blues, stereotypes of girls represented are more about appearance, for example, Carey and Lette mention that girls have to be not too fat, not too skinny, and make-up (8). Like Olive waited Roo, the girls make cake and search a place for boys (Carey and Lette 74, 101)
As I began reading “Where are you going, where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates I found myself relating the experiences of Connie, the girl in the story, to my own personal experiences. She spoke of going to a friend’s house and having her friend’s father drive them to the shopping mall so that they could walk around and socialize or go see a movie. I found that this related very closely with my own experiences of being fifteen years old because it was always someone else’s parents driving my friends and I to the movies or to the mall.
about marriage that our society assumes to be true today. These include ideas about single
Protection – she could never offer protection to the creature she loved: Could you marry me, Stephen? She could neither protect nor defend nor honour by loving; her hands were completely empty. She who would gladly have given her life, must go empty – handed to love, like a beggar. She could only debase what she longed to exalt, defile what she longed to keep pure and untarnished. ( Hall 2978)
What defines gender? The sex of a person refers to their physical anatomy, their sexual orientation refers to whom they are attracted to. The gender identity of a person, however, is their internal sense of being male, female, neither or both. The way in which they manifest their masculinity and/or femininity is their gender expression. Society has no right to dictate a person’s gender identity or manifestation, nor does it have the right to confine them to any one of these. Too often does the public deem someone’s gender and expression the same as their sex, and treat them as such without consulting the individual. The play Down from Heaven by Colleen Wagner and the novel Annabel by Kathleen Winter depict the ongoing battle that society faces
Gender Roles: In some respects, Fitzgerald writes about gender roles in a quite conservative manner. In his novel, men work to earn money for the maintenance of the women. Men are dominant over women, especially in the case of Tom, who asserts his physical strength to subdue them. The only hint of a role reversal is in the pair of Nick and Jordan. Jordan's androgynous name and cool, collected style masculinize her more than any other female character. However, in the end, Nick does exert his dominance over her by ending the relationship. The women in the novel are an interesting group, because they do not divide into the traditional groups of Mary Magdalene and Madonna figures, instead, none of them are pure. Myrtle is the most obviously sensual, but the fact that Jordan and Daisy wear white dresses only highlights their corruption.
When first reading August Wilson's The Piano Lesson it is very easy to zero in on the topic of racism. However I believe that is not the only major theme that exists in this text. I do believe that the issue of sex and gender roles is an underlying issue that is just as important to the play as the race issue is.
The characters in the play are consistent with the stereotypical ones of the Victorian era. Women were expected to get married and stay at home, being seen as unintelligent and fragile. Hedda Gabler is neither of things, thus emphasizing Henrik Ibsen’s point of female oppression in the Victorian era. Hedda’s character does not present the typical affectionate trait a woman would have towards her husband; The idea that women were supposed to get marriage and have children early during the Victorian era. The male role was expected to be extreme dominance over the woman, and to be the bread winner. Henrik Ibsen’s reflection of the Victorian era in the story, Hedda Gabler emphasizes on the social standards imposed upon women and men. The play questions the power dynamics distributed between the two genders, the concept that a woman’s proper role in her marriage is to tend her husband, while the man’s role is to provide for the family and uphold its reputation. Henrik Ibsen presents two characters who are victims of this drastic social code and the measures of both characters have to take in order to structure their ideals around a strict society. When both characters ideals conflict with the social mores of society, the result is often unsatisfying or tragic. For example, Hedda’s lust for power in the story is a trait not often found in women during the Victorian period. The role of power is reserved for only the men in Victorian society. In order to behold power, Hedda sacrifices her stereotypical image as a woman. Hedda does not display the typical loving wife role, but rather adopts a vicious and manipulating female character trait. George Tesman breaks this stereotype as well, by depending on Hedda to get his professorsh...
How would one feel if ones significant other was constantly disobeying the relationship? In Irwin Shaw’s “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses”, he shows how important having a trustworthy and honest relationship is. This short story highlights the flaws in romantic relationships by demonstrating how one needs some type of relationship in life, how fragile a relationship can be, and how many take loved ones for granted.
Many times in stories, authors use literary elements to help capture a story’s overall meaning or help the reader better understand the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one of those authors which uses identity and gender roles to develop the idea that women in society are considered to be a traditional stay at home wife. She also uses a lot of figurative language to demonstrate how women were in a sense trapped and had to stay at home while men go out and work. If women were allowed to do what they wanted then the character’s insanity in “The Yellow Wallpaper” wouldn’t have been questioned and in “Mrs. Elder’s Idea” the character wouldn’t have felt so discontented with her lifestyle as a wife living with her husband.
The Yellow Paper is a short story published in 1892, and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte tells of a disheartening tale of a woman who struggles to free herself from postpartum depression. The Yellow Paper gives an account of an emotionally and intellectual deteriorated woman struggles to break free from a mental prison her husband had put her into, in order to find peace. The woman lived in a male dominated society and wanted indictment from it as she had been driven crazy, because of the Victorian “rest-cure” (Gilman 45). Her husband decided to force her to have a strict bed rest by separating her from her only child. He took her to recuperate in an isolated country estate all alone. The bed rest her husband forced into made her mental state develop from bad to worst. The Yellow Paper is a story that warns the readers about the consequences of fixed gender roles in a male-dominated world. In The Yellow Paper, a woman’s role was to be a dutiful wife and she should not question her husband’s authority and even whereabouts. Whereas, a man’s role was to be a husband, main decision maker, rational thinker and his authority was not to be questioned by the wife.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator and her husband John can be seen as strong representations of the effects society’s stereotypical gender roles as the dominant male and submissive female have within a marriage. Because John’s wife takes on the role as the submissive female, John essentially controlled all aspects of his wife’s life, resulting in the failure of the couple to properly communicate and understand each other. The story is intended to revolve around late 19th century America, however it still occurs today. Most marriages still follow the traditional gender stereotypes, potentially resulting in a majority of couples to uphold an unhealthy relationship or file for divorce. By comparing the “The yellow wallpaper” with the article “Eroticizing Inequality in the United States: The Consequences and Determinants of Traditional Gender Role Adherence in Intimate Relationships”, the similarities between the 19th century and 21st century marriage injustice can further be examined. If more couples were able to separate the power between the male and female, America would have less unhappy marriages and divorces.
For this project, I will be summarizing three different articles that pertain to the argument that there is an apparent double standard for what is acceptable behavior in men versus women in Tom Jones. In addition to summarizing these articles, I will also be adding my own views and comments throughout this paper.