Peiyun Liu
Biff Faunce
Writing 2
15 March 2017
Gender: The Truth about Woman in “The Piano”
Many societies have different ways to demonstrate the position of the woman in the family and community. There are men who have been treating woman differently, and there are also women who have been reacting to those treatments. The film The Piano presents the story of a strong and independent woman who has her own sense of life and a great passion that is expressed with playing the piano. The story took place in the nineteenth century when women had not gain any rights. The main character's name is Ada McGrath. Her personality is an excellent collective image of all women of that time. It is a young woman who has been married and sold to an unknown
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person. She has a daughter and a great passion – playing the piano. Her piano symbolizes the only way to express feelings and emotion of beauty, which helps Ada to communicate with others because she cannot speak. “It is a story of shyness, repression and loneliness; of a woman who will not speak and a man who cannot listen, and of a willful little girl who causes mischief and pretends she didn't mean to”. (Ebert) The image of a young woman characterizes the whole image of women that time. They were not allowed to choose their own way of life, love or destiny. They were under the pressure of men and strongly depended on them. On the other hand, Ada is also totally different. The movie demonstrated ways woman are portrayed in the dominated patriarchal society through female gaze. One of the main focuses of the movie is gender roles in society. Ada is sold by her father into a marriage to New Zealand to a middle-aged person called Alisdair Stewart. The man gets Ada and her daughter Flora as presents instead of the humans they are. This can be showed in the beginning when Alisdair got really disappointed when he found out Ada was not as big as he imagined. Baines, the other main character on the other hand, asked if Ada looked tired. A psychological fight already begins between Alisdair and Baines. While Baines is Ada‘s form of affection, Alisdair has a detached relationship with her. The way in which these two men fight over Ada brings out a certain position of women in society. Men seem to determine the way of life women must show in the society. The film describes this issue in the way in which the men, including Ada's father, Alisdair, and Baines behave with her and her daughter Flora. Nevertheless, the marriage soon changes into love triangle among young people. Ada’s husband even does an unexpected thing where he chops off her finger with a purpose to frighten and prevent her from having the relationship with another man. However, at the end of the story, Ada stays with Baines and her daughter. Ada seems to be a victim of her feelings to an another man. Firstly, the idea of being married to an unknown person is horrible. At the same moment, Alisdair kept Ada in a strange relationship. He does not become a good husband for her since he even got rid of her piano. At the same moment, he knows that she enjoys playing the piano, but he does not care about it because he is a powerful man. The film director uses Alisdair’s character as a way to support the theme of gender inequalities which is presented in the film. He does not respect Ada. He is treating her as the owner. She is just a toy for him. He throws away her piano, and he forces her into physical relationships and he is not willing to allow her to live a happy life. Alisdair is a very selfish husband who does not have any respect for his wife. There are some certain moments in the movie that Alisdair was portrayed as a dominated male character from the patriarchal society. One of the moments is when he forcefully drags Ada, his wife, from the warmth of their home to their front yard, the sudden appearance of heavy rain symbolizes the despair she experiences as her husband subjects her to eternal, physical damnation, which is chopping off her finger. Ada’s ill fate illustrates the ideologies of the dominant, patriarchal society. Despite losing her voice during the earliest moments of her childhood, Ada forges an inseparable connection to the piano, and the existence of musical language enables her to resist the oppressive philosophy endorsed by the authoritative male figures within her. Therefore, in the next moment, by slicing off her finger, Stewart attempts to isolate and silence Ada from their community, thus, sentencing his disabled wife to a life of solitude. Ultimately, Ada’s muteness not only exemplifies how men continuously subjugate women to the subordinate class through an implementation of socio-economic restrictions but also serves as a symbolic resistance to the dominated patriarchal society. According to the main concept of the film, women are mostly portrayed as weak. For example, Ada is sold to her husband as if she is a property. Baines wants her for sexual pleasure in the beginning. She sells herself out as a property in order to get her piano back. A woman does not have power during the colonial period in history. Men make all the decisions. They are like kings or the Gods and women have to listen to them and do everything their men consider to be right. Nowadays this situation is frightful. People simply cannot imagine that men control all women's actions, but that time it was common for people. However, the movie also demonstrated parts where woman are portrayed as strong and independent, where Ada have the rights to make her own decision. During the scene where Ada constantly demands her piano portrayed the woman as a great character. She refuses to deal with others until she got her piano back. Also, she refuses to let her husband touch her. It is portrayed in the movie where Ada touches her husband but her husband cannot touch her. This denies the idea that a woman should stay submissive during that period. As for the audience, it is a very unusual situation for that time, but people should feel proud of Ada for her character and the psychological strength to stay in her own way of life. Although Ada’s little daughter is a bastard child, she is still considered a strong female character that serves as the main communication tool between Ada and other people.
She allows her mother to be in touch with the world just through communication with others. No one discriminated against her which is unusual for the bastard child back in the days. Nevertheless, a UCSC student Lily that watched the film still wondered if Ada’s daughter is a friend or an enemy to her mom. There are a lot of moments in the movie when this young girl does her activity against her mother. To be honest, it is seemed to be a usual childish behavior, but it sets up the plot that makes Ada suffer. The character of Flora is used to speak about all secrets of her mom because she considers her behavior like the wrong one. Flora's imaginative creation of an overpowering love in nature, an idealized, romantic version of a family, represents art at its simplest and purest – a child creating a personal mythology for herself. (Chumo II 174) She just wants to have a normal family like other children, to be in touch with her parents and to share her life with them. Flora calls Steward “father” and her attitude to him is characterized with a great willing to become a part of his life. The girl does not understand that hurts her nearest person and she plays a great role in this Love triple of characters which is unusual in a film for a female child to take such a huge part in the
storyline.
One form of art which is predominant in The Awakening is piano playing. Piano playing symbolizes a woman’s role in society. In Edna’s society, artistic skill, such as piano playing and sketching, were accomplishments which ladies acquired. They were merely enhancements to their education, not possibilities for occupation. Women artists, whether they were musicians, painters, or writers, had a difficult time being accepted in society (Dyer 86). Kate Chopin presents two women who are foils to Edna: Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz (Koloski 117). Both of these women play the piano; however, their purpose and motivations are vastly different. The way in which they view their piano playing reflects their values.
Throughout history women assumed subordination is a constant theme; although in the 1930s and 1920s America this changed. The Twenties brought on woman’s suffrage while the Thirties saw and encouraged a more progressive in women. August Wilson writer of The Piano Lesson supported women’s press towards equality and expressed this in the play. The Piano Lesson follows the Charles family and their heirloom, a piano with carvings of their once enslaved family. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano to purchase land where the Charles family labored as slaves for the family of a man named Sutter, who has died. Bernice, Boy Willie’s sister refuses to let him sell it. Sutter’s ghost, the main antagonist terrorizes the family as his spirit wants the piano
“Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).
In the play “The Piano Lesson”, August Wilson utilizes two main characters Boy Willie and Berniece to present the theme of gender roles and sexual politics. The reaction of the siblings toward the piano illustrates the role of a man and woman during the conflict. Throughout the entire play they argue over the piano and struggle with an underlying problem of choosing to honor their ancestors or leaving the family’s history in the past. Boy Willie wants to show respect to his ancestors by selling the piano to continue the Charles’s family legacy. He wants to buy Sutter’s land because Sutter was a white slave master who forced his ancestors to work on the land. However, Berniece wants to keep the piano and doesn’t want to use it because of fear. The disagreement between the siblings shows the play’s representation of gender differences.
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is taking place in Pittsburg because many Blacks travelled North to escape poverty and racial judgment in the South. This rapid mass movement in history is known as The Great migration. The migration meant African Americans are leaving behind what had always been their economic and social base in America, and having to find a new one. The main characters in this play are Berniece and Boy Willie who are siblings fighting over a piano that they value in different ways. Berniece wants to have it for sentimental reasons, while Boy Willie wants it so he can sell it and buy land. The piano teaches many lessons about the effects of separation, migration, and the reunion of
Wilson demonstrates how one should accept and respect the past, move on with their life or slow down to pay respects to their family?s history, by describing the struggle over a symbolic object representing the past like the piano. Often people will sulk in the past and struggle with themselves and the people around them when they cannot come to terms with their personal history or a loss. Others will blatantly ignore their personal history and sell valuable lessons and pieces of it for a quick buck to advance their own lives. Berniece and Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson are great examples of these people. Through these contrasting characters and supernatural occurrences, Wilson tells the tale of overcoming and embracing a rough and unsettling family history.
Jane Campion’s “The Piano” relates the story of a Scottish woman who is sent to New Zealand, during the Victorian Era, for an arranged marriage with a farmer. Ada voluntarily gave up speaking at the age of 6 and communicates by either signing for her daughter, writing on a small paper tablet around her neck, or, more joyously, through playing her piano. After a long and arduous journey with the piano, Ada is forced to leave it on the beach where her boat landed. Left without her musical passion, Ada must learn to adapt in very male world.
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
The piano held symbolic significance in the story of the family and their struggle to move forward. The piano represents the importance and value of slaves during slavery. Slaves were traded for objects during slavery. Slaves were of no importance to their slave owners. As Doaker says in the story “now she had her piano and her niggas too”, meaning slaves were nothing more than an accessory to their slave owners (Wilson 395). Doaker sarcastically speaks of how slaves were not considered humans but property. As Sandy Alexandre states in her work, “Property and Inheritance in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson”, “Doaker sees greed where there should be something like repulsion or at least a semblance of hesitation to accept such an ill-begotten gift”(77). Alexandre argues slaves are not given the proper respect and are not considered equal. This specific event from the story shows how little to ...
Society places ideas concerning proper behaviors regarding gender roles. Over the years, I noticed that society's rules and expectations for men and women are very different. Men have standards and specific career goals that we must live up to according to how others judge.
The female gender role in society has created a torturous fate for those who have failed in their role as a woman, whether as a mother, a daughter, or a wife. The restrictive nature of the role that society imposes on women causes extreme repercussions for those women who cannot fulfill their purpose as designated by society. These repercussions can be as common as being reprimanded or as severe as being berated or beaten by a husband or father. The role that women were given by society entails being a submissive homemaker who dotes on her husband and many children. The wife keeps the home impeccably neat, tends to the children and ensures their education and well-being, and acts obsequiously to do everything possible to please her husband. She must be cheerful and sweet and pretty, like a dainty little doll. The perfect woman in the eyes of society is exactly like a doll: she always smiles, always looks her best and has no feelings or opinions that she can truly call her own. She responds only to the demands of her husband and does not act or speak out of turn. A woman who speaks her mind or challenges the word of any man, especially her husband, is undesirable because she is not the obedient little doll that men cherish. Women who do not conform to the rules that society has set for them are downgraded to the only feature that differentiates them from men; their sex. Society’s women do not speak or think of sex unless their husband requires it of them. But when a woman fails to be the doll that a man desires, she is worth nothing more than a cheap sex object and she is disposed of by society.
...and her attitude to her father and his work began to change. So while the killing was underway her and her brother were picking up sticks to make a teepee out of. Suddenly there was a lot of commotion and Flora was running free. Her father told her to shut the gate. She ran to the gate and just had just enough time to close it. Instead of closing the gate she opened it wide and let the horse run free. Laird got there just in time to see her do it. When her father and Henry showed up they thought that she didn’t get there in time. They simply got the gun and the knives they used and jumped in the truck. On the way out they stopped and picked up Laird who was begging to go.
...le older and a chance to show off her bravery emerges in the form of Flora making her escape, she doesn’t even consider playing the part of the hero, she simply follows her father’s orders, and even that she goes back on when she leaves the gate open. She doesn’t daydream of action and excitement anymore; she instead imagines herself in a love story.
Indisputably, roles and characteristics of opposite genders have been ubiquitous, since historical evidence proves so – dating back to when the practice of oral tradition was favored over written language. This historical evidence is especially apparent in literature from previous time periods. In these works of literature, men and women often have very different social and economic positions within society. Particular duties, or tasks, are practiced depending on the gender of these individuals. However, in the advancing world we are currently living in, these duties are beginning to intertwine in an effort to allow equal rights amongst opposite genders. This effort to break the sexist barrier, which encompasses our world, has already begun rattling the chains of politicians and the like. However, with the progressions made thus far in retaliation to sexism and unequal gender privileges, the United States of America is heading in a positive direction towards gender equality. Nonetheless, the female gender is perceived as a lesser entity in society while the male gender is dominant and controlling. The masculine individuals in literary works usually govern, or direct the feminine individuals. These characteristics are often evident in various literary works – including “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “A&P” written by Ernest Hemingway and John Updike, respectively. The slow and steady transformation from a sexist society to one that allows inferior genders to perform similar tasks, if not the same as their superior counterparts, may disturb the ideological mindset of figures with authority; however, it provides inferior genders with the opportunity to branch out socially, economically, and politically.
This moment was the first encounter Wladylsaw Szpilman had with the Second World War. It was just the beginning of a terrible tragedy that unfolded for Szpilman. The movie The Pianist is a depiction of this tragedy. At its very core, the movie is a tale of survival. As the German forces systematically eliminated his home, his possessions, even his family, Wladyslaw Szpilman had a force inside of him that kept him going. The Pianist follows Szpilman's journey, showing his love for the music pulling him through the horror of times. And it was this love that kept him going for the near half decade he spent living hell.