More handpicked essays just for you.
20th century gender roles in literature
Gender roles 20th century literature
Essays on non traditional gender roles in novels
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
A story is always an adventure of the mind, but many people can have different understandings of the same story. It always has a different point of view and not everyone perceives things the same way. Usually when someone reads through a story for the first time, they pick up on the basic ideas but don 't always see the underlying messages. Continuing to re-read the stories opens a new window of ideas that were never saw before. Some authors leave a gap for the reader to fill with their own imagination. The author also may have symbols and special details that give more information to give deeper context of the story. The short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro , has a great message and the setting is in the mid 20th century. The story is being narrated by a young girl that lives on a fox farm with her mother, father, and brother. Thought her life she is characterized by gender roles and struggles with this issue. …show more content…
She wants to be different and not just the average girl whose only value is to do work in the house. The narrator saw her mom’s work as useless and unimportant compared to her father’s work. She called her mom’s work ,“endless, dreary and depressing”(Mays 157). She was very against working in the house with her mom, but her mom took every opportunity to get her to stay in the house and help her. It was because her mom wanted her to learn and become a lady. It was not enough for her to just be a normal girl that works around the house. She described it as a, “hot dark kitchen in summer” symbolizing that she feels trapped by the inherently female tasks and would much rather have the feeling of freedom when she works outside like a man. She wanted to be something better and make a real difference. She strives for this, her bedtime stories of her saving the world and being heroic. It builds up this great image of a girl that she dreams of being and also wants to accomplish in her real
Lily’s idea of home is having loving parent/mother figures who can help guide her in life. Because of this desire, she leaves T. Ray and begins to search for her true identity. This quest for acceptance leads her to meet the Calendar Sisters. This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel.
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
Society continually places specific and often restrictive standards on the female gender. While modern women have overcome many unfair prejudices, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were forced to deal with a less than understanding culture. Different people had various ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities, including expressing themselves through literature. By writing a fictional story, authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James were given the opportunity to let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic.
“Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid is essentially a set of instructions given by an adult, who is assumed to be the mother of the girl, who is laying out the rules of womanhood, in Caribbean society, as expected by the daughter’s gender. These instructions set out by the mother are related to topics including household chores, manners, cooking, social conduct, and relationships. The reader may see these instructions as demanding, but these are a mother’s attempt, out of care for the daughter, to help the daughter to grow up properly. The daughter does not appear to have yet reached adolescence, however, her mother believes that her current behavior will lead her to a life of promiscuity. The mother postulates that her daughter can be saved from a life of promiscuity and ruin by having domestic knowledge that would, in turn also, empower her as a productive member in their community and the head of her future household. This is because the mother assumes that a woman’s reputation and respectability predisposes the quality of a woman’s life in the community.
Yellow Wallpaper’.” Gender in Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. (1986): 147-64. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale. 163-166.
In a society where the focus on equality amongst different races, religions and sexes continues to grow, it is no surprise that literature has begun to follow suit. Publishers have seen a rise in strong, capable female protagonists who overcome a variety of struggles to save themselves or others and both teens and adults alike rush to get their hands on this material. With such popular literary works to choose from, it seems strange that many schools continue to rely on somewhat archaic material that mistreats and degrades so many women. In John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men, for example, the only female character the reader interacts with is treated like a lower-class prostitute who is ultimately killed off due to her seductive behavior. Though Steinbeck 's treatment of women comes mainly from classic gender roles, his portrayal of female characters in Of Mice and Men is
Gender identities and gender relations are determined by the culture of a society. Culture makes gender roles meet certain inescapable beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and obligations. Gender politics camouflaged by cultural norms and governed by patriarchal interests and manifested in cultural practices like female genital mutilation, make the life of women difficult and burdensome. Alice Walker’s fifth novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) discusses a tabooed cultural practice called female genital mutilation, camouflaged by gender politics, that is used to subjugate women, to protect the interests of men. Female Genital Mutilation is a painful procedure considered to be a mark of true womanhood in certain cultures. The procedure
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
In doing this she is listing off things that the Daughter should be acting out upon. “Don 't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know” (Kincaid 68). The mother is demonstrating how the daughter should act in the presences of boys and explain she is not one. As a girl she must act proper and not play the ways boys do. Boys are aggressive and dirty as seen by society; a girl like she is supposed to be kind and proper. Then the mother explains in one section on how to do housework and chores; a woman’s job. “This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so they don’t have a crease” (Kincaid 67). Kincaid writes that the mother is instructing the daughter on how to do her father’s clothing. This shows that the father; a man does not iron his own clothes but that it is a woman’s job. This can connect to Judy Brady’s work “I Want a Wife” which is about a woman who is listing all the things women do for their husband. Like Kincaid she brings up the same chores of housework and tending to clothing. “A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended,
...and social class. Her habit of writing down everything she saw around her-street names, people, the way shadows fell-made her stories more realistic as well as “dreariness of spirit”--a common phenomenon in Alice Munro’s stories. Her characters struggle to do the right thing because neither succeeding nor not succeeding is satisfactory. However, the most important aspect of Munro’s writing is the way female characters are empowered, scorned, shamed, relieved through different sexual culture as time goes by. All of these factors combine to create a style unique to Munro and cherished by fans in every corner of the world. Perhaps it’s how relatable her stories are, or maybe it’s because she is able to enter her character’s--and in a way our own--minds and explore how it works and how we think. Regardless of why Alice Munro’s is so popular, she leaves a legacy.
Reading literature, at first, might seem like simple stories. However, in works like William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Mansfield's “Miss Brill,” and Kate Chopin's “The Storm,” the female protagonists are examples of how society has oppressive expectations of women simply because of their gender.
Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is a story about a girl that struggles against society’s ideas of how a girl should be, only to find her trapped in the ways of the world.
Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning and also the basis of education. Curiosity had killed the cat indeed, however the cat died nobly. Lives of Girls and Women is a novel written by Nobel Prize Literature winner, Alice Munro. This novel is about a young girl, Del Jordan, who lives on Flats Road, Ontario. The novel is divided into eight chapters; and each chapter refers to a new, unique event in Del's life. As an overall analysis of the book reveals that Del Jordan's intriguing curiosity has helped her throughout her life, and enabled her to gain further knowledge The character is often seen in scenarios where her attention is captivated, and through the process of learning she acquires information in order to her answers her questions about particular subjects. There are many examples in the book that discuss Del’s life, and how she managed to gain information, as well as learn different methods of learning along the way.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.
In order to bring change, the myths of Gender have to be altered. Believing that the world consists of only two genders has been a cultural invention which does not accommodate the vast number of experiences humans are capable of living. According to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network in 2009, “86% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students experienced harassment at school; one in three skipped a day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe there” (Colombo 376). Their gender preference is not accommodated in society, and as a result, they are being discriminated, judged, mentally affected and not allowed expression of their social identity. There are many cultures that have three or more gender categories.