A young girl steps outside, where the air seems more gloomy than usual. She sneaks down the crumbling stairs to the old well to retrieve water for her family. She put the metal bucket on the hook and let it slowly down before being startled by Taliban members talking around the corner. She quickly pulled the bucket back up, water splashing out until there was a dribble of water left. The Taliban members saw her and she started to immediately run to return home, with barely any water in only one of the buckets. Nora Twomey is the director of the film The Breadwinner, the main character Parvana is a young girl who lives with her parents and siblings, older sister Nooria, and younger siblings Maryam and Zaki. Parvana lives in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. …show more content…
This shows that women were not respected in this movie, and if someone viewed them as something higher, they would be punished. Even though they were well capable of doing things on their own, watching the film through the gender/feminist lens helps reveal how women were viewed in society. Women were not just viewed differently but treated differently than men, and this was shown when Parvana first went to buy food after her father had been taken, compared to when she went disguised as a boy. First, she politely asked for apples, only to be told, “I can’t serve you,” (The Breadwinner). And later “Get your father to buy food for you.” (The Breadwinner). So Parvana then realized the only way for her family to survive is if she disguised herself as a boy to be able to buy food. She cut her hair and wore some of her brother’s clothes, then headed to the market. Parvana approached the venue quietly before trying to get the owner’s attention. “Come inside, boy!” (The Breadwinner). The owner told Parvana. At this moment she was also being made fun of for not being direct and knowing what to do, but Parvana did not care to notice, she was grateful that she had gotten food for her
They had no right to do anything other than what they were supposed to do. They did not have the same rights as men did. They were considered to be nothing but a form of maid to their husband. They were not allowed to have a say in anything including themselves. Their opinion was not as valuable as men. Gender roles are institutionalized in Pleasantville through the way women and men were expected to do certain roles. In the film women were expected to do the housework and stay at home. It was not normal for a women to work or to not have dinner made .A woman was supposed to stay in the house with the kids, prepare food for the family and have it ready when the husband came back from work. They were also expected to look beautiful at all times with their makeup and hair done so they can look attractive for their husbands. They were to not worry about a thing because It was not allowed for them to worry about anything since they only had to worry about pleasing their husband. They were also supposed to act “ladylike” because anything other than this was not accepted in their village. Men were the only workers in the family and were the sole provider because women were not allowed to work. Being the sole provider gave them power over their family which contributed to the feeling of male superiority and gave women less power in the household. They were also to be the decision makers of the family. The gender of a person determined everything. It determine how you were supposed to act and what was your role within your family. Gender roles also dictated how each gender is to speak, think, act, and engage with each
Throughout the story, however, the word girl is constantly used as an insult against her. For example, when a feed salesman comes to the father, the father introduces her as a hired-hand, and the salesman laughs and says, “ ‘Could of fooled me.’ He said ‘I thought it was only a girl.’” The mother also reinforces that she should not be out there when she talks to the father about keeping the girl inside. The narrator sees her mother in a negative light and does not want to become her; she hates housework and describes it as depressing and endless, despite the fact that shortly after she says that the father’s work is “ritualistically important.”
In “Boys and Girls”, the protagonist, a young girl, is caught between her desire to live in a male-oriented world and her mother’s protests to play her part as a female in the family. The girl resists female chores such as cleaning and preparing meals. Finding them “endless” and “depressing”, favoring work done “out of doors” with her father, “ritualistically important”. However, her effort to neglect this gender role does not go without struggle. She listens relentlessly to her mother, claiming “it’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” The word “girl” becomes a burdening reminder of not who she is, but what the girl is expected and pressured “to become”. With her grandmother’s reminde...
A woman’s role in the early twentieth century still revolved around serving the male members of one’s family. Klara was tied to the traditional role of a female. She would have chores as well as having to make supper for her father, grand father and sometimes Eamon. Klara was more independence than the average woman because she was taught two arts by two masters. She could tailor suits, and carve wood. She had two skills that were named to be man’s skills. Her knowledge gave her the power to control what happened in her life. Klara was respected in her town for her skills because they usually came to her to make suits. Eamon acknowledged her skill and asked her to make a red suit. Her knowledge of these skills gave her more independence, freedom and power. She was one of the few female members in her community who had their own income. She had freedom to do what she wanted with her life but she was still restricted by her society because she was still a woman.
The story explained how the appearance of the girls affects the community. “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle – the girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything) – were pretty hilarious. You could see them, when Queenie 's white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. (Updike, A&P) This shows that in the small town that if you dressed outside of what society deems socially acceptable you would draw unwanted attention. The regular shoppers were all the same and the girls coming in created a disruption that was not normal in this part of town. It added a sense of rebellion and took away the perpetuating cycle of boredom and lack of excitement that Sammy and all the customers were used to at the A&P. This is still relevant in today’s society. Although society as a whole is more accepting of less modest clothes, it finds certain appearances with a unique kind of awareness.
By them going against their gender roles and being inappropriately dressed in A & P, they also create the possibility for tragedy to occur. The manager of A & P, Lengel, an old Sunday school teacher embodies what is expected to be the male gender role of that time when he publically chastises the girls for being dressed in that manner in the store. Despite the girls’ attempts to justify their actions of being dressed in this manner by saying that they only came in to buy one thing, Lengel maintains his masculine gender role of keeping women in line. Lengel states quite matter-of-factly, “We want you decently dressed when you come in here.” (Updike 234). It is at this moment that Queenie pushes the envelope even further in going against her gender roles, by answering back Lengel. Queenie’s response of “We are decent,” (Updike 234) shows her somewhat rebellious and disrespectful nature, and her disregard for Lengel’s patriarchal authority. She instead would have been expected in this scenario to possibly apologize to Lengel and leave the store with her friends since he was not only male but senior to her thus demanding her
The mother cautions her daughter endlessly, emphasising on how much she wants her to realize her role in the society by acting like a woman in order to be respected by the community and the world at large. Thus, Jamaica Kincaid’s work argues that traditional gender roles are learned because at a young age children are taught how to act masculine and feminine. According to Carol Baileys article on Performance and the Gendered Body in Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ “The poem is a fictional representation of the double-edged tendencies which involve child-rearing practices in many Caribbean societies: as the mother provides guidelines for living, the moments of care are constantly weakened by the severity evident in what the mother is actually saying and the fact that her daughter is lectured with little room for discussion” (Carol Bailey 106). The instructions in the poem “Girl” reveal an effective performance of gender roles assigned to women in the Caribbean societies, which shows significant acts in domestic, social, and other spheres.
In order to better understand the conflict, first we must define what conformity and self image are in the story “Boys and Girls”. Conformity is action in accordance with prevailing social standards, attitudes, and practices. In the time frame of the story, as well as through much of history, it was the social norm for women to be housemaids, and to rarely venture outside of the house to perform “man’s work”. The narrator however, has a different idea as to about how she wishes to live her life. She does not enjoy “work done in the kitchen” as she finds it tedious and “endless”. She does view the work of her father though as “ritualistically important” and far more interesting. This tomboy state of mind of the girl is part of her self image, defined as the idea, conception, or mental image one has of oneself. Upon reading the story, it is clear that her views come into direct conflict with her parent’s beliefs, and even mainstream society’s. While the protagonist’s self image of herself is a driving factor in the nature of her adventures and leisure, with enough outside pressure it can b...
According to “Boys and Girls”, there are certain things women should not be doing as defined by their genders. The narrator, a young girl, feels more inclined to spend her time outside alongside her father, “I worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride.” She finds her place in a man’s world, outdoors in her father’s domain. While she is a female, she does not relate herself to the things of feminine nature. When her mother goes to speak with her father in the barn the narrator “felt my mother had no business down here,” admitting that it was a man’s world, and also her place, but not her mother’s. Her mother could not stand the idea of her daughter doing a man’s work, reminding her husband, “Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have real help and then I can use her more in the house. It’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” According to her mother’s definition of girls, a daughter, who spends all her time outside doing a son’s work, is not a daughter at all.
The short story, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid deals with being a young female in a poor country. This can be seen because Kincaid’s complicated relationship with her own mother is illustrated with the mother-daughter dynamic in the story. As I continued to read the story, I saw bitterness and worriness from the mother grow towards her daughter as she became a teenager. Throughout the story, the mother would tell her daughter, “this is how you do this… and you must act like this,” forcing the young women to act and be someone she did not want to be. It was like she was protective of her daughter and did not want her to ruin her life. Throughout the whole story, the mother was telling the daughter how to do chores a certain way so when she grew into a woman she knew how to do them
In the article Construction of the Female Self: Feminist Readings Of the Disney Heroine, Jill Birmie Henke, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Nancy J. Smith are looking at the female self and how it was developed based on two theories: Standpoint by Parker Follet and the psychological development of girls by Gilligam. That by examines gender identity especially girls and how media exposure affects them through analyzing five of Disney movies: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas. They segmented the article into three titles: The Oxymoron of Power and the Perfect Girl where they introduced the two theories in which they built their critic on, Construction of the Female Self where they talk about the evolution in the female character from Cinderella to Pocahontas, and Construction of Self in Relation to Others where they talk about the evolution of the self in relation to others from power-over to power-with until power-to. Finally they concluded that even if the female character in Disney’s movies was changing to become more
III. The Obedience of Women Introduction Not only are women expected to lead lives in which they depend on men to be happy and wealthy, but they are expected to do so with total obedience to the expectations of men. It is important to see how women react to the requests of men and how much freedom for thought and action they are allowed to have and what consequences occur when a woman disobeys what is asked of her. Cinderella In the Brothers Grimm, the first characterization of Cinderella is a description that “she was always good and said her prayers” (Grimm 122).
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
middle of paper ... ... women know and think that if they don’t act or behave to their expectations they will. looked down upon and possibly neglected by their family and society. To avoid losing friends and family, most male and female, construct their own role in their life.
The female other has been portrayed as intensely alienated while growing to know that their actions are subject to ridicule, rumor, conjecture, and gossip. It is flawless that it is impossible to interpret some of these 19th-century texts without coming across concepts of imperialism. The English, the social system used widely in England and the entire English community placed the male gender on a social platform that disregarded any advancement of the female sex (Pui-Lan). The ruling class took the authority and were not to be challenged, prompting them to put the woman in her place, considering her as physical property belonging to men and could be possessed.