How do the composers convey their attitudes towards cultural values associated with the ways of thinking evident in the texts?

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The way perspectives of composers and the cultural paradigms that they are influenced by are of a peculiar and often hidden nature. Through thorough textual analysis, the possibility of revealing these cultural values is enhanced, allowing the observation and appreciation of the how different ways of thinking have developed over time. Cultural values that deal with topics of gender inequalities, racial and social status prejudices and the result of societal dynamic are often hidden in texts from the Victorian Era, and this is absolutely true of Vanity Fair by William Thackeray as well as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. The two texts hold many areas of diversification and commonality which provide a basis of characters and their ways of thinking, in turn exposing attitudes towards certain cultural values.

Both Vanity Fair and A Room of One’s Own explore and challenge the idea that women are incapable of creating a name and a living for themselves, thus are completely dependent on a masculine figure to provide meaning and purpose to their lives. Thackeray, having published Vanity Fair in 1848, conforms to the widely accepted idea that women lack independence when he makes a note on Ms Pinkerton and remarks “the Lexicographer’s name was always on the lips of the majestic woman… [He] was the cause of her reputation and her fortune.” The way that a man’s name was metaphorically “always on the lips of the majestic woman” and how he was the source of “her reputation and her fortune” expresses this idea, especially through Thackeray’s skilful use of a sanguine tone to communicate that this cultural value, or rather inequality, was not thought of as out of the ordinary. From viewing this in a current light and modernised perspective...

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...s a combination show the unfathomable broadness of this cultural value as well as portraying the submissiveness of women as something that they are destined to become. This value in particular may also associate with racial and class stereotypes and operates in the same manner.

In short, both Vanity Fair and A Room of One’s Own withhold many cultural values that are represented in a diverse manner due to the stark contrast of their styles and the time in which they were written. However, both composers make comments on societal and cultural values that reveal truths in association to the dynamic of the current time period. They both choose to illustrate these values through the ways of thinking that are evident in their compositions and make note of important significances which, in themselves, are a development of our universal culture that we live amongst today.

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