The Intertwined Themes of Margaret Atwood's Dancing Girls
Dancing Girls is a collection of Margaret Atwood's short stories. Each story captures a different aspect of society, different people of different ages, culture and status, with different attitudes, emotions and behavior; all in different locations and life circumstances. Yet there are many connections between the stories and these links are primarily found in Atwood's portrayal of women. As Atwood says:
By and large my novel's center on women...None of them are about miners in the mines, seamen on the sea, convicts in the jail, the boys in the backroom, the locker rooms at the football game…How come? Well, gee, I don't know! Maybe because I am a woman and therefore I find it easier to write as one.
Each story focuses on a different female character and explores her thoughts and her reactions to her social environment. Throughout the collection of stories there are a number of underlying themes that reveal Atwood's insight and understanding of why men and women are different. These themes include the questionable definitions of femininity proposed in society, the idea of escapism through fantasy and the conflict that exists between men and women.
One concept Atwood explores to explain the differences between men and women is simply that there are biological differences between each gender. This difference is highlighted throughout a number of the stories, significantly in "Giving Birth". Atwood comments that for women there is some salvation from a male dominated society in that, through the process of giving birth a woman is allowed some connection with her body which men simply cannot experience.
They still have some connection with their o...
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... capable of seeing connections between apparently disparate circumstances.
Ingersoll-Earl.G., Margaret Atwood: Conversations, Virago Press, London, 1992, pg. 195
Ibid., pg.17
Atwood-Margaret., Dancing Girls, Vintage, London, 1996, pg. 225
Ibid., pg. 227
Ibid., pg. 229
Ibid., pg. 229
Ibid., pg. 240
Ibid., pg. 239
Ibid., pg. 239
Ingersoll-Earl.G., op. cit., pg.141
Ibid., pg. 142
Aspin-Lois.J., Focus on Australian Society, Longman, Australia, 1996, pg. 14
Ingersoll-Earl.G., op. cit., pg. 102
Atwood-Margaret, op. cit., pg. 63
Ibid., pg. 69
Ibid., pg. 69
Ibid., pg. 69
Ibid., pg. 131
Ibid., pg. 138
Ibid., pg. 143
Ingersoll-Earl.G., op. cit., pg. 32
Ibid., pg. 31
Ibid., pg. 245
Atwood-Margaret, op. cit., pg. 98
Ibid., pg. 98
Ibid., pg. 87
Margaret Atwood’s speech ‘Spotty-Handed Villainesses’ is an epideictic text, which explores the significance of having a multi-faceted depiction of female characters within literature as a means of achieving gender equity, centring on the fictional presentation of women as either virtuous or villainess. The title of the speech
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F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Edward Fitzgerald and Mary McQuillan. Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre when he was stationed near Montgomery, Alabama. Zelda was eighteen at the time and was the daughter of Judge Anthony Dickinson Sayre and Minnie Machen Sayre. Fitzgerald later married Zelda Sayre on April 3, 1920 (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” American). They had one child together and named her Frances Scott (“Francis”). When Fitzgerald was forty-four years old he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, in Hollywood, California (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James).
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Introduction The topic of gender differences must understandably be approached with caution in our modern world. Emotionally charged and fraught with ideas about political correctness, gender can be a difficult subject to address, particularly when discussed in correlation to behavior and social behavior. Throughout history, many people have strove to understand what makes men and women different. Until the modern era, this topic was generally left up to religious leaders and philosophers to discuss. However, with the acquisition of more specialized medical knowledge of human physiology and the advent of anthropology, we now know a great deal more about gender differences than at any other point in history.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s early life was filled with moments that allowed him to realize who he was as a person, and as a writer. Fitzgerald was born on September 24th, 1896 to Edward and Mary (www.sc.edu). His father was an American with extreme pride in his family’s past while his mother, Mary, was raised with her Irish parents’ traditions and culture (www.sc.edu). Both of Fitzgerald’s parents were strict Catholics which influences Fitzgerald’s value in religion (www.sc.edu). Due to his father’s aristocracy and his mother’s wealthy inheritance, Fitzgerald was raised in a wealthy, middle class family (www.sc.edu). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing career began at St. Paul Academy where he began writing for the school’s newspaper (www.pbs.org). After attending St. Paul Academy, his schooling career spread to the Newman Catholic Pr...
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