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Naturalism in Miss Julie by August Strindberg
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Recommended: Naturalism in Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Miss Julie by August Strindberg was published in 1888 yet was soon censored for it’s, what was then, ‘scandalous’ content with its frank portrayal of sexuality. In the preface of the play, Strindberg refers to Miss Julie as a ‘man-hating half women’ who seems to be the result of a power struggle between her mother and father. Miss Julie is already the dominating figure within the play showing a disregard for gender and class conventions, these themes and the idea of a power struggle that forms tension between characters should be drawn upon when taking a directorial approach to staging the play. Miss Julie is widely regarded as the most important drama to come from naturalism. The movement was based largely on the theory of social Darwinism,
Summary and Response to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Called Home” In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability.
The novel Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler is a beautifully thought out book that follows the complicated life of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe as he seeks forgiveness for his sins both from himself and from God. Ian blamed himself for causing his older brother, Danny’s suicide and his guilt slowly ate away at him until he was drawn into the Church of Second Chance. By this time, Ian was in college and both Danny’s daughter and step-children were orphaned and being taken care of by his elderly parents. So Reverend Emmett, the pastor of Ian’s newfound church, decided that the only way Ian could find forgiveness from God and from himself was to quit college and offer up all his time to raise Danny’s children. The plot spans the time frame of about 25 years, in which time Ian and the three children slowly mature and become very developed, intricate characters, and the story takes place in the city of Baltimore through the years 1965 to 1990. Anne Tyler spins a very believable tale, using a writing style that easily reminds the reader how quickly life goes by.
The world is filled with many different types of societies and cultures. This is due to the fact that many people share dissimilar beliefs and ideas, as well as diverse ways of life. People lived under different circumstances and stipulations, therefore forming cultures and societies with ideas they formulated, themselves. These two factors, society and culture, are what motivate people to execute the things that they do. Many times, however, society and culture can cause downgrading effects to an assemblage if ever it is corrupt or prejudiced. Society and culture not only influences the emotions individuals have toward things like age differences, religion, power, and equality but also the actions they perform as a result.
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing is, on the surface, a typical romantic comedy with a love-plot that ends in reconciliation and marriage. This surface level conformity to the conventions of the genre, however, conceals a deeper difference that sets Much Ado apart. Unlike Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies, Much Ado about Nothing does not mask class divisions by incorporating them into an idealized community. Instead of concealing or obscuring the problem of social status, the play brings it up explicitly through a minor but important character, Margaret, Hero’s “waiting gentlewoman.” Shakespeare suggests that Margaret is an embodiment of the realistic nature of social class. Despite her ambition, she is unable to move up in hierarchy due to her identity as a maid. Her status, foiling Hero’s rich, protected upbringing, reveals that characters in the play, as well as global citizens, are ultimately oppressed by social relations and social norms despite any ambition to get out.
A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, both have central themes of search of self-identity within a social system. This is demonstrated by women characters from both plays breaking away from the social standards of their times and acting on their own terms. In most situations women are to be less dominant than men in society. These two plays are surprisingly different from the views of women in society and of the times and settings that they take place in.
The women in Susan Glaspell's “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen's “A Doll's House” creates a complex picture of male-female relationships and their effects on women's views about reality. Nora Helmer, the main character of Ibsen's play, seems totally happy with her family and social life: she is constantly pampered and patronized by her husband and plays the role of a trivial, small girl who cannot take pertinent choices. In a similar manner, Minnie Foster, the central character of Susan Glaspell's “Trifles”, spends her life in separation and rejection, banned by her husband from realizing her purpose and aspirations. Nora and Minnie are two strong females in a male-dominated world, who choose different ways to cope with gender inequalities and protest against gendered standards and expectations of female performance.
Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike repetition, emotional truth and autobiographical underpinnings (Tahree, 2013). Oftentimes her work have been criticized for its anger and simplicity and praised for its keen observation of character, wit and lyrical quality. But according to Ms. Kincaid her writing, which are mostly autobiographical, was an act of saving her life by being able to express herself in words. She used her life experiences and placed them on paper as a way to make sense of her past. Her experience of growing up in a strict single-parent West-Indian home was the motivation for many of her writings. The knowledge we garnered at an early age influenced the choice we make throughout our life and this is no more evident than in the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.
“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield tells a story of a lonely, English lady in France. Miss Brill is a quiet person who believes herself to be important. The whole afternoon at the gardens, Miss Brill does not converse with anyone, nor does anyone show any inclination to talk with her. She merely watches others and listens to their conversations. This provides her with a sense of companionship; she feels as if she is a part of other people’s lives. Miss Brill is also slightly self-conceited. She believes that she is so important that people would notice if she ever missed a Sunday at the park. It does not occur to her that other people may not want her to be there.
August Strindberg wrote the play, Miss Julia in 1888 and is considered a naturalistic play. Naturalistic plays take place in real time and exaggerate reality. Naturalism, in general, looks at, and examines the sexual roles of men and women. Naturalism shows that men cannot control their sexual urges and that, if unrestrained by
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
Goldman, Emma. The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Berkeley. Edu, n.d. Web. 09 May 2012.
Leslie Headrick: A stubborn housewife and mother of one boy and one girl. Living in Columbus, Ohio. She used to be a dancer.
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.
Literature normally touches on traditional gender stereotypes and the role of the society in building those gender biases. From earlier centuries, gender stereotyping is closely intertwined with every aspect of the social fabric. The play, A Doll 's House by Henrik Ibsen presents a critical reflection of marital norms of the nineteenth-century. This three-act play revolves around the need of every individual, particularly women, to discover oneself, and how they have to strive to establish their identities. This aesthetically shaped play depicts traditional gender roles and the subsequent social struggles that every woman encounter in a stereotyped society. Though, Nora fits rightly to the nineteenth century social norm of submissive housewife