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Essays On The Secret Agent
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Women living in London in the late 19th and early 20th century, did not have the choices of the 21st century women. Women had little chance of evading their societal approved destiny that consisted of marrying young, stay at home and raise a family. Despite the fact that change was on the horizon and many women took to finding work in factories and other domestic work, most women still had to rely on men for financial security and stability. Joseph Conrad portrays a woman who is very strategic and complex in her actions which places her in multiple roles. Throughout the narrative, she is referred to as having an “unfathomable look” about her, which leaves a lot unexpressed about Winnie—except her commitment to her brother, Stevie. The narrator of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, takes the reader on a ride full of secrecy and lack of communication between its characters, and the true secret agent of The Secret Agent emerges not as Verloc but his wife Winnie.
Women were not expected to have major roles in the family, and the narrator shows how Winnie is truly a secret agent this from the first paragraph. He says, “Mr. Verloc…left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law…And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law” (17). Winnie is already placed in a dual role, she is not the one placed in charge but she is the one who is in charge because her brother is mentally disabled. She claims the role of a double agent from the start. Winnie knows that she has to play different roles to gain the life she wants for her mother and more importantly, Stevie. The narrator explains how Mr. Verloc told Winnie that his work was of the political nature, and that she would have to be polite to his political friend...
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...the end when she seeks vengeance on his behalf. Winnie played the roles of wife, shopkeeper, sister, and daughter but was really only being a sister. By the end of the novel, Winnie is more of a secret agent that her husband, because she is the one with secrets that are not uncovered until the end. She enters a loveless marriage for the sake of her family, assuming the role of “wife” so that she can provide food and shelter for her brother and mother. Despite her not being able to successfully complete her mission, she still eliminates her target after his interference—which is the actions of a true secret agent.
Works Cited
Lawall, Sarah N. “The Oresteia.” The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 107-205. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent. New York: Modern Library, 1998. Project Gutenberg. Web.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
Ugur, Neslihan Guler. "Self-destructive forces in Oates' women." Studies in Literature and Language 4.3 (2012): 35+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
The women in both Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are seemingly presented with traditional feminine qualities of inferiority, weakness, and sexual objectification. However, the power that they hold in male-female relationships, and their embodiment of traditional male roles, contests the chauvinistic views of society during Conrad and Hardy’s era. While Conrad presents powerful female characters through their influences over men, the reversal of traditional gender roles is exemplified more by Hardy’s character, Tess, yet both authors present revolutionary ideas of feminism, and enlighten readers to challenge the patriarchal views of society towards women. Both novels criticize traditional societal views towards women by the hypocrisy of Conrad’s Marlow, and Hardy’s narrator’s male gaze. Prince’s death, the rape and her arrest all happened to her whilst asleep.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake." Studies in the Novel 43.4 (2011): 470. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
American Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 783-791
Lawall, Sarah N. “The Odyssey.” The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 206-495. Print.
In my research essay for my English Composition 2 class, I will be analyzing the different gender roles in Notes from the Underground and Death of a Salesman. Often times, in American Literature work, gender roles are used very differently due to whomever wrote it. This story and play fall into the category of “traditional” gender roles that are given to males and females based off of society and what is expected of males and females. I will use the gender approach to explain that roles in families and society are based off of gender. I will also compare a feminist approach to the gender approach and see how they are different. In Author Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
Dalnekoff, Donna Isaacs. "Eldorado as an, ‘Impossible Dream’." Readings on Candide. Ed. Thomas Walsh. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2001. P64-71. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 vol. 110. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center.
The "Hills Like White Elephants." In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 8th ed. New York:
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol C. 9th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 2313-2358. Print.
Do you believe that women of this present generation have always received the same level of respect as they receive now? Today, women are treated exceptionally well as compared to their counterparts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and treated even better than those in the very early years of America. Women in the past were restricted from freedoms and rights; their individuality was stripped and they were constantly forced to meet the constraining view of a “traditional” America. In contrast, women of modern America are granted a level of recognition and respect unexplored by American women of previous generations.
This essay consists of two separate parts but the intention is that both these parts will prove to be relevant from the point of view of what this essay sets out to study. The first part will present Joseph Conrad's life and some of his works and the latter part will consist of a comparison of two of Conrad's works, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent. In this essay I will begin from two assumptions, namely, that both the works mentioned above include clearly identifiable similarities in their narration, theme and method, and, that Conrad's own experiences and views have had great effect on both works.