The Ideal vs. The Real
Raina lives in a make-believe world, and she is aware of it, though she believes it is a more noble world than the one other people live in: “the world is really a glorious world for women who can see its glory and men who can act its romance” (Act I, p. 4). She and Sergius declare one another knight and lady, an example of the “higher love” (Act II, p. 31). Raina is always found posing, dreaming, or making a dramatic entrance. Her mother and father note her uncanny ability to come into a room at the right moment: “Yes, she listens for it,” Catherine says (Act II, p. 28). Life for Raina is what she picks up at the opera season in Bucharest. Extending sanctuary to an enemy was in the opera she saw, and so she saves Bluntschli’s life.
Bluntschli believes Raina is underage because of her romantic pretense. He is surprised to learn she is twenty-three. He admits he admires her thrilling voice, but he cannot believe a single word she says, he declares to her. He points out in his direct way in Act III.(add a quote from the text) that her life is a lie. Raina is relieved to be accepted as she is, a real person with faults. She is surprised to find she has more affection for her “chocolate cream soldier” who admits to hunger, cold, fear, and cowardice than for Sergius, who is full of noble bombast. She
…show more content…
She plays on Sergius’s sense of rebellious individualism to get him to defy social convention. She shows him that underneath his noble rhetoric, they are both human and made of the same “clay” (Act II, p. 35). Nicola gives Louka lessons on how to change classes through her thinking and actions. He teaches her to stop wearing false hair and make-up, to trim her nails and keep her hands clean. He tells her a lady must act as if she will get her own way. He lies to Sergius and says that Louka has been reading in the library, trying to get education above her
BNW Literary Lens Essay- Marxist Since the primitive civilizations of Mesopotamia and the classical kingdoms of Greece and Rome, people have always been divided. Up to the status quo, society has naturally categorized people into various ranks and statuses. With the Marxist literary lens, readers can explore this social phenomenon by analyzing depictions of class structure in literature. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, readers are introduced to a dystopian society with a distinctive caste system.
As Rand refutes a principal concept of socialism, she illustrates multiple counts of insubordination and social class structures. Socialism’s attempt to remove class structure fails miserably. The most prominent demonstration of rebellion rises from Equality 7-2521 and his emotions and desire for knowledge. After being denied by the Council of Scholars, Equality 7-2521 rashly breaks a window and flees “in a ringing rain of glass” (Rand 75). Equality 7-2521’s actions illustrate the ‘working class’ rebelling against the ‘elitists’ though this society attempted to eliminate social structures. Furthermore, Equality 7-2521 was not alone in rebelling against ‘the brotherhood’, Liberty 5-3000 followed his example. Unsatisfied with her life and the suppression of emotion, she followed Equality 7-2521’s example and “on the night of the day when we heard it, we ran away from the Home of Peasants” (Rand 82). The rebellion of the two members reflects the means of a social rev...
Furthermore, within the play these "facades" belonging to the confident upper classes of the period are like wise displayed amongst the lower classes. For example, during the interaction between Christine and Katharina Binder (pp. 133-135 ), Katharina almost lectures Christine on the appropriate and expected behaviour of young working class girls within the Viennese `Vorstadt' - it
The rapid development of global economy with the opening of new markets worldwide gave way to the development of new means of production and also to the change of ideologies across the world. Alongside with that, the division between different groups or classes within societies became more apparent as some people got richer and other poorer. These two phenomena, the worldwide development of industries and consequent class struggles, have been analyzed by two major thinkers of their times, Karl Marx and Robert Reich. Their essays have been influential and are similar in sense that they analyze existing conditions of societies and give projections on future fates of people, or more specifically, fates of classes. In this paper, the main focus will be on the fate of the wealthiest people; these are the bourgeois for Marx and symbolic analysts for Reich. More specifically, it will be argued that the rich people will be in the worst position according to Marx and this position will cover two aspects: material aspect, which is how well the rich will eventually manage their properties, and the inherent antagonism of classes and its consequences for the wealthy.
In the novel wealth plays vital impact on the lives of the characters, money defines social stature, in my perspective middle class was practically nonexistent, established wealthy individuals
With this in mind, some perspective on the society of that time is vital. During this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and so on. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Now, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class can no longer live a normal life following their own pursuits, but are lowered to working inhumane hours in these factories. This widens the gap between the upper and lower class-called bourgeois and proletariat-until they are essentially two different worlds. The bourgeois, a tiny portion of the population, has the majority of the wealth while the proletariat, t...
In his play Fuenteovejuna, Lope de Vega presents his audience with a provocative subversion of traditional class dynamics, depicting the peasants of the village of Fuenteovejuna revolting against and then killing the Commander who presides over them. This dramatic disruption of conventional class hierarchies would certainly be shocking to Vega’s original 17th century audience because they would be familiar with the structure of feudal societies such as the town of Fuenteovejuna. On the other hand, a modern audience lacks the necessary knowledge of European feudal politics to truly experience the same impact as an audience from Vega’s era. To remedy this issue, the class conflict in Fuenteovejuna should be portrayed as a Marxist revolution,
This story may seem solely comedic, but within it is a darker tale of a Russia where, in the current times and those prior to it, social rank and position were key. ...
Immediately, the story sets off with Vera living under the rule of an autocratic mother who wants to have her marry the son of their tenement block owner. Although Vera has aspirations of her own, she is bound to a lifelong servitude to her family and a loveless marriage to which she does not want to commit. This shows how not only men contributed to women’s subordination in Russia, but the women had a social role in this as well. Vera’s mother wants her to marry rich in hopes of gaining money, power, and status. All of these motives show how Vera’s mother thinks in her own best interest before her daughter’s happiness, and even hints at how desperate not only women, but people of lower class were to escape their social stigma. However, arranged marriage and lifelong servitude is not unique in only...
Poverty on social conditions affects everyone in every part of the world, no matter if they are rich or poor. First of all, everyone is divided into some sort of social class. The most known classes are the economic classes- the lower class, the middle class, and the higher class. The lower class goes through arduous labor all day and night to earn decent amounts of money to provide for themselves and their families. Most likely, they are the only source of income for the entire family. The higher class works hard to keep up or raise their high social status. They also work hard so they don’t loss their social rank, which permits them to hold a higher power over the middle and lower classes. Similarities of decisions made by characters in these two literary works will analyzed to understand the meaning behind the actions and influences of the social classes on each other.
She does not spew out all the reasons why she loves Othello or say that she is unavoidably attracted to him as she could have. Instead, she picks a practical reason –
The problem with society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the equality of all persons was few and far between. The bourgeoisie was in control of all the power and the proletariats were basically under their control. It was as if the bourgeoisie “originated out of the old medieval peasant class, in opposition to the medieval titled aristocracy.” [ii] They had taken over everything; the oppressed class lived by their rules and ways of life. Their way of life was not a happy one; family was based upon money instead of love. “Capital developed in the same proportion as the class of laborers developed.” ii Life then seemed simple for those living the life of the bourgeoisie, b...
In his literary work, Eça’s female characters are marked for life and are either weak or are prostitutes; in the case of Genoveva in “The Tragedy”, she is the latter (King and Sousa 200).
A clear theme recognized while reading “A Modest Proposal” is the division of social classes during this time. The classes Swift refers to is between the lower class poor tenants and the upper class wealthy landlords. The
Perdita ultimately takes on the natural image of Proserpina as well as her role as a lost daughter. Through the flowers Perdita mentions, she effectively manages to describe not only her own identity, but that of the goddess. Even though Antigones abandons the shepherdess at birth, Perdita’s missing person and questionable identity causes others to also lose the ones they love and opportunities they could have had. Because the loss of Perdita creates significant loss for others, it is as though the maiden has a hand in others’ lives, much like the gods. Thus her indirect intervention, image, and role as a lost daughter all play a key part in her representation of Proserpina.