Idgy Nelson Snavely AP English P3 12 February 2024 Joan Didion’s Contribution to Journalism With the second wave of feminism on the rise in the sixties, journalism played a major part in society. Joan Didion was at the center of this social movement while living in Los Angeles, California, at this time. Didion was a journalist, essayist, and fiction author who mainly reported on social injustice in America in the sixties. Her writing was monumental in the way journalism was seen and operated. Joan Didion’s direct tone, relatable topics, and insight into both positive and negative aspects of society creates a unique style seen in her writing. The shrewd tone seen in Joan Dididon’s essays such as “On Morality” creates a desire within her readers …show more content…
She also mentions the political aspects of many areas around the United States. These anecdotes showcase how politics are closely intertwined with the region. Part of why the essay “On the Road” creates a significant impact on her audience is the relatability or lack thereof. Didion writes about all aspects of traveling on a press tour, including flying first class, room service, limo drivers, and bedside breakfasts. While this essay is seen as extremely relatable to a small number of upper-class people, many others find her life to be far off from reality. In “On the Road” Didion confesses, “I stopped reading newspapers and started relying on bulletins from limo drivers, from Mouseketeers, from the callers-in on call-in shows and from the closed-circuit screens in airports that flashed random stories off the wire between advertisements for Shenandoah.”(Didion, On the Road). For those who do not find her lifestyle relatable, they find joy in the stories she tells about her exciting lifestyle. The extravagant stories she recounts serve as the American dream for those who cannot live it …show more content…
Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968 — The White Album. Simon & Schuster, 1979 Evans, Sara M. "Second-Wave Feminism." Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, edited by Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams, Charles Scribner's Sons, bbb2001. Gale In Context: High School, bbblink.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2350030124/SUIC?u=edmo80637&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=7dbbba92bbc. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024. Felton, Sharon. A. "Joan Didion: a writer of scope and substance." Hollins Critic, vol. 78, no. 1. 26. No. 58, no. 58. 4, bbbOct. - bbbOct. 1989, pp. 113-117. 1+. The. Gale In Context: High School, bbblink.gale.com/apps/doc/A133018787/SUIC?u=edmo80637&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=e94ebbbc6ed. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024. Harrison, Barbara. Grizzuti. Joan Didion: The Courage of Her Afflictions. Discovering bbbAuthors, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: High School, bbblink.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2101203182/SUIC?u=edmo80637&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=47bbb9e3248. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024. The Women’s Movement. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by William A. Darity, Jr., 2nd ed., vol. 9, Macmillan Reference USA, 2008, pp. 113-117. 116. The ECB - 118. Gale In Context: bbbHigh School, bbblink.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3045302985/SUIC?u=edmo80637&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=debbbd10d47. Accessed 27 Feb.
Society continually places restrictive standards on the female gender not only fifty years ago, but in today’s society as well. While many women have overcome many unfair prejudices and oppressions in the last fifty or so years, late nineteenth and early twentieth century women were forced to deal with a less understanding culture. In its various formulations, patriarchy posits men's traits and/or intentions as the cause of women's oppression. This way of thinking diverts attention from theorizing the social relations that place women in a disadvantageous position in every sphere of life and channels it towards men as the cause of women's oppression (Gimenez). Different people had many ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities amound women, including expressing their voices and opinions through their literature. By writing stories such as Daisy Miller and The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic that took a major toll in American History. In this essay, I am going to compare Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to James’ “Daisy Miller” as portraits of American women in peril and also the men that had a great influence.
In their works, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin show that freedom was not universal in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The three works, "The Yellow Wallpaper," "At the 'Cadian Ball," and "The Storm" expose the oppression of women by society. This works also illustrate that those women who were passive in the face of this oppression risk losing not only their identity, but their sanity as well.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental feminism and literature's ancestral house: Another look at The Yellow Wallpaper". Women's Studies. 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Novels that are written by pronounced authors in distinct periods can possess many parallels and differences. In fact, if we were to delve further into Zora Neale Hurstons, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, we can draw upon many similarities. Now of course there are the obvious comparisons, such as Janie is African American and poor, unlike Edna who is white and wealthy, but there is much more than just ethnicity and materialistic wealth that binds these two characters together. Both novels portray a society in which the rights of women and their few opportunities in life are strictly governed, usually breaking the mold that has been made for them to follow The Cult of True Womanhood. These novels further explore these women’s relationships and emotions, proving that throughout the ages of history women have wanted quite similar things out life. Similarly they interconnect in the fact that the end of the stories are left for interpretation from the reader. Both these women in these novels are being woken up to the world around themselves. They are not only waking up to their own understanding of themselves as women and individuals that are not happy in the domestic world of their peers, but they are also awakening themselves as sexual beings.
A. Women in Modern America: A Brief History. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974. Glaspell, Susan. A. Trifles. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed.
Lois Tyson’s text, Critical Theory Today (2006), explains the various theories that are utilized to critique literature and explain plots, themes, and characters. With feminist literary theory, Tyson writes, “Broadly defined, feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (83). With Edna Pontellier, her place in the story relies on her husband’s social status; her husband, Leonce Pontellier, is a successful businessman in New Orleans and wants to maintain appearances of success and marital stability. With Leonce, a product of society, he sees and treats Edna as an object: “‘You are burnt beyond recognition,’ he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin 44).
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
Throughout history society has been controlled by men, and because of this women were exposed to some very demanding expectations. A woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a maid, and sexually obedient to men. As a form of patriarchal silencing any woman who deviated from these expectations was often a victim of physical, emotional, and social beatings. Creativity and individuality were dirty, sinful and very inappropriate for a respectful woman. By taking away women’s voices, men were able to remove any power that they might have had. In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient women, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty emotionless shell. In men’s eyes this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Women's Studies 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Showalter, E. 1989. “The Female Tradition.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. New York: St. Martin’s.
Abrams 1604 - 1606. Peterson, Linda H. "What Is Feminist Criticism?" Wuthering Heights. Ed. Linda H. Peterson, Ph.D. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992.