Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Different gender roles in different cultures
Different gender roles in different cultures
Women in indian society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Different gender roles in different cultures
Self Control Reading this as a girl, it seemed very offensive to all women. Why do men think women are weaker than men? In the “The Dinner Party”, written by Mona Gardner, it portrays the idea of self control in both genders isn’t equal. This story takes place in India where a young girl is having a conversation at a dinner party with government officials and their wives. The men argued that women don’t have the self control to control their fears when they see something scary. Even though some men don’t think that women have self control, it has been shown that women have a lot of self control when handling scary situations, especially when the situation puts others lives in danger. In this story it proves that some women can have a lot of self control when it is putting others lives in danger. During the dinner argument the hostess told a servant boy to put a bowl of milk out as bait for a cobra. “An American scientist saw this and told everyone to be completely still while he counted to three hundred and whoever moved while he counted would have to give up 50 rupees”. This is proving that women can have self control when in dangerous times. This story is showing how …show more content…
“Towards the end of his counting the cobra went outside to the bowl of milk and he slammed the doors shutting it out. The man then went on saying that the scientist had just proved that men have more self control than women, but then the scientist asked the hostess how she knew there was a cobra. She said “because it was lying across my foot.” Some women can and will have the self control to not jump or scream at the sight of a mouse, cobra, or something scary. When women are in scary situations they have an instinct to protect people like it was their own kid and in doing that they have to remain calm. Thus saying women are not as strong as men in stressful situations is not
If a woman was raised to protect her self and to fend for herself, then she is less of a target. If a woman was raised to depend on others for everything, then she is more of a target. Silko told her readers how she was raised to protect herself. Her father took her to the river and taught her how to shoot guns in order to defend herself. Being raised to defend herself paid off when the man followed her to the pet store. She was not afraid because she knew how to defend herself with her gun and that scared him away. If a woman was raised to depend on other people, then they depend on the state to keep them safe. They depend on the police enforcing the law and mandatory
In “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid’s use of repetitive syntax and intense diction help to underscore the harsh confines within which women are expected to exist. The entire essay is told from the point of view of a mother lecturing her daughter about how to be a proper lady. The speaker shifts seamlessly between domestic chores—”This is how you sweep a house”—and larger lessons: “This is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all…” (Kincaid 1). The way in which the speaker bombards the girl overwhelms the reader, too. Every aspect of her life is managed, to the point where all of the lessons she receives throughout her girlhood blur together as one run-on sentence.
The author's views on women may never be fully revealed, but it is clear that he believes in male superiority and that insurgent females ought to be suppressed. Like Wealhtheow, females should only exert minimal power and influence, but they should always keep the drinks coming.
In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals still held sway in American society, at least among members of the middle and upper classes. Thus the cult of True Womanhood was still promoted which preached four cardinal virtues for women: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Women were considered far more religious than men and, therefore, they had to be pure in heart, mind, and, of course, body, not engaging in sex until marriage, and even then not finding any pleasure in it. They were also supposed to be passive responders to men's decisions, actions, and needs. The true woman's place was her home; "females were uniquely suited to raise children, care for the needs of their menfolk, and devote their lives to creating a nurturing home environment." (Norton, 108). However, the tensions between old and new, traditional and untraditional, were great during the last years of nineteenth century and there was a debate among male and female writers and social thinkers as to what the role of women should be. Among the female writers who devoted their work to defying their views about the woman's place in society were Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin.
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
In the military physical strength and endurance is a major element to nearly every task. Having endurance and sustainable strength is very vital in many instances but most importantly in the combat zone. Men are physically stronger and can tolerate more than women naturally. Hypothetically if there was a situation where a troop was injured and needed to be carried out of a fighting zone it would make more sense for a man to carry the troop out because they can tolerate the weight more easily then a woman. Women are built to have children, and while they are capable of heavy lifting and have remarkable endurance, it is a different level than men. Looking back men have always been hunters, gatherers, ultimately being the ones who do all the physical work. After decades of these physical life styles that men have endured and the homemaker life style women have come to obtain it is clear that the order of nature has spoken. The normality of women being the only ones that can produce children and men gain strength more easil...
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers of children. Only with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension comes from men, society, in general, and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper" and “The Story of an Hour," focus on a woman’s fix near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting
In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.
middle of paper ... ... Women are always going to seem weaker than men, no matter how independent they are or how capable they seem to be able to handle the same punishment as me. At the same time, by being the weaker link, women have a certain advantage over men that could work in their favor depending on the situation at hand. Works Cited Anderson, E. A. & Co. (1976)
Not only are women expected to lead lives in which they depend on men to be happy and wealthy, but they are expected to do so with total obedience to the expectations of men. It is important to see how women react to the requests of men and how much freedom for thought and action they are allowed to have and what consequences occur when a woman disobeys what is asked of her.
Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth," discusses the impact of our male-dominated society upon women. Wolf argues that women's most significant problems associated with societal pressures are a "fairly recent invention," dating back to the 1970s (6). She explains that women have "breached the power structure" by acquiring rights equal to men in areas such as, education, professional careers, and voting. As a result, Wolf suggests that the "beauty myth" is the "last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has the power to control those women" (3). Considering that the beauty myth is women's last battle, the struggle is increasingly more difficult. Wolf claims that women are currently experiencing "a violent backlash against feminism," noting the recent rise in eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and objectification of women's bodies (3,2). While Wolf accurately defines the beauty myth, she incorrectly states that eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and pornography are recent issues, resulting from an intentional "backlash" against women's rights.
In Iris Marion Young’s composition Throwing Like a Girl, Young highlights how the body movement of women reflects the stressors of their environment: a patriarchal society. Young places an emphasis on how the behavior of women prioritizes the protection of their bodies, and that the “immediate bodily impulse [of women] is to flee, duck, or otherwise protect [themselves]” (Young 34). I view this as a repercussion of the indisputable fact that men are more often than not the instigators of violence, and women are their most frequent victims. Young sheds light on how the fear perpetuated by a world predominantly centered in the ideals of male chauvinism drives women to complete tasks with “timidity, uncertainty, and hesitancy” (Young 34), as they
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” shows in society how a woman should be placed and what it means to be a woman. A women doesn’t question her partner, instead she is subservient to him. A woman’s duties include staying at home taking care of the children and cooking; while the man works and brings home the money. A feministic approach to Kincaid’s “Girl” points to the idea of the stereotypes that women can only be what they do in the home, they should only be pure and virtuous, and their main focus should be satisfying their husband.
middle of paper ... ... women know and think that if they don’t act or behave to their expectations they will. looked down upon and possibly neglected by their family and society. To avoid losing friends and family, most male and female, construct their own role in their life.
The passage, The Dinner Party is obviously trying to send a message to all people that men and women are equal. I can conclude that this is the running theme because the passage was written by a women. The author includes characters that have very strong opinions about what they think. The Dinner Party was created to get all people thinking about how they treat people of the opposite gender. A fantastic example of this in the story is when the young girl and a colonel argue about the jumping-on-a-chair-at-the-sight-of-a-mouse era.