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Examples of Social Power in The Artificial Silk Girl
Throughout The Artificial Silk Girl, one can see examples of how social power is exercised and responded too. The Artificial Silk Girl takes place during the last leg of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was a time era when women were trying to emancipate themselves. This involved them trying to prove that women can be more than just either a mother/Madonna or a street walker/prostitute. They were able to blur these lines by taking up jobs, participating in sexual encounters that did not tarnish their reputation and doing other acts that were previously only viewed as acceptable for men to do. The protagonist of The Artificial Silk Girl, Doris, views herself as a modern urban woman and in doing so challenges the previously construed views of women prior to the Weimar Republic. By doing so she believes that has attained an amount or social power.
The flaneur is a man who strolls through the streets with a nonchalant ease and appears to observe the city and its inhabitants. These men can walk through the streets and not be worried that they will be faced with someone who has ill intent aimed towards them. When a woman walks with the gait of a flaneur she has to be careful that she is not perceived as a streetwalker instead for it is only by her gait that a woman can be distinguished from a streetwalker and a woman merely walking the streets. Once Doris becomes the surrogate wife of Ernst she is able to become a flaneuse or a female flaneur. She exercises this social power by walking through the streets without Ernst in order to get groceries. Doris was once thought to be a streetwalker where she was accosted but she was able to defer the unwanted attention by informing t...
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...herself and turn the male gaze upon herself (Keun 84, 3).
When Keun uses the male gaze she is taking away any power that Doris may have accrued and giving it to her male counterparts. This is because Doris does not have the ability to describe herself. Instead, while looking in a mirror she uses a desexualized view to describe a sexually confident woman. In effect she doesn’t know who she is, she only knows herself by way of how she believes others (males) see her. The way Doris carries herself though it is almost as if she doesn’t even know that this is happening. She still believes herself to be the one in power even though she is continually proven otherwise. This might be due to the fact that during the Weimar Republic, even though women were gaining power, it was the men who held all of the social power and women only thought that they held most of the power.
Russell’s story takes place in old Japan where Women become hybrids of silkworm and human, they live and work in a mill where they produce thread. The whole procedure to get the thread from their bodies to turn into silk is just as awful as the machine from The Penal Colony. The machine is described as “. . . a great steel-and-wood beast with a dozen rotating eyes and steaming mouths-it’s twenty meters long and takes up half the room. . . Pulleys swing our damp threat left and right across it, refining it into finished silk” (Russell 31). In order to remove the threads from their body, they dip their hands into boiling water, which helps loosen the thread then machine reels it from them and turns it into silk. These poor women are treated like animals, they are made to work continuously in an environment that reminds me of a sweatshop. They have no choice but to work because of their mutated bodies so even if they didn’t want to, they’ll have to. The machine has so much power over the women because it relieves them of the silk that builds up within them. At a certain of the story, one worker, Kitsune who is the main character goes on strike. The story describes her body as “her belly is grotesquely distended and stippled with lumps, like a sow’s pregnant with a litter of ten piglets. Her excess thread is packed in knots. Strangling Dai from within.”
The men in the factories looked at the women coming in as just an extra pair of hands. They were mostly indifferent. Even so, the women could not date the men. This rule was more of a control effort and a bit of the women not being seeing as respectable women. Yet, the bosses were at a lost because they were not used to women working. The bosses tried to enforce rules; when they were broken, the bosses did not know how to punish the women because they were women. The women had to wear hats, even if their hair was longer than the men. The women did not like this because they felt as though they were being discriminated against. They would wear slacks and carry tools because the men had to, but the men did not wear head coverings. Also, everyone that worked in the factories, besides the factory women, viewed them as girls because a true woman would be at home taking care of the house. They had to trade in their smooth soft hands for rough hands filled with
Another issue that the writer seemed to have swept below the carpet is the morality of women. First, women seemed to have been despised until they started excelling in mass advertising. Also, the author seems to peg the success of the modern woman to clothing and design. This means that women and cloths are but the same thing. In fact, it seems that a woman’s sex appeal determine her future endeavours, according to the author. It is through this that I believe that the author would have used other good virtues of women to explain
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
She showcases a variety of different scenarios, standards, and occupations that women were subjected to at the time. This helps the readers to see the difficulties women of that time period had to overcome to secure what little rights they were able. The oppression of working class women did not just affect those said individuals, but in turn, males, children, and other upper class females. Stansell’s ability to look beyond the normal subject matter permits her to capture the inimitable atmosphere surrounding the struggle of an assorted group of women to find their footing within the society of a nation that was facing its own struggle of independent and prominence. Thus, giving City of Women a fascinating edge against other books of a similar
...le dominance over female acquiescence. His goal is to ascertain that those qualities identified as feminine are used to undermine those qualities considered masculine. Kesey minimizes the mental suffering of the male patients while focusing on the inability of a woman to have control over men and keep it without resorting to emasculatory tactics. This is a social commentary on the representation of a woman or an institutional system that abuses power (Leach; Termpaperwarehouse.com).
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
Power, especially in the hands of females, can be a force for immense societal changes. Director Sciamma plays with the role of power in the lives of the four girls, predominantly in the character of Lady. Lady’s sense of control, stems from winning hand on hand fights, but the opinion of the men around her lays the foundation of this empowerment. The more fights Lady wins, the more the men appear to respect her, yet as feminist Simone de Beauvoir explains “[n]o matter how kindly, how equally men treated me when I tried to participate in politics, when it came right down to it, they had more rights, so they had more power than I did (Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex- ix),” the “power” Lady obtained was provisional. Lady’s power was directly tied to the opinion of the men around her, in this scene, a portion of the boys sits on stairs physically higher than Lady, invoking a sense of power hierarchy and control. The boys only valued Lady when she successfully participated in the their world of violence, but this participation came with boundaries as “[w]omen can never become fully socialized into patriarchy- which in turn causes man to fear women and leads then, on the one hand, to establish very strict boundaries between their own sex and the female sex (Feminist theory 142).” The men had never truly incorporated Lady into their group, she had just
“A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating: “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right”! He could speak a little spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door (1).The caged birds are meant to represent women in society committed inside the house and existing for the pleasure of man. The parrot represents Edna and her true inner feelings that she doesn’t revel. The hidden feeling are represented by the fact that the parrot is caged. The mockingbird also tagged, represents Mademoiselle Reisz with the whistling notes it produces. Moreover, this mocking bird is capable of understanding the parrots spanish in the same way Mademoiselle Reisz is capable of understanding Edna. In this Victorian era the caged bird represent the women who are expected to have no other role than that which is assigned; being a wife and mother without true freedom. Like the birds, the women’s movements are limited by society, and they are unable to communicate with the world around them. And It seemed as when they got married they were committed to doing one thing and one thing only. In addition to symbolism Chopin describes Edna “A bird with a broken wing... reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down.” (115). This
Offred and a friend of hers were walking outside one day, saw a group of tourists and thought about how “[she] used to dress like [the tourists]” (Atwood 28). The tourists were wearing clothing and makeup such as skirts above their knees and red lipstick. Offred and her friend were fascinated and envious of these women. They couldn’t imagine themselves wearing clothes like the tourist were wearing. Even though they couldn’t imagine themselves wearing those type of clothes and makeup, they used to wear it in their past. Offred remembered herself going to the laundromat and putting “[her] own clothes, [her] own soap, [and her] own money” into the machines and “having such control” over what she used to do (Atwood 24). She doesn’t have that control over her life anymore. Some women, such as Aunt Lydia, feels that she should be grateful that she doesn’t have to do those things anymore. They feel that Offred is complaining about something that is actually a good thing. Society brainwashes these women into thinking that not having that kind of freedom is a good thing. Society also makes women think that they are just good for having children and sex. Therefore, women lose self-esteem because of the pressure that they are faced with on a daily basis. For example, in the story, Offred has low self-esteem. She “[avoids] looking at her body, not so much because it 's shameful or immodest but because [she doesn’t]
The Second Industrial Revolution had a major impact on women's lives. After being controlled fro so long women were experiencing what it was like to live an independent life. In the late nineteenth century women were participating in a variety of experiences, such as social disabilities confronted by all women, new employment patterns, and working class poverty and prostitution. These experiences will show how women were perceived in the Second Industrial Revolution.
Women were perceived as either being a housewife, a nurturer, or a person for company. They did not have the right to vote till later on, work, and if they had an opinion that a male do not agree with, women are considered “wicked”; not savvy, not prudent but wicked to the core. It is unfair, unethical, atrocious, but through it all there was one female who dared to challenge the mind of men and the notion that women can be more than what men perceive them as being. Her name is Margaret Fuller. The goals of Margaret Fuller were precise. Men should realize that women are not an epitome of a statue but human beings, just as men, women can achieve full adulthood and citizenship, but most vitally Margaret aimed to change the assumptions about
Close reading reveals more than one possible answer to this question, but the overriding theme seems sympathetic to the Lady. By applying "the feminist critique" (Peterson 333-334) to Tennyson's famous poem, one may begin to understand how "The Lady of Shalott" not only analyzes, but actually critiques the attitudes that held women back and, in the end, makes a hopeful, less patriarchal statement about the place of women in Victorian society. As noted in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, the Industrial Revolution provided women with opportunities to work outside the home, but it also "presented an increasing challenge to traditional ideas of woman's sphere" ("Role of Women" 902). The idea of "public and private life as two'separate spheres'. inextricably connected either with women or with men" (Gorham 4) had emerged as an upper-class Victorian ideal amongst the "strains of modernization" ("Role of Women" 902)....
In actuality, she was defiant, and ate macaroons secretly when her husband had forbidden her to do so. She was quite wise and resourceful. While her husband was gravely ill she forged her father’s signature and borrowed money without her father or husband’s permission to do so and then boastfully related the story of doing so to her friend, Mrs. Linde. She was proud of the sacrifices she made for her husband, but her perceptions of what her husband truly thought of her would become clear. She had realized that the childlike and submissive role she was playing for her husband was no longer a role she wanted to play. She defied the normal roles of the nineteenth century and chose to find her true self, leaving her husband and children
The role of women has changed significantly throughout history, driven by women who took risks in setting examples for others to follow. Henrik Isben, author of A Doll's House, said “ A woman cannot be herself in society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view” (Innes 147). This proves that Isben was aware of male dominance in society during that time period. In his drama, “A Doll's House,” it deals with gender favoritism and male dominance.