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Treatment of women in literature
Literature gender roles
Gender roles and literature
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Glaspell is showing how both men and women view households in a different perspective. All the men who were asked to go to Minnie to find evidence to convict her as they took their wives. The two ladies kept coming across clues of a disordered household that the men mocked as to be nothing. The women found an unfinished quilt with a weird pattern, and a strangled canary. They women insinuated that these small details were the motivations of Minnie murdering her husband. The women were sympathetic towards Minnie and talked about her husband being controlling. Glaspell had created a courtroom and women had become the jurors and decided that Minnie was not guilty for her actions. They judged on humanity and not legal aspects. The whole time they withheld the evidence they found from the men investigators because they are supposed representatives of the law in this story. Relating to the story since the men are the law or authorities, they presumably ignore or reject many elements of life or explanation; like unequal rights. …show more content…
According to the Ethic of Care PowerPoint “Men reason ethically based on principles, while women reason more concretely based on relationships”.
(Slide 3). Gilligan argues how women have initiated another way of looking at ethics. Gilligan pointed out that there are two types of moral reasoning’s. Male ethics are of justice and female ethics of care. The ethics of care for women is directed to the respond of the needs of others in complicated situations. This approach mainly involves concepts like having compassion, relationships, and responsibilities. (Slide 18). Ethics of justice thinks that the situation is important in determining how it should be treated. Men base justice on rights, applying the rules to everyone and responsibility goes toward codes of conduct. (Slide 19). Male perspectives are held more publicly and are concrete on rights of law. Women on the other hand perceive things as a private
matter.
I. Article Summary: Suzy Clarkson Holstein's article, “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell's 'Trifles'” evaluates the play Trifles and how the difference between the men in the play mirror how a woman's perspective is very different from a man's. Trifles is about two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who show up at a house with their husbands and the county attorney to investigate a murder. The entire time the men are looking for evidence to implicate the accused wife, Minnie Wright, of killing her husband. Meanwhile, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are there to gather up some items to bring Minnie Wright in jail. While doing so, the women uncover evidence that would prove the wife is culpable but decide to hide it from the men in the last moments of the play. Trifles is evaluated on how the women are able to come up with the evidence unlike the men because they didn't approach it like a crime scene but rather a home, “By contrast, the women arrive at a home. Although neither they or the men realize it, they too are conducting an investigation” (Holstein 283). Holstein also notes they are able to find evidence because they use their own life experiences to relate to the accused murderer, Minnie Wright as shown here; “But the women do not simply remember and sympathize with Minnie. They identify with her, quite literally” (285). Holstein finishes the article by noting the women decide to hide the evidence because of the solidarity they feel towards Minnie Wright; “From Mrs. Hale's perspective, people are linked together through fragile, sometimes imperceptible strands. The tiny trifles of life –a neighbor's visit, a bird's song, the sewing of a quilt –have profound reverberations” (287).
Glaspell exposed how this dominance can be physically and mentally damaging to the women by displaying the sexist interactions between males and females. According to the article “Representations of Rural Women in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles”, Raja Al-Khalili states “Susan Glaspell used domestic violence as a motif to arouse questions concerning motives that lead women, who are relegated to the house, to become physical aggressors.” (132) Glaspell uses hidden clues such as the men having important professions, and how these professions play a huge role in the hierarchy of male dominance. These specific professions were being the town’s sheriff and the court appointed attorney. Another example, in the beginning of the play, Glaspell uses great imagery to show us the men stand by the stove and the women by the door during a cold time. This essays demonstrates the changes the characters underwent and displays the physical and mental damage that Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Peters endured during this male central
Hale and Mrs. Peters find and withhold evidence that could convict Minnie Wright of murder. The women are reluctant to admit that they have found proof of motive for Wright’s murder; Mrs. Peters repeats “We don’t know who killed him,” to Mrs. Hale (502). The very last sentence of the story, spoken by Mrs. Hale, “We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson,” plays on the women absolving Mrs. Wright of any guilt for her crime, deciding that she is “not it” and not guilty (504). With that in mind, readers may question what right Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters have to pardon Mrs. Wright from her crime. As Bendel-Simso states, “while the women can seek Justice for other women, the men in charge of the case . . . can seek Justice only for men (their peers), and can only impose Law upon women.” Without understanding what women of the time were going through, how could the men in the story judiciously decide a punishment for Minnie Wright or even determine her
...g to conceive to her audience by proving all opinions matter no matter whose it is. By looking in the past the audience can see that the story shows some significant similarities to the time it was written in. Glaspell shows women how a united cause can show the world that women should have just as much rights as men do. The theme of the story is expressly told through how and why Mr. Wright is murdered and Mrs. Peters transformation at the end of the story. Film adaptations that changed the title of Trifles to A Jury of Her Peers probably did it to appeal to the male audience and include a double meaning of how a jury can hold bias even with evidence directly given to them.
In Trifles, the play takes place at an abandon house at a farm where John Wright and his wife, Minnie Wright lived. John was killed with a rope around his neck while his wife was asleep. The neighbor, county attorney and sheriff came to the crime scene for investigation. Along with them came their wives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters; they were told to grab some belongings for Mrs. Wright that she may need while she’s in custody. Once they all entered the home the men dismissed the kitchen finding it as unimportant. The three men focused more on legal regulations of the law. The play was mostly revolved around the women, discovering the motive through “trifles” and other symbolic things that had significance to Minnie’s guilt. When Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters understood the reason behind the murdering they hid the evidence from their husbands, and kept quiet. Many readers would visualize this play as a feminist point of view due to women’s bonding in discovering Minnie’s oppressive life after marriage. However Glaspell, provokes two ethical paradigms that have different perspectives of justice. Glaspell uses symbolism to characterize women’s method in a subjective way, by empowering themselves through silence, memories of her and their own lives as well as having empathy about her sit...
“Jury of Her Peers” is a short story that combines murder, lies and sexism while exposing the reader to the truth about women’s abilities and skills. Aside from being a murder mystery about the investigation of the sudden death of John Wright, the story’s theme is more about respect for women and making decisions based on one’s own beliefs and morals rather than allowing others to control them. Glaspell is a firm believer in women’s rights, and she dedicates most of her writing, including this piece, to displaying to society that women are indeed as smart and capable as men are to perform the duties and jobs of everyday life (internet*). The setting is in rural Dickson County, USA, just prior to 1920. This was a period in America’s history when women were seen as household workers only, that men were the only ones capable of making important judgment calls and decisions. Although one of the main characters, Mrs. Peters, lives her life by what the men make her to be, in the end she undergoes a movement that changes her into an independent person of society.
Moreover, another focal theme throughout Glaspell 's play is woman empowerment. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are able to show their intellectual ability to keep the evidence that was deduced from the physical state of the bird cage that was essentially the only piece of evidence that could link Mrs. Wright to her husband 's murder. The fact that they agreed to withhold this very crucial piece of information from the men shows how Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters want to give Mrs. Wright the chance to be free and to not be held accountable for Mr. Wright 's death.
...tion of women. Gilligan's research of women, In a Different Voice (1982), resulted in a model of stages of moral development based on responsibility and care for self and others rather than on justice.”(Swanson 2009).
Women’s Oppression: Kate Chopin and Susan Glaspell were both talented writers during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Chopin and Glaspell wrote about the oppression of women during that era. Kate Chopin is famously known for her short story “The Story of an Hour.” Chopin demonstrates a woman’s mixed reaction to the news of her husband’s passing, with a surprise twist. Glaspell is famously known for writing the Trifles.
During the 20th century, women role is to be an obedient and modest wife. Their main duty is to serve and live for family. So the play of “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, men feel that women can’t do any harm to their investigation work but women find evidence that men were looking for. Mrs. Wright was convicted of a crime that she killed her husband, it was real that she was a woman. So the women 's decision was justified because they were not treated fairly, or because they knew that Mrs. Wright would not be treated fairly in court. However, women were not only suffrage for their justice but also they were breaking the law by protecting their fellow woman. As a result, the men never found any evidence or clues necessary to solve the case. The women’s decision to withhold evidence from the men was not justified. Repressed portions of society must force the injustice and
I believe that is what prompted Carol Gilligan to drove in to the studies that set her apart from so many others in her field of study. In her ventures as a psychologist she set out to disprove the theories that Lawrence Kolberg tried to establish with his justice theory. Was she just in her decisions when she set out to prove her justice and care perspective? If Plato was alive and he asked Gilligan the same question he asked his fellow philosophers in “The Republic” “Is it better to be just or unjust” What would her response be to his question? Would she agree with Thrasymachus and his statement where he stated “the just suffer while the unjust prosper”. I wonder if Plato would be on the side of the feminist philosopher, or would he disagree with her studies. In this paper I will discuss the studies of Carol Gilligan, and how she proved that women make moral decisions based on care perspective. She also established that men tend to make moral decisions based on the justice perspective. I will also discuss how Socrates and Thrasymachus engage in a conversation where they try to
Carol Gilligan, in her writing In a Different Voice, drew a distinction between the male and female ways of thinking. This idea was further discussed by Virginia Held in her writing Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory, where she used such distinction to represent two different moral theories. She categorized male and female moral perspectives respectively as “the ethic of justice” and “an ethic of care”(Held p.331). “Ethic of justice” prioritizes the general in our moral values, as Held stated, “we try to see what the general features of the problem before us are”(Held p.329). It starts out as impartial, abstract universal principles which produce general rules for us to follow. We then apply these general rules in specific scenarios. In this case, we prefer reason over emotion since reason can help us better formulate these principles and rules. Conversely, “ethic of care” pays attention to the specific. I will note that “ethic of care” is not meant to challenge “ethic of justice”, as Held stated that “it will embrace emotion as providing at least partial basis for morality itself”(Held p.332).This approach aimed at understanding the details of different contexts and narratives before making a decision. Emotion, therefore, is encouraged as a tool to resolve concerns within specific
It comes to no surprise to the American people to speak of America as a patriarchal society where most if not every institution, from religious to educational, is ran by a male and/or were created under a male perspective. Legal processes and laws being no exception have been created and enforced to fit a male society where the woman has no say. The male vision legal scholarship is to law what law is to patriarchy: each legitimates by masking and by giving an appearance of neutrality to the maleness of the institution it serves. Throughout history male scholars have left out female experiences. The law is what we can refer to as gender specific and many parts of our culture demonstrate this. Excluding the female experience in law is an error that can still be corrected. The need for the change came during the women’s movement and feminist scholarship theory has given rise to feminist jurisprudence, a philosophy of law based on the political, economic and social equality of sexes. I will be discussing many of the laws that were passed not only with a male perspective but also as a form of oppression towards women. It is an inquiry that is methodologically and substantially an inquiry from the point of view of women’s experiences. It criticizes and subverts patriarchal assumptions about law including patriarchal attempts to present law as without a gendered point of view.
Pollock argued that most men examine ethical decision with rules and fairness while, many women see the same ethical issue from needs and relationship perspective which became known as the “ethics of care” (2016). Another difference between this two perspective is the discussion of the “moral self.” According to Blum (1988), “the moral agent does not attempt to abstract from this particularized self, to achieve, as Kohlberg advocates, a totally impersonal standpoint defining the “moral point of view” (Blum, p.474, 1988). Gilligan saw morality as a specific agent in which one is caring for and about a particular friend or child whom the person has a particular relationship (Blum, 1988). In respect to two this two perspectives, one can say that Gilligan’s theory is more correct than Kohlberg’s theory because Kohlberg develop a model in which women were inferior to men and Kohlberg’s model was male
For many centuries, women in all parts of the world had struggled to have the same rights as men. People from different cultures believed that women should obey men because women tend to be characterized as the “weak and emotional” sex. Even in modern times, some countries, especially ones of the Middle East of Islamic and Hindu religion, women are considered property of their father or of their husband. Those women are often sold, brutally beaten and even murdered without any equitable reasons. Females are considered second-class citizens, which lead to conflicts between the two genders. According to Robert Max Jackson, in his article, “Why is it So Hard to Explain Gender Inequality,” gender conflicts usually occur because men have more freedom,