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Compare and Contrast Negative and Positive Representations of Women: Final Paper
In most works, movies, and writings most women aren’t represented as well as we may want them to be or as we may see it. Most women of all race tend to be present as vulnerable, insecure, or just too independent the list of negative representation can go on and on. However, black women are represented the worst in writings and films. Most African American women are known to be bitter, prideful, or ghetto. The purpose of this essay to compare and contrast the representation of women in The Gilded Six Bits and How it feels to be Colored Me through a Womanist theoretical lens in regards to how women are represented positive and negative.
These two pieces of literature written by Zora Neale Hurston pretty much has an heavy outlook of positive and negative representation of women. Zora is an African American writer that was very well known during the Harlem Renaissance. Her story The Gilded Six Bits is about a wife and husband that lives this happy life out in the country. The husband always comes throwing coins at her door and gives chocolate kisses. However, a rich hustler comes in and interfere with the couple
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because the wife sleeps with him. How it Feels To Be Colored Me is how Zora feels about being a black woman in the 20th century. She goes in her story to describes how the people are different color bags. A theory that matches with both works that was read over the semester is feminism theory.
Most of all Zora’s work deals with a feminist theory because it pretty much is written by a black woman. However, the two works that was chosen comes from very different points of feminism. In Gilded Six Bits, the wife cheats on her husband, in most situation it the man that seem to be sleeping with other women. The wife shows that feels bad for cheating on her husband who loved her strongly. In How it feels to be Colored Me, there are many points it could fit in feminism theory because in her story she discusses how it feels to be a black woman. Around the era she wrote this story, women didn’t have many rights which shows how strong and powerful feminism is in Zora’s
writings. Both of these piece of literature do come from two different outlooks. In Gilded Six Bits, the woman sleeps with her husband. Even though she feels bad, insecure, and vulnerable because she cheated on her husband. From some readers perspective, she may have cheated on her husband because he works late and she feels alone at night. This made the hustler easy to approach and sleep with her. She doesn’t feel like she wanted an emotional attachment but she just wanted someone to be with at night. The story has many difference from How it Feels To Be Colored Me because it come from a whole different background. Secondly, in How it Feels To Be Colored Me, is how Zora feels about self-identity, self pride, and how she explores it. It takes a whole different approach from Gilded Six Bits, this story shows imagery, lots of colorful description, and many more figurative language. In the beginning of her story she goes on about her childhood. This shows woman viewers to truly love who you are and accept the color your in. Some women aren’t so proud about being in the skin they are in and reading this giving women a positive boost. A positive outlook in Gilded Six Bits, is that the couple decides to still working it out even though the wife had an affair. The wife gets pregnant but she not sure who the father is and back in those times when the story was written they didn’t have that kind of technology to figure out who was the father. The couple still remains together regardless of the woman mistakes. He is very distant towards her when he catches them. He also shows resentment towards her and it shown that he still love her but he only tolerates her. However, towards the end of the story he continues to show love to her when the baby is born. He see the son looks exactly like him so he believe its his boy. In transition, How it Feels To Be Colored Me, it shows more metaphors and similes. She uses many metaphor to describe her self-pride. “ Sharpening her oyster knife...” in this text it’s known that she is discussing discrimination back in her time. She talks about all her obstacles in her story. She acknowledges other races but she knows about the racial differences between whites and blacks. The beginning of this essay she filled with joy as she goes around the neighborhood singing and dancing for her neighbors. Gilded Six Bits has a few negative representation in the story. Well, of course, the wife cheats on her husband with the hustler. It breaks them apart and make them fall out of love with each other. In a feminist theory it makes woman seem as if they are gullible and easy enough to just come along to sleep with. However, the story could be more in depth. It could have been described as to why she actually cheated on her husband. The wife just sleeps with another man but her actual husband has seem to make her very happy. Another negative part for the written piece in How It Feels to be Colored Me, is when she moves to Jacksonville and the city is very different from her hometown. She see the discrimination against blacks. In the city she is known to be the “colored girl”. She feels isolated and lonely for being different. She mentions how she is more than just a black girl but she know that the town she in has a lot to do with race. However, many people may disagree with my point of view of each of these stories. Gilded Six Bits and How it Feels to be Colored Me have many positive point of views in a feminist theory. The story shows many obstacles but these women seem to overcome them. How It Feels to be Colored Me, Zora has a happy childhood until she is moved away to go to boarding school. She learns the difference in another city that race is very major there and the town seem to be very segregated. In conclusion, the two pieces of literature shows many different points of view. Even though, it come from different outlooks and point of view the story still relates in a way. They are both positive because they both have a powerful feminist theory. In Gilded Six Bits, she hurts what she has with her husband. It makes her not trust her for awhile and not want anything to do with her. At the end, of the story he forgives her and throws coin at her door. How it Feels to be Colored Me, it shows how discrimination made people that were different feel isolated. However, she overcomes it and she describes herself as a brown paper bag. Zora knows that everything is different and that the world see color. The purpose of this essay was to compare and contrast the representation of women in The Gilded Six Bits and How it feels to be Colored Me through a Womanist theoretical lens in regards to how women are represented positive and negative.
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits” is a story about the changing relationship of Missie May and Joe Banks after their morals and values are tested with material items. A clear message in “The Gilded Six-Bits” is one that contradicted the beliefs of the American society during this time period, the idea that money or the urban life would bring happiness to the American household. Early in the story, Missie May and Joe Banks are a happy couple. They live an average and modest lifestyle, but are content with what they have because their relationship is what mattered most to them. However, the arrival of a character that represents a materialistic way of life turns their marriage around because they began to want the wealth most people wanted. In “The Gilded Six-Bits”, Missie May’s character is a character that is loving, innocent, and vulnerable, and she provides an excellent example and connection to the themes in Hurston’s story of marriage, love and betrayal.
The Gilded Six-Bits tells the story of a black family dealing with social restrictions and expectations during the 1930s. The story begins with a picturesque snapshot of a newlywed couple in Eatonsville, the first black integrated community in the United States. Zora Hurston in The Gilded Six Bits demonstrates gender stereotypes through a newlywed couple’s dialogue in the early 1900s. The quintessential women in American society was still the bosomy beautiful homemaker with a penchant for cooking and cleaning. The husband was usually placed on a pedestal as the breadwinner and had the more power in the household and in their marriage. The typical woman during the 1930s was expected to cook, clean, and take care of the household chores.
This is reflected in the literature of the African-American as a special bond of love and loyalty to the mother figure. Just as the role of motherhood in African-American culture is magnified and elevated, so is the role of the wife. The literature reflects this by showing the African-American man struggling to make a living for himself and his family with his wife either being emotionally or physically submissive. Understanding the role of women in the African-American community starts by examining the roles of women in African-American literature. Because literature is a reflection of the community from which it comes, the portrayal of women in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain (1952) is consistent with the roles mentioned above.
Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and gender through the years of slavery and Reconstruction. The novel also depicts the courage behind the female slave resistance to the sexual, racial, and psychological subjugation they faced at the hands of slave masters and their wives. The study argues that “slave women were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be (22).” Essentially, White declares the unique and complex nature of the prejudices endured by African American females, and contends that the oppression of their community were unlike those of the black male or white female communities.
The setting of both stories reinforces the notion of women's dependence on men. The late 1800's were a turbulent time for women's roles. The turn of the century brought about revolution, fueled by the energy and freedom of a new horizon…but it was still just around the bend. In this era, during which both short stories were published, members of the weaker sex were blatantly disregarded as individuals, who had minds that could think, and reason, and form valid opinions.
Over the course of our country's history, social constructs have been dismantled to become less obtrusive to the groups they conflict and aim to negatively portray. However, this has not always been a truth of time, and although there exists less stereotyping and predispositions to minorities now than in in the past, the day in which we are free of it is not manifest. In Langston Hughes’ “Red Silk Stockings”, the portrayal of black women comes with a seemingly degrading essence, attached through the eyes of white males who are in a position of power and authority. Hughes paints an image of black women who use their bodies, specifically through prostitution, to further their social standing by allowing objectification by the atypical dominant
She tell us about her experiences she went through herself while growing up. In her essay she states, "Mixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes- for example, that of the Hispanic woman as the "Hot Tamale" or sexual firebrand" (page 105) because she gives us an example how men think a Latina woman is sexy female with an attitude that can be explosive. She did not believe that she should be judge by how society images a Latina, nor how they should act. In Zora Neale Hurston essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" she feels judge when she moves from cities. Zora was a African American living in Eatonville, Florida a little Negro town where she was never judge for the color of skin, yet until she had to move to Jacksonville. She states in her essay, "It seemed that I had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl" (page 186). Zora Neale was never judge for the color of her skin in her old town but when she moved to Jacksonville she realized that the world wasn 't how she pictured. She was being treated different for how she looked like. Both essay had the same situation of being judge for their race, yet how their alike their too are
Money is the root of all things evil. When a person puts money before their beliefs and values a lot of things can go wrong. Delia and Missie May are the two women Hurston wanted you to see what money do to two different type if people, one self-made and one depended on money given. Delia was the woman that had to work hard for everything she wanted and have. She is not a person who let money define her, whereas you have, Missie May, a housewife and her husband gives her everything she wanted and needed. It’s Funny how Hurston depicted two different kinds of bad marriages. In “The Gilded Six-Bits” the wife cheats on the husband, whereas in “sweat” the husband cheats on the wife. In both stories, Hurston tested a Woman’s strength and weakness by showing your love, regret and hate in two different viewpoints.
Zora Neale Hurston was an American novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist. She was born in Alabama but moved to Eatonville, Florida in 1892 where she is known most well known of. Zora Neale Hurston wrote “The Gilded Six Bits” in 1933. During this time period it was not uncommon for women to desire to receive attention from men. As I was reading this story I asked myself how far will women go to get the attention of men? It is clear throughout the story that Missie May is in “love” with her husband Joe. Maybe their relationship is not based on true love, but rather Missie May being showered with money, chocolate kisses, or lust. Missie May noticed a sense of jealousy her husband held whenever Otis D. Slemmons was spoken of. He believed that Otis was a
“The Gilded Six Bits,” by Zora Neale Hurston is about a happily married couple, Missy May and Joe Banks, who discovers that something is missing from their life when sly Slemmons comes to town. The story exhibits how capitalistic-patriarchy dominates and eventually distorts Joe and Missy May’s marriage.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
Hurston writes about how she moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and it wasn’t until then that she realized she wasn’t just Zora—she was also colored. She says, “I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl” (941). It was after she was thrown against the backdrop of a white community that others made her feel colored. But even though she was made aware of her differences she did not feel any anger about slavery or the discrimination she was faced with. She states, “…I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, n...
The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset, and Wallace Brown.
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.