The Making Of The English Working Class Joan Scott Analysis

733 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The History of Sexuality

Thesis: Gender and sexuality are significant in personal and societal experiences. Joan Scott’s collection of essays explores the construction of meaning and knowledge about gender and gender roles and their impact throughout history. These essays display the significance of gender in culture and historical events while also highlighting the different meanings and roles of gender in various cultures. In addition to Scott’s analysis of women in history, she examines the field of women’s history providing a comprehensive view of the discipline and its role in academia.
3. General Scope & Content: Scott’s work provides and expansive summary and demonstration of feminist and gender studies in history. Scott describes the evolution of the discipline …show more content…

These case studies demonstrate different approaches and struggles in a feminist approach to history. These include an extended examination of The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson where Scott shows how Thomson portrays the working class and brings their struggles to light. Despite being a classic example of labor history and history from bellow, Thompson struggles to portray the female role in the English working class. Scott builds off these shortcomings and shows how these points could be included in the …show more content…

Two who feature most prominently in her text and influence her scholarship are Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz. She cites Foucault’s concept that knowledge and meaning is not absolute, but instead is shaped by society and culture. This compliments Geertz call for “thick description” of concepts, customs, and symbols as well as the concept of social construction of meaning. These theorists shape Scott’s advocacy for a social understanding of gender and gender roles to better understand the role these perceptions play in diverse cultures. Scott does not believe there is a universal “feminine” or “masculine,” “male” or “female.” These concepts are shaped by

Show More
Related

  • Life of a Sensuous Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

    1844 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ihara Saikaku’s Life of a Sensuous Woman written in the 17th century and Mary Woolstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in the 18th century are powerful literary works that advocated feminism during the time when women were oppressed members of our societies. These two works have a century old age difference and the authors of both works have made a distinctive attempt to shed a light towards the issues that nobody considered significant during that time. Despite these differences between the two texts, they both skillfully manage to present revolutionary ways women can liberate themselves from oppression laden upon them by the society since the beginning of humanity.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles: Men and Women from the Anglo-Saxon to the Renaissance Era Part 1

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. "Do Women Need The Renaissance?" Gender & History 20.3 (2008): 539-557. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Power of the Written Word: Literary Greats Paving the Way for Social Equality

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout history, women have struggled with, and fought against oppression. They have been held back and weighed down by the sexist ideas of a male dominated society which has controlled cultural, economic and political ideas and structure. During the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s women became more vocal and rebuked sexism and the role that had been defined for them. Fighting with the powerful written word, women sought a voice, equality amongst men and an identity outside of their family. In many literary writings, especially by women, during the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s, we see symbols of oppression and the search for gender equality in society. Writing based on their own experiences, had it not been for the works of Susan Glaspell, Kate Chopin, and similar feminist authors of their time, we may not have seen a reform movement to improve gender roles in a culture in which women had been overshadowed by men.

    Read More

  • epq

    923 Words  | 2 Pages

    Knowing this you would think women would portray themselves more seriously, but the exact opposite is happening. These continuous loops of failure have severely weakened women’s physical presence, and because of this, are continuously singled out in world discussions on topics such as war or threats to national security, and are constantly burdened with tasks regarding health and family life. In my research I read many books from the nineteenth-century onwards, such as, Stuart Mill’s book ‘The Subjection of Women’ (1869) to Butler’s ‘Gender Troubles’ (1990), both of these and many more books has helped in my quest to conjure up a personal concept of women, but out of all of them I found Berger’s ‘Ways of seeing’ the most fruitful in terms of a literal explanation of women.

    Read More

  • Disorderly Women : Gender And Labor

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    Accordingly, I decided the purposes behind women 's resistance neither renamed sexual introduction parts nor overcame money related dependence. I recalled why their yearning for the trappings of progression could darken into a self-compelling consumerism. I evaluated how a conviction arrangement of feeling could end in sexual danger or a married woman 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, regardless, ought to cloud an era 's legacy. I comprehend prerequisites for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the area of women into open space and political fights previously cornered by men all these pushed against ordinary restrictions even as they made new susceptibilities.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Anna Clarke's The Making Of The English Working Class

    1499 Words  | 3 Pages

    To say that the government micromanaged the financial facets of the lower class society would be an understatement. They had certainly put their fingers into every pie of every aspect of the lower class’ life, at least the reformers certainly expressed their feelings of such a micromanaged oppression. Thompson’s Whigs and Hunters discusses the Black Act in heavy detail. The Black act was initially a means of controlling hunting so that game was readily available for the Royals. The book illustrates the harsh punishment of death the bill entailed far for the small townsfolk surviving on agriculture around forests. Some of the additional crimes were public disorder, mismanaging criminal justice, and crimes or injury against property or people.

    Read More

  • Comparing Feminism in Frankenstein and Dracula

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the texts we have read in English thus far have been feminist issues. Such issues range from how the author published the book to direct, open statements concerning feminist matters. The different ways to present feminist issues is even directly spoken of in one of the essays we read and discussed. The less obvious of these feminist critiques is found buried within the texts, however, and must be read carefully to understand their full meaning- or to even see them.

    Read More

  • Lerner's Contribution To Historiography

    1017 Words  | 3 Pages

    With the onset of the feminist movement, Lerner realized that most contribution to women’s history was not by historical scholars, but rather by feminist scholars. In her article, “New Approaches to the Study of Women,” she conceded that the feminist “frame of reference has become archaic and fairly useless.” She in turn posed new ways on how historians and students could broaden this scope—adding fresh approaches to already known material or diving into newly found primary sources. Lerner helped by acting as an organizer in Women’s History Sources, which made it possible to find primary sources that included women without the need to search through a woman’s male family. She also pointed to the Notable American Women sources, which included subject bibliographies. Additionally, Lerner believed the study of ‘women’ was too vast, that historians should notice the roles and status of women, and that we should see women as subjugated instead of oppressed. Also, Lerner noticed that women have by and large been deprived of equal education, as she noted in her article “A View from the Women’s Side.” She wrote that society had come far, noting that while 10.4% of women in the 50’s were awarded Ph. D degrees, by the early 1980’s women had been awarded 32.6% of Ph. D degrees. More so, she helped lobby for appointments of women to the A.H.A. and O.A.H.

    Read More

  • Women In Giovanni Boccaccio's On Famous Women

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    Her chief arguing points and evidence relate to the constriction of female sexuality in comparison to male sexuality; women’s economic and political roles; women’s access to power, agency, and land; the cultural roles of women in shaping their society; and, finally, contemporary ideology about women. For her, the change in privacy and public life in the Renaissance escalated the modern division of the sexes, thus firmly making the woman into a beautiful

    Read More

  • Women in World War One

    918 Words  | 2 Pages

    French, Katherine L., and Allyson M. Poska. Women and Gender in the Western past. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Kate Chopin's Story Of An Hour

    816 Words  | 2 Pages

    In today’s time women and men are seen with equal qualities and capabilities, if schools didn’t teach the student that it was not always like that, upcoming men and women would never have a clue, but that is not how it works. Prescribed gender roles were a major part of life in the nineteenth century. Women were the ones that cooked, cleaned, and raised the children. In Kate Chopin’s, “Story of an Hour” the use of prescribed gender roles unify Louise Mallard’s agonizing taste for freedom. Women who lived in the time period of prescribed gender roles, often were referred to as “housewives.”

    Read More

  • The Dual Oppressions of Working-Class Women in Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth by Alex Gomez

    1641 Words  | 4 Pages

    The socialist movement criticized the exploitation of workers under capitalism.  The feminist movement, lead by middle-class women, criticized the exploitation of women.  Each movement on its own ignored the fundamental objective of the other.  Yet, out of these two movements emerged socialist feminists like Agnes Smedley, who were determined to bring each movement together and give birth to a new vision that would shed light on the dual oppression of the working-class women.  Agnes Smedley, in Daughter of Earth, shows this dual oppression by exposing the characteristics of capitalism and those of the male-dominated society.

    Read More

  • Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour and Feminism in the 1800s

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    156. The 158. Driscoll, Kerry. A. The "Feminism" - "The 'Feminism' American History Through Literature, 1870-1920. Ed.

    Read More

  • A Feminist Perspective of The Lady of Shalott

    2170 Words  | 5 Pages

    Abrams 1604 - 1606. Peterson, Linda H. "What Is Feminist Criticism?" Wuthering Heights. Ed. Linda H. Peterson, Ph.D. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992.

    Read More

  • Women's Role in Society in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

    2714 Words  | 6 Pages

    Wojczak, Helena. “English Women’s History.” English women’s history. Hasting Press. n.d. Web 24 Nov 2013

    Read More

More about The Making Of The English Working Class Joan Scott Analysis

Open Document