Although some may argue that the short story, “Moving On” by Diane Cook, conveys the psychoanalytic motives behind the narrator’s transition between husbands in the woman’s shelter, this position limits the significance of the struggle between the classes to maintain power. This class struggle, identified through the rules set in a manual, reveals the bourgeoisies’ emphasis on materialism within this society. Through the resale possibilities of material possessions and the poor people in the shelters, commodification shows the idea that the bourgeoisie believes humans hold the same value as their material possessions. Considering love is chosen by the bourgeoisie and forced on the poor people in the shelters, it becomes a sign value and an …show more content…
Karl Marx believed this division was a struggle for power, “[…] ‘motored’ by the competition for economic, social, and political advantage” (Barry 151). Thus, since poor people have no money, they have no power over their lives. As the narrator states while in the woman’s shelter, “What I prefer is no longer of concern” (Cook 46). With the wealthy choosing who they want to marry, the poor do not have the ability to accept or decline the selection. Even though many widows and poor people get placed in shelters, there is an exemption age that allows a person to live on their own. For example, “Most people reach the age of exemption before their partner dies, and they are allowed to simply live alone” (Cook 48). The bourgeoisie maintains this rule because the elderly are of no use to them. Instead, they prefer to have the power to choose a spouse who is younger and has multiple skills that are of use to them. Ultimately, class struggle reveals the idea that the bourgeoisie holds power over the proletariat’s rights as citizens in
In ?Everyday Use?, Alice Walker chooses to develop the idea of poverty by focusing exclusively on the environment in which her protagonists live. Setting attributes, such as the ones used to describe the house in which the protagonists reside, enables us to better understand the theme. In fact, the dwelling does not even have any real windows. Instead, it has holes cut in the sides, like the portholes of a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. Then, Walker proceeds with inside description of the house as she points out that the protagonists use benches for their table instead of chairs because they cannot financially afford any. Further, the author supports the theme by providing us with some physical description of specific objects. The use of quilts that ?Grandma Dee? sewed from the scraps of her dress and the churn that Uncle Henry whittled from the wood is not derived from the protagonists? intention to preserve ?family values? but rather from a necessity to ?survive?.
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
Martineau clearly had a strong political agenda in writing this story, however in doing so, she addresses the fundamental difference she sees in the roles of responsibility in marriage. In her mind, the husband and the wife have clearly defined roles, not so much along lines of production, but rather in terms of the household. That which is in the household, whether it is the domestic duties or financial responsibility, falls to the wife while it is the husband who is responsible for the income stream.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s 1926 short story “Sweat,” Delia Jones a washwoman and house owner is portrayed as an abused wife. Even though she has a job and owns the home she occupies, it does not change the fact that her husband still holds power over her. Women are stereotyped by society as housewives, which make them feel repressed of freedom. Women are repressed by society’s views and are limited in freedom, thus women such as Delia are unable to get what they desire.
“The Gilded Six Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston centers on the views of capitalism and patriarchy. This short story is not only about love, betrayal, and reconciliation. “The Gilded Six Bits” conveys a deeper message about race, class status, power, and money. These messages all tie in together with the capitalistic-patriarchy that distorts Missie May and Joe marriage. Although Joe does not leave Missie May the reconciliation between the two is left unassured causing Joe to still have dominance over his wife Missie May.
This essay will compare Marx’s understanding of the relationship between laborers and capitalists and Wollstonecraft’s understanding of the relationship between women and men. Both Marx and Wollstonecraft’s conception of these groups of people show a large gap between their treatment and status in society. Marx argues that capitalism is not created by nature and the unequal relationship between laborers and capitalists is not humane. In other words, it is actually the cause of social and economic problems during that time period. On a similar note, Wollstonecraft believes that the oppressive relationship between men and women is also unnatural. The standards for men and women are placed by society, not by biological facts. Society and how people
With this in mind, some perspective on the society of that time is vital. During this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and so on. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Now, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class can no longer live a normal life following their own pursuits, but are lowered to working inhumane hours in these factories. This widens the gap between the upper and lower class-called bourgeois and proletariat-until they are essentially two different worlds. The bourgeois, a tiny portion of the population, has the majority of the wealth while the proletariat, t...
During the Nineteenth Century, the gender roles were greatly divided. Women were seen to have a completely differently status and nature from men. The stereotypical woman during this time-period was dependent, passive, domestic, and far weaker then a man. Men on the other hand, were far more dominant, dependent, controlling, ambitious and active. Men were the protectors and providers for the family. As if women weren’t already inferior enough to men, when they got married, essentially everything that was theirs was striped from them. What she once owned, was now her husbands, this included her savings, her land, her slaves, her freedom and especially her independence (Steele and Brislen). Women were expected to just do their household duties and be content with their lives and want nothing more. This lead wives to live in the shadows of their spouse. It is Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a feminist writer of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century who illustrates the discord of the gender roles of this time-period. One of her most famed writings is “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In this short story, we read about a spouse who is totally dominated by her husband John, and we follow her while she is away rejuvenating herself from an illness. Feministic literature of this time, really focuses on the inferiority of women against men.
One had always seemed to know their role in society. It was Marx who believed that this was true due to a capitalistic economy. One’s wants and needs were different from society to society. For instance, a person with a higher social status would not have the same needs as a peasant living on a farm would. Marx felt that human nature could not be changed in contrast to what many economists believed. In a capitalistic economy, men were the ones who received the wages while women earned little to nothing.
In conclusion, Marx states that the worker is alienated from his own life as well as individuality. This level of estrangement from one’s own life can be equated to slavery as he cannot think, make decision or plan for his future life but rather the capitalist is his owner. Labor camps tend to characterize workers as objects which should be act or behave as normal human beings but are required to follow a set routine of activities in the production of products.
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
Urban industrial workers were bombarded with many problems, a major one being long working hours. They not only had to endure endless hours of labor and turmoil, but received scarcely any pay at all. To make things worse, they were struggling to exist in the late 19th century where industrialization was flustering and depressions were part of the norm. An average American worker earned a measly $500 per year and a woman only half as much as the men. People were not making enough money to purchase the necessities of life and thus, lived a hard, struggling life. A woman stated she didn’t "live" , but merely "existed".. she didn’t live that you could call living."
Jonathan Swift and Katha Pollitt, separated by 200 years, share a common interest in the welfare of people. Specifically, the two authors write of different experiences regarding the underprivileged women and children in their particular countries. While my experience might be limited in the environment of poverty personally, I have had some exposure to underprivileged youth and their families. My perception of poverty is based on attending both primary and secondary school in a depressed socioeconomic community filled with single mothers living in government funded housing on the north side of Houston. From my experiences, I have found that, while divorce can be damaging for children, the deterioration of family values in society doesn’t
In western capitalist societies, communism is portrayed as a system that practices wealth distribution where everyone makes the same amount of money and own the same exact things with no competition. In reality Marx’s idea of communism gives people the chance to develop their skills and advance their potential to the fullest extent, that is actually denied under the capitalist class system. Marx agrees with rousseau that political and civil rights are important and gives the people more power but he takes it further and argues that in order for people to be truly free they must have control on their labor and their production by democratizing the economic and labor system.
According to Marx class is determined by property associations not by revenue or status. It is determined by allocation and utilization, which represent the production and power relations of class. Marx’s differentiate one class from another rooted on two criteria: possession of the means of production and control of the labor power of others. The major class groups are the capitalist also known as bourgeoisie and the workers or proletariat. The capitalist own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others. Proletariat is the laboring lower class. They are the ones who sell their own labor power. Class conflict to possess power over the means of production is the powerful force behind social growth.