More handpicked essays just for you.
Feminist reading like water for chocolate
Essays on women's rights over the years
The progression of women’s rights (1900 – present)
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Gender plays a significant role in family and societal traditions. Some families place such a large importance on that role that it is impossible for a person to achieve his or her goals or live his or her life. Society binds people to strict standards that are difficult to avoid. In Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Tita is forced to follow the tradition of her family. She cannot marry and is doomed to serve her mother for the rest of her life. Her two sisters, Rosaura and Gertrudis, are also effected by this tradition, but in different ways. James Joyce's collection of short stories, The Dubliners, deals with the issues of common residents of Dublin. Polly, in the short story "The Boarding House," is trapped in the societal standards of her gender. After she has an affair with a tenant her mother forces Polly to marry him. Gender related family traditions are hard to get out of because they are hard standing; societal traditions bear the judgment of everyone.
The De La Garza family tradition states that the youngest daughter in a family must take care of the mother instead of marrying. She isn't allowed to have her own life. Tita disagrees with the rigid tradition because it confines her to a life without love. She doesn't sit back and accept her position; she fights for what she wants. However, Tita doesn't question the practice to her mother. Mama Elena is the supreme authority in the household and Tita fears her. Tita refuses to accept her undesirable social role even though others accept it in her family. She doesn't have the same belief system as her family because she is raised by the cook, Nacha. Tita wins her fight against the tradition eventually gains her freedom.
Tita falls in l...
... middle of paper ...
...societal standard that girls must get married if they lose their virginity. Her mother knows this and uses it against her and Mr. Doran. Polly accepts her gender role and dreams of her future with Mr. Doran.
Both "The Boarding House" and Like Water for Chocolate deal with gender issues in society and families. The characters in "The Boarding House" quietly accept the societal standards for their gender roles and their actions whereas those in Like Water for Chocolate don't fit into the strict confinements of such ideals. As time progresses, gender roles in society evolve because people fight against them. Like Water for Chocolate personifies this idea. "The Boarding House" is simply the submission to the paradigm of society that is presented. Gender roles are only changed through individuals slowly stepping out of the strict ideal and moving forward.
Write-up: Tita is the main character of the story, also the narrator, who suffers from unjust oppression from Mama Elena, her mother. She is raised to excel in the kitchen and many entertaining arts where she is expected to spend her whole life taking care of her mother. This is following the family tradition that the youngest daughter takes care of the mother until she dies. With her frivolous wants, Mama Elena denies her marriage and happiness to any man especially Pedro. She eventually breaks down and meets John Brown, the family doctor, who recovers her until she finds happiness again after Mama Elena's death with Pedro. Overall, Tita goes through a very dynamic change in the story which obviously entitles her to be a main character.
American culture has defined the ideal dynamic for a family for many generations as one with a single, or perhaps multitude of dominant male figures, a submissive role or roles usually filled by the women in the household, and of course, children, who are deemed more acceptable if they are “seen and not heard”. Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping deconstructs and twists around what has grown to be custom in American Literature, and challenges the reader to feel uncomfortable about missing or swapped gender roles within the story itself. In Housekeeping, Ruthie and her sister Lucille have been transferred through several relatives after their mother’s death, and find themselves aching for a “normalcy” that they have never experienced, one that
To understand fully the implicit meaning and cultural challenges the film presents, a general knowledge of the film’s contents must be presented. The protagonist, Tita, suffers from typical Hispanic cultural oppression. The family rule, a common rule in this culture, was that the youngest daughter is to remain unwed for the duration of her mother’s life, and remain home to care for her. Mama Elena offers her daughter, Tita’s older sister Rosaura, to wed a man named Pedro, who is unknowingly in mutual love with Tita. Tita is forced to bake the cake for the wedding, which contains many tears that she cried during the process. Tita’s bitter tears cause all the wedding guests to become ill after consuming the cake, and Tita discovers she can influence others through her cooking. Throughout the film, Tita’s cooking plays an important role in all the events that transpire.
The male characters in this book drink, gamble, but only one of them is a rapist and unambitious man. The other men drink, which are Bone 's uncles, but they are better off than the one who is unambitious, Glen. The women in this book are well off because they are strong Boatwright women except for Bone 's mom who lets bad things happen to her child. Bone is the main character in this story and her life is filled with questions until the very end. She has to put up with a abusive step-dad, Glen, and a mother who knows what is going on and letting it get out of control. The aunts in Bone 's family are strong women who have seen and know what is happening to Bone. In this the book the women are strong and carry their problems. Bone carries her secret about Glen abusing her and raping her to herself until one of her Aunts finds her in the bathroom passed out with blood stains on her panty. In this story the house is not a safe place for Bone because of Glen. The home in this situation does help when Bone is staying with her aunts instead of being home with Glen. This book by Allison and the short stories by Carver are tied together in some way or form because they take a specific individual and put a problem that they have to deal with at
In the stories “The Boarding House” by James Joyce and “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, it’s ironic how different these two stories plots are, yet they are dealing with the same problem. The protagonists let their social status and the opinions of others come between their relationships instead of basing their decisions on modesty and love. In “The Boarding House,” Mr. Doran is one of the boarders and he is having an affair with a young woman named Polly, the owner of the boarding house’ daughter. He has to decide whether or not to marry Polly in order to save this perception people have of him. In “Desiree’s Baby” Armand marries an orphan woman, “She was nameless… What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?”
Gender roles have been the one of the longest conflicts since the creation of man. Females have been struggling to gain way in the country since the foundation of the United States. For most of our country’s life up until the 1940’s women predominantly were supposed to stay at the house and do all the house work. For a fictional unnamed female child in the short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, the life of the average woman is not the life she wants to live. She wants to work the hard labor with her father who sells fox pelts but, she is constantly getting “harassed” by her mother to do lady like work. The women’s struggle for rights can be divided up into centuries starting with the 19th and continuing to present day. At the end of the story the girl finally accepts her role as a female because she messes up and her father says, “She’s only a girl.” Men on the other hand, have had always had any opportunity they wanted but, generally their role is the
...alized that “a girl was not, as [she] had supposed, simply what [she] was; it was what [she] had to become” she was starting to admit defeat, and then finally when she begins to cry, it is here that the narrator understands that there is no escape from the pre-determined duties that go along with the passage of a child into being a girl, and a girl into a woman, and that “even in her heart. Maybe it (her understanding that conforming is unstoppable) was true”
Feminism is the advocacy of women’s right and is on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. Centuries ago, women did not share the same equality as men. Men and women’s gender roles were practiced with greater acceptance than by today’s standards. More-over, gender roles among women decades ago, were wrapped within the limits of their political, economic, and social rights and freedoms. The man’s role was to work and to make important final decisions for the family. Were-as, the wives were to stay home with the kids and obey her husband. Feminism changed all those aspects in the world for men and women to be treated to have the same rights. “A Doll’s House” is a profound play to make direct connection on why feminism started. The main character in the play Nora is wife and a mother that struggling to gain equality in her life. In
The female characters are from various social classes and each of them has her own attitudes towards life and love. Lily, the caretaker's daughter is the first character to be introduced to us. In the story she is a representative from the labouring class. Comparily, Gabriel is a well-educated young man who seems to have a bright future. When he arrogantly greets her, "I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?" (Joyce 123). The girl answers bitterly "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (124). Then Gabriel "color" as if he has made a mistake when Lily becomes upset about the subject of men. This is because he never expects his self-conceited good intention will hurt her feelings so much. Instead of comforting Lily, he "without looking at her", kicks off his goloshes and flicks actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes. From this we can see he first chooes to avoid difficulty when the conflict between he and the ...
Society’s gender roles have been changing and evolving, though not necessarily a positive change. Women’s expected and defined role have changed and broken by women who refuses to follow their expected roles in society and decide to rebel against the norm. The pages of history have their own evidence of evolution of these female gender roles into the roles they are following now. Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” both contain a female protagonist and make us observe and understand how society in their period of time expects of them and their roles. Both these plays let us rethink and compare a female’s role in their period of time with our modern time through points and events that led them into realization of their roles and identity.
James Joyce created a collection of short stories in Dubliners describing the time and place he grew up in. At the time it was written, Joyce intends to portray to the people of Dublin the problems with the Irish lifestyles. Many of these stories share a reoccurring theme of a character’s desire to escape his or her responsibilities in regards to his relationship with his, job, money situation, and social status; this theme is most prevalent in After the Race, Counterparts, and The Dead.
In Dubliners, James Joyce tells short stories of individuals struggling with life, in the city of Dublin. “It is a long road that has no turning” (Irish Proverb). Many individuals fight the battle and continue on the road. However, some give up and get left behind. Those who continue to fight the battle, often deal with constant struggle and suffering. A reoccurring theme, in which Joyce places strong emphasis on, is the constant struggle of fulfilling responsibilities. These responsibilities include; work, family and social expectations. Joyce writes about these themes because characters often feel trapped and yearn to escape from these responsibilities. In “The Little Cloud”, “Counterparts”, and “The Dead” characters are often trapped in unhappy living situations, often leading to a desire of escape from reality and daily responsibilities.
A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.
Set in the time of the Mexican Revolutionary War, the De la Garza family consisted of Mama Elena and her three daughters. “The most significant, life-changing activities women carried out in the Revolution at the outset were related to their families” (Monk). The oldest daughter was Rosaura, followed by Gertrudis and then the youngest, Tita. Tita’s father had died shortly after Tita’s birth. They lived on a self-serving farm where all members were expected to help. Each female had chores that were to be completed without complaint. Even though the fictional story revolves around recipes, other gender based ideals are revealed. “These activities were no longer carried out inside four walls, causing family survival to become essential” (Monk).
Throughout the story, the different roles and expectations placed on men and women are given the spotlight, and the coming-of-age of two children is depicted in a way that can be related to by many women looking back on their own childhood. The narrator leaves behind her title of “child” and begins to take on a new role as a young, adolescent woman.