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Feminism in shakespeare plays
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Depiction and treatment of women in Shakespeare plays
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Maryse Conde’s ‘The Tropical Breeze Hotel’ is a pre-colonial play that focuses on the issue of black body. The Black Body is an issue that has a long history since the pre-colonial period and some authors have addressed the issue using dramatic writing. In the play, Conde unleashes a power struggle between the two characters, Emma and Ishmael which reveals a gender-based struggle or grasp for identity. The author uses the two characters who constantly appear to switch roles as a way of balancing each other’s character. The play has scenes that help in analyzing the structure and thematic composition of the writing.
The second scene begins when Ishmael screams while having a nightmare to which Emma quickly rushes into the room. Ishmael snaps
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The second scene uses various symbolisms such as the nightmare that helps in bringing up old memories that help the two characters to relate. In the memoirs, various aspects of the Black Body are revealed. The first and the second scenes appears to portray the different personalities of Emma which would characterize the Black female. In the first scene, Emma appears as a bold and beautiful woman while reflecting upon her past life. She attempts to relive her past as a celebrity as depicted in the way she walks and applies her make-up. In the second scene, her personality seems to change when Ishmael walks into the room. Emma’s paranoid character is awakened when she asks “Say what’s on your mind. You think I’m a whore?” (Conde, 124). Emma’s paranoia is as a result of the judgement that she had previously experienced in the past while living in Guadeloupe.
The scene also reveals the grasp for identity from the two characters as depicted in their conversation. Despite Emma’s dislike for her hometown, she still had a link to the town through her surname ‘Boisgris’ which refuses to change despite the fame. The name belonged to one of her ancestors who has escaped from slavery. Ironically, the name was from French nationality and had been handed down to her ancestors by the slave master’s family. On the other hand, Ishmael denies and tends to disassociate from his family claiming
To have a good story, there must be good characters. Characters help the reader relate to the plot and struggle of the story, as well as creating a picture of the scenes on each page. But what exactly makes a character? What defines their personalities and relatableness to the reader? The way a character thinks, acts, and views the world are influenced, much like in the real world, by the people and places around them. In essence, they are ideas that are forged and refined by the author and other supporting aspects of the story into the living, breathing lenses through which we view the story. In the case of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, Henry is our window into the world of wartime Seattle. Through him, we can view
The purpose of this essay is to highlight the issues that Dana, a young African-American writer, witness as an observer through time. As a time traveler, she witnesses slavery and gender violation during 19th and 20th centuries and examines these problems in terms of how white supremacy disrupts black familial bonds. While approaching Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, this essay analyses how gender and racial violation relates to familial bonds through Dana 's experience in Tom Weylin 's plantation. It is argued that Butler uses pathos, ethos, and in rare cases logos, to effectively convey her ideas of unfairness during the American slavery, such as examining the roots of Weylin’s cruel attitude towards black people, growing conflicts between
Vogel’s writing exudes symbolism from the first word of the script to the last – from the rise of the curtain to its close. The glimpses into Li’l Bit’s past are sometimes explicitly and literally described, but Vogel also often uses extended metaphors to act as a detailed commentary on the action. Why, however, did the playwright choose symbolism to convey the effects of sexual abuse – as heavy as its subject matter may be – during the late twentieth century when seemingly nothing is censored in America? In order to answer this and better understand the way in which Vogel uses symbolism –in the smaller elements of the play and extended metaphors – the terms must first be defined.
Wright’s review was just one of the critics that destroyed the reputation of Hurston’s novel. Other African-American authors, such as Alain Locke, gave mutilating reviews similar to Wright’s...
There is an assumption that black women–as described in Absalom! Absalom! – are a complex combination of sexuality and raw nature. George E. Kent concurs that black women serve as a barrier between the sexual desires of the white male and the metaphysical privilege of white females. This is intended to demonstrate why Henry Supten objected to his sister having relations with Charles Bon who has a mixed blooded mistress. Psychological tenants are connected to the relationship of the white male and black women. The black female keeps the white male from obtaining a piece of the “American Dream” which is having a pure White decent blood
In Frantz Fanon’s couple chapters, “The Woman of Color and the White Man” and “The Man of Color and the White Woman”, within his novel Black Skin, White Masks, the reader is introduced to the sexual and psychological relations between interracial couples. Fanon analysis these themes through the use of the assumed autobiographical works of authors such as Mayotte Capécia, Abdoulaye Sadji, and René Maran, in order to demonstrate the theory that a person’s race determines their real reasons for entering interracial relations. This theory goes on to claim that the underlying goal of interracial relations for both the woman and man of color is to “grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine.” Fanon goes on, mostly in the third chapter,
The play Blackrock, written by Nick Enright that was inspired by the murder of Leigh Leigh, which took place in Stockton in 1989. During this essay the following questions will be analysed, what stereotypes of women are depicted in the text, how do the male characters treat the female characters and how do the male characters talk about the female characters. These questions are all taken from the feminist perspective.
“Désirée ’s Baby” is a mix feelings story. It is an intriguing, captivating, and sad short story which reflects her experience among the French creoles in Louisiana (Chopin). I used “sad”, because it shows the level of hatred the white has towards black. The story is about two two families in Louisiana: the Valmonde and the L’ Abri. The story focuses on human relationships; the lives and characters of both family members are subtly portrayed in comparison. The story tells about love, slavery, and racism. Hypocrisy of patriarchal society, gender conflicts, and injustice of racial prejudice are depicted in the story. In the story, racism victimizes everybody without equivalent consequence. The story is heaped with ironies. The narrator uses symbolism and irony to convey the themes of half-blood, racial hatred, unequal gender roles, and social ladder. Irony and symbolism are also used to enhance the story, captivating the minds of the reader until the very end.
To show how stories can affect colonialism, we will be looking at British authors during the time of colonialism. During this period of British colonialism, writers like Joyce Cary, author of “Mister Johnson” wrote novels about Africa and more specifically, a Nigerian named Johnson. Johnson in this novel is represented as “[an] infuriating principal character”. In Mr. Cary’s novel he demeans the people of Africa with hatred and mockery, even describing them as “unhuman, like twisted bags of lard, or burst bladders”. Even though Cary’s novel displayed large amounts of racism and bigotry, it received even larger amounts of praise, even from Time Magazine in October 20, 1952. The ability to write a hateful novel and still receive praise for it is what Chinua Achebe likes to describe as “absolute power over narrative [and...
Bringing the attention towards Parks’ stylistic fingerprint, and writing about not-so-socially-acceptable topics, Shawn Garrett writes that “many African-American audience members and critics were nervous, and even angry, about the way Parks told the story.” And some critics argued that the portrayal of Saartjie Baartman in the play actually objectifies the colonizers, rather than the intended focus being the heroine. But regardless of the people who opposed the work, Parks displayed a very unique perspective on the femininity and sexuality of African American women.
Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine's Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in Africa; the second act takes place in 1979 London, but only twenty-five years have passed for the family. The choice to contrast the Victorian and Modern era becomes vitally important when analyzing this text from a materialist feminist view; materialist feminism relies heavily on history. Cloud Nine is a materialist feminist play; within it one can find examples that support all the tenets of materialist feminism as outlined in the Feminism handout (Bryant-Bertail, 1).
Emma's personality is largely shaped by the nature of her upbringing. Emma had no motherly figure guiding her as she grew up, due to the fact that her mother passed away at a young age, and her governess, Miss Taylor, became her best friend instead of an authority over her. At the start of the novel Miss Taylor gets married to Mr. Weston, leaving Emma with her despondent and hypochondriac father, Mr. Woodhouse. Although Mr. Woodhouse often confines Emma to the house because of his paranoia of her being harmed, he gives her little guidance. Emma becomes accustomed to being the "princess" of her house, and she applies this role to all of her social interactions, as she develops the ability to manipulate people and control them to advance her own goals. Emma views herself with the highest regard, and feels competition and annoyance with those who threaten her position. Emma has much resentment toward Mrs. Elton, as Mrs. Elton becomes a parody for Emma's mistakes and interactions. Mrs. Elton's attachment to Jane Fairfax is much like Emma's attachment to Harriet Smith; both Mrs. Elton and Emma attach themselves to young women and try to raise their...
Self awareness of a person’s identity can lead to a challenging scope of ascertaining moving forward: the moment he/she has an earth- shattering revelation comprehending, they of African descendant and they are a problem. The awakening of double-consciousness grew within the literary cannon sensing the pressure of duality in the works of Native Son and The Bluest Eye, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison respectively create two characters who deal with this struggle. It is illustrated through both text how society creates situations that impose the characters Bigger and Pecola encountering extreme measures in the mind frame of double consciousness in their pursuit of survival physically, the search for identity, the desire of self- expression and self-fulfillment.
Trevor Rhone's Old Story Time Today's Jamaica seems overly preoccupied with the issues of class and colour. In Old Story Time Trevor Rhone mirrors a Jamaica struggling with the same subject in the Mid Twentieth century. Discuss these concerns of the play in detail making comparisons/contrasts to the current Jamaican and Caribbean societies.