Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Representation Of Women In Literature
Representation Of Women In Literature
Position of indian women in patriarchal society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Representation Of Women In Literature
There are a great number of issues in our society, dated back even further than 1800’s to present day. The struggles of today’s women are presented in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott.” A vast majority of women are held back by society’s judgmental thought. Not just in third world countries like, Pakistan, India or Afghanistan, but also in first world countries, like America. Society should stop oppressing women by how they should dress, their freedom, and their love affairs in these countries and all over the world.
These women are treated just like the lady of Shalott, who was placed in an excluded tower far away from human interaction. She also, could not look down her window at life passing by, but she could see through “a mirror clear, Reflecting tower’d Camelot” (Tennyson, 45-50). This mirror was displaying to her what she could never have; freedom. Freedom is exactly what most women in these countries, Pakistan, India or Afghanistan, cannot attain. In the book, A Thousand Splendid Suns,
Often women in these countries are forced to wear a burqa or hijab. These traditional coverings are supposed to keep these women safe. Just like the lady of Shalott’s tower kept the lady safe yet secluded; so secluded that no one “hath seen her wave her hand [,] or at the casement see her stand” (Tennyson, 23-25). In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Rasheed often told both his wives to always keep themselves covered in burqas because he did not want other men to leer at what was his property. In that society, women are told to cover themselves from head to toe. This is due to the fact that their beauty is a distraction to men and might make them take the wrong “action.” This is not right, society should not make women think that they are a distraction or force them to wear something they do not want to wear. Society should consider if these women dress respectively then that should be
Fatemeh Fakhraie’s essay “Scarfing it Down,” explains how Muslim women suffer because of what they wear. Fakhraie blogs about Muslim women in her website she explains; “Seeing ourselves portrayed in the media in ways that are one-dimensional and misleading." Several people judge Muslim's by their appearance because they assume they're a bad person. The author of this essay wants the reader to know that Muslim women wearing a hijab are not a threat to the world.
Gender inequality has been a major issue for many centuries now. Societies insist in assigning males and females to different roles in life. The traditional stereotypes and norms for how a male and female should present themselves to the world have not changed much over time. But individuals are more than just their gender and should have the right to act and be treated the way they want. The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
A lady is an object, one which men attempt to dominate. A man craves to get a hold of this being beneath his command, and forever have her at his disposal. In her piece “Size Six: The Western Women’s Harem,” published in 2002, Fatema Mernissi illustrates how Eastern and Western women are subjugated by the control of men. Mernissi argues that though she may have derived from a society where a woman has to cover her face, a Western woman has to face daily atrocities far worse then ones an Eastern woman will encounter. Moreover, Mernissi’s core dogma in “Size 6: The Western Women's Harem” is that Western women are not more fortunate than women raised into harems in other societies. Additionally, she asserts that though women in the Western world are given liberties, they coincide with the unattainable ideals of what is aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, to strengthen her argument towards her wavering audience, Mernissi’s main approach in her paper is to get the reader to relate with her issue by means of an emotional appeal, while also utilizing both the ethical and logical appeal to support her thesis.
Woman used to live in a time era, where women didn 't have the voice or privilege to speak for themselves. Men were superior and predominant, a woman was forced to obey the guidelines of society 's views of how a woman should be. Being a shrew was not acceptable, don’t tease or tempt a man and that a good women depends on four characteristics. But as time progressed slowly women have been fighting for their voice; changing the views and perspectives society onces used to have on the “ideal” women and giving it a whole new concept and ideology.
Women had no choice but to follow whatever society told them to because there was no other option for them. Change was very hard for these women due to unexpected demands required from them. They held back every time change came their way, they had to put up with their oppressors because they didn’t have a mind of their own. Both authors described how their society affected them during this historical period.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan outlawed women from revealing any part of their bodies excluding their hands and faces. This is done so as to save the male populous from concupiscent compulsion, achieving no good. These Afghani leaders maintain that the government should decide what is good for people, so stopping them seeing things that might lead them wayward.
According to Doucleff, “‘wearing the hijab eliminates many of the hassles women have to go through — such as dyeing their hair,’ she says. ‘For example, you're getting old, and gray hairs, when you wear the hijab, you might not think about dyeing your hair because nobody sees it anyway.’” By wearing a hijab women do not have to worry about “gray hairs, and can focus on other parts of their lives. Although this seems like a trivial improvement, women in the west spend inestimable amounts of money on beauty products and a surfeit amount of time on their daily regimen. Even though the burqa is therapeutic in helping women with their appearance, it can be physically restricting, “Mariam had never before worn a burqa…The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her skull…The loss of peripheral vision was unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating way the pleated cloth kept pressing against her mouth” (72). In this excerpt the burqa is described as “tight”, “heavy”, and “suffocating, making it seem like an unpleasant garment to be ensconced in. The burqa can cause an “unnerving” feeling, which can make daily tasks hard to complete. When interviewing a girl in Afghanistan Daniel Pipes, American historian, writer, and commentator, got her opinion on the burqa, “When I wear a burqa it gives me a really bad feeling. I don't like to wear it…I don't like it, it upsets me, I can't breathe properly.” The discomfort the girl feels in the burqa “upsets” her, linking her physical distress to emotional distress. The girl gets “a really bad feeling” when she wears a burqa, showing that the physical effects of the burqa can be negative. Besides the physical hardships Muslim dress may cause, it can also cover up physical abuse, “A Muslim teenage girl
villages, women rarely wear the burka for villages in Afghanistan are organized into kin-oriented areas, and the veil needs wearing only when a woman is among men from outside of her kin group. A rural woman most often puts on a burka for travel, especially to cities. The veil was never the nightmare American feminists make it out to be. In a world where satisfaction in life is predicated on the honor, strength, and unity of the kin group, the veil makes sense. Despite that the oppressive impositions of the Taliban have rightly been abolished, the United States should not to be in the business of browbeating Muslim women out of their veils, much less reforming the Middle Eastern kinship system, and instead, people need to encourage the separation of traditional Muslim family practices from the political ideology of Islamic
The word feminism can have multiple meanings around the world, where what seems intrusive to some women may be considered to be culturally acceptable and unpretentious to others. In the Western hemisphere, women are taught to be outspoken from a very young age, where being uninvolved in women’s issues like fighting for equal wages or being a stay-at-home mother is viewed as moving backwards in the feminist movement for equality. In the article To Veil or Not to Veil? written by Jen’nan Ghazal Read and John P. Bartkowski, it looks at the notion of wearing a veil as making women submissive to men to some Islamic women while to others, it is a way of making them feel secure in going out to the world where they will not be judged based upon their
Today, we in the Western world see Muslim Women and think they’re oppressed, hurt and under male rule due to the forced dress codes in some countries. But before we make assumptions on a group of people, in any one place we should do our research, look back, see why, when and where this all started and why it’s still happening today. We need to see if this is really hurting them, or if it’s just their way of life, there’s a fairly prominent cartoon that shows a Western perspective on Muslim life versus a Muslim perspective on Western women’s life. In the Cartoon the Western Woman is thinking to herself “Everything covered but her eyes, what a cruel male-dominated culture!” which shows how most of the Western World thinks of Muslim women, oppressed by their male counterparts. But at the same time the Muslim Woman is thinking to herself “Nothing covered but her eyes, what a cruel male-dominated culture!” which shows the topic through a different lens, it can be said that they prefer to wear it because they feel more respected wearing it and feel as equals, but we must stop just looking at the surface and judging another group, we need to dig into the information and figure out why before we deem another culture “male-dominated.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson offers oblique reflection on a number of major Victorian themes and subjects in his poem “The Lady of Shalott”. The most prominent theme that appears in the poem is the idea of passion and love in a woman. The poem is simply about the way women were suppressed from their feelings and everything else during the Victorian era. Tennyson’s poem shows the commentary of society's oppression of women during the Victorian era. Tennyson takes the knowledge of women’s entrapment in society and makes it a literal entrapment in his poem. This essay will argue how passion, love, and women’s oppression is a major theme of the poem and what the commentary it alludes to about the Victorian era.
The first issue addressed in this essay is the role of women in Islam. “Muslim women are having to confront not only the sexist assumptions from within their own communities … but also from British society as a whole.” (Butler cit Gilliat-Ray,2010: 215) This statement shows that women are facing sexist assumptions not only within the home but also from British citizens who presume that they are being forced into wearing the veil and following Islamic law because their husbands demand it, when more commonly women are following Islam because they want to. By having this presumption of Muslim women it is impacting on their identity, Britain has assigned Muslim women with the role of the victim, often pitied, this is a negative stereotype which can affect their lives. One of the most controversial issues for Muslim women is their choice to wear the veil. “The Qur’an does not impose any general religious obligation for women’s clothing but gives simple guidelines for social decency.” (Kung, 2007: 622)It is not commanded in the Qur’an...
Within the Middle East, the largest population of the men and women are Muslim. The Muslim religion suggests that women wear a veil or hijab, which is a head scarf that only exposes a woman’s eyes, accompanied by a burqa which is a full body cloak. The sole purpose of the clothing is to cover a woman’s feminine features from men’s eyes. The Qur’an, an Islamic scripture, supports and slightly obligates the uniform by saying that women are to be conservative, “let them wear their head covering over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments.” (Qur’an).
The use of the hijab is one of the most misapprehended traditions of the Muslim culture and is constantly looked down upon by many in American society due to misunderstandings about the relationship between Muslims and terrorist attacks. The hijab is a veil that covers the head and chest, and is usually worn by Muslim women starting on the day they reach the age of puberty. It needs to be worn when in public with the presence of adult males and non-Muslim females. In Muslim culture, a woman’s body should be covered such that only her face, hands, and feet are revealed and the clothing must be loose so the woman’s body shape isn’t visible. People in the Muslim culture believe that a woman should not dress like a man or dress in a way similar to those who don’t believe in God. Their clothing should be modest and can’t be ragged nor overly fancy. Not only
These doors lead into prisons’ for victims whose only crime consists of being a woman. The burqa alienates woman not only from her own self but also snubs her power to reason or realise that she is being wronged against. This alienation is perhaps what patriarchy aimed for by putting women behind a burqa . This actually ‘enslaves’ a woman rather than ‘empowers,’ ‘safeguards,’ or ‘protects,’ her as has been projected to be the purpose of the burqa.