Women and Sexuality in Aphra Behn's Poems
"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of AphraBehn, . .
. for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." (Woolf 91)
Born in 1640, AphraBehn broke gender stereotypes when she undertook a thrilling
(if unrewarded) life as a spy for the Crown, but it was her scandalous career as
an author which truly achieved many firsts for women. She was the first woman to
supporthereself financially by solely relying on the profession of writing, and
many readers argue that Oroonoko--her passionate tale about the institution of
slavery--was the first English novel. She was certainly one of the first female
authors to write candidly about sexuality: in fact, she both broke new ground
and challenged conceptions of patriarchal power when she wrote about women's
empowerment through sexuality. In her poems "The Willing Mistress" (from her
play The Dutch Lover, 1673) and "The Disappointment" (1680), Behn creates
situations of bold sexual mischief in which female characters are aware of,
comfortable with, and even thrive off their sexuality.
Not only was it virtually unheard of for a woman of Behn's time to express
herself openly as a sexual being, but it was also explicitly forbidden by
cultural precepts for a woman to so aggressively take charge of her own physical
desires and satisfaction, as Behn's characters do. Previously, men were in
control of most sexual situations--both in real life and in literature. Behn,
however, creates a playing field where the traditional roles not only do not
apply but are subverted. Urged to seize the da...
... middle of paper ...
...ny; they
can hold the power. Although these sentiments were certainly ahead of their
time, they did help pave the way for future generations of women to express
themselves honestly, sexually or otherwise. For that, all women are indeed
eternally indebted to AphraBehn.
Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. "The Disappointment."The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women.
2nd ed. Eds. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York : Norton, 1996. 112-115.
---. "The Willing Mistress." Norton. 111.
Bradstreet, Anne. "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment."
Norton. 89.
Woolf , Virginia . "AphraBehn." Excerpted from A Room of One's Own. Reprinted in
Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing. Ed. Michele Barrett. New York : Harvest, 1979.
89-91.
Romeo and Juliet is widely known to be a tragedy, but what caused the atrocity for which it is so renowned? Some may argue fate was to blame for Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths, that the situations these young lovers faced were depicted as being out of their control. Could Romeo have refused to attend the Capulet masque? Was Romeo destined to duel the raging Tybalt? Did Romeo and Juliet truly have to kill themselves? If one considers the specific circumstances and causes of these situations, the fact that all scenarios are the result of choice rather than chance, and the notion that the characters were never left without options, only one conclusion can be determined. It was unarguably the decisions made by characters, not those made by fate, that were responsible for the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet.
She argued and fought for all women to have access and with it freedom to choose when and or if they wanted to be mothers.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was an author, critic, editor and teacher who "possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time" [1]. She contributed significantly to the American Renaissance in literature and to mid-nineteenth century reform movements. A brilliant and highly educated member of the Transcendentalist group, she challenged Ralph Waldo Emerson both intellectually and emotionally. Women who attended her "conversations" and many men of her time found Fuller's influence life-changing. Her major work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century published in 1845, profoundly affected the women's rights movement which had its formal beginning at Seneca Falls, New York, three years later.
This paper will contain research done about foster care, including a brief history and progressing along to the system today. This research interested me because it is a professional career option after graduation. I found both positives and negatives about the foster care system that children and foster parents go through on a daily basis. As the paper progresses I will be explaining these positives and negatives in more detail. Throughout the paper I will be referencing different scholarly sources that explain foster care in different ways. Overall, this paper will show different aspects that the general public may never know about foster care.
Copyright (c) 2005 Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, 2005, 12 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 371, 13986 words, SYMPOSIUM: THE STATE CONSTRUCTION OF FAMILIES: FOSTER CARE, TERMINATION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS, AND ADOPTION: FROM ANTICIPATION TO EVIDENCE: RESEARCH ON THE ADOPTION
In 2002, 51,000 children were adopted through the foster care system. The federal government tracks the number of adoptions from the United States foster care system, and all of its international adoptions. It’s estimated that around 120,000 children are adopted by U.S citizens each year. Half of these children are adopted by individuals not related to t...
Mary Wollstonecraft was as revolutionary in her writings as Thomas Paine. They were both very effective writers and conveyed the messages of their ideas quite well even though both only had only the most basic education. Wollstonecraft was a woman writing about women's rights at a time when these rights were simply non-existent and this made her different from Paine because she was breaking new ground, thus making her unique. Throughout her lifetime, Wollstonecraft wrote about the misconception that women did not need an education, but were only meant to be submissive to man. Women were treated like a decoration that had no real function except to amuse and beguile. Wollstonecraft was the true leader in women's rights, advocating a partnership in relationships and marriage rather than a dictatorship. She was firm in her conviction that education would give women the ability to take a more active role in life itself.
Throughout the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, various types of love are portrayed. According to some of the students of Shakespeare, Shakespeare himself had accumulated wisdom beyond his years in matters pertaining to love (Bloom 89). Undoubtedly, he draws upon this wealth of experience in allowing the audience to see various types of love personified. Shakespeare argues that there are several different types of love, the interchangeable love, the painful love and the love based on appearances, but only true love is worth having.
Social services focus on sending kids away from abusive homes and jumping from one group home or institution to another instead of focusing on building families back up and solving the actual issue. A child can legally become uprooted from their home due to multiple things. The primary guardian has a drug problem, the living quarters obtain eviction, too many children in one group home, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect of any kid, incarceration, abandonment, truancy, death of primary guardian, voluntarily placed, the child continues to commit juvenile offenses or a runaway. Almost the majority of the latter listed can prevail placement in foster care. Instead of wasting another life in the failing system of foster care, child welfare can create programs to promote children’s rights.
To many outsiders, the foster care system may appear to be a safe haven for those children that are abused or abandoned by their birth family. This is correct, but the system with which it is based, has many flaws. A background check is mandatory for all foster parents, but a test to see if a child 's temperament matches that caregiver 's parenting style, is not. Now, this is seen as a minor issue, but there is not enough evidence to support this. Plus, there are many other, much worse reasons, why the system is not perfect. Altogether, the foster care system and a multitude of its rules are flawed and may actually be negatively affecting foster children.
There are far too many children in the foster care who need a stable home, along with the loving support from couples who are willing to adopt them, so that they have a more concrete environment to grow up in. Statistics from Child Welfare Information Gateway show that there were close to 400,000 children who entered the foster care system in the United States as of November 2012 (1). Out of the 400,000 children, an astounding 51% were successfully re-united with their families while only 21% were adopted (6). Thus, leaving an estimated 130,000 helpless children who ...
...sband, mothered eight children, risking death from each pregnancy, and managed to live sixty years. She was the first woman in American Literature to have her work published and also one of the first American women to begin thinking as a femenist. Even though Bradstreet was not a prominent, public femenist, she realized that she had to start somewhere and due to her living in the strict patriarchal puritan society, she did what she could. Although Bradstreet was very religious and held her spirituality very close to her, she still put together early femenist thought and can be considered one of the first American femnists.
The choices Romeo and Juliet make are poor, and eventually resulted in their death. Getting married, killing Tybalt, and thinking with hastyness were all poor choices that lead to both of their deaths. Once in a while making bad choices doesn’t affect someone as much, but making then many times regularly does affect one’s life. This teaches people that we must think our actions through before committing them.
Even though Pinocchio could distinguish right from wrong, he decided to disobey. Pinocchio chooses not to listen to Gepetto, and is faced with consequences that affected him later in the story including the times that he skips school. Pinocchio visits the marionette play, risking his life of becoming firewood and missed months of school during his trip to Playland with Lamp-wick. Pinocchio was to go back home to his fairy, the night that he ran away to Playland, but did not return. A couple months of slothful behavior ended with Pinocchio and Lampwick turned into donkeys and sold.
Collodi uses combination of fantasy and reality in his novel , blue fairy, transformation into the donkey, talking animals, egg becoming a chick and flying out off the window, “Pinocchio is hungry and looks for an egg to cook himself an omelette; but, to his surprise, the omelette flies out of the window”.(Adventures of Pinocchio. Chapter 5), all of this captivates young readers, but thought out a story he does not forget about the importance of educational process and through all this different characters and fantasy he helps the young readers to understand the value of education, and what it takes to become a real boy.