In times of war, we find that all though out the history of America, there is some sense of a change. This holds true to time when the Civil War that was being fought in 1861, when the South was against the North. During this particular war in America, we take notice of changing roles in feminism with the cult of true womanhood. This cult is described to be a mold for the "perfect" woman. This is broken down into piety, domesticity, purity, and submission. Piety is devotion and reverence to parents and family. Domesticity is the quality of home life. Purity is the act of being pure and without blemish. Submission is total surrender of power to one another. In the visual text, Gone With the Wind, we are introduced to a dark haired, green-eyed Georgia belle named Scarlett O'Hara. She is questioned on being a feminist character in this picture. All these characteristic Scarlett may possess but does not use to prove her character as feminist. We can prove that she is not a feminist character by using the historical context, her character traits and her relationship with Rhett Butler.
Starting with the historical context, we find that Scarlett O'Hara is not a feminist. All though out this artifact, Gone With the Wind, the Civil War is present with a focus on the South. In this film, we meet Scarlett O'Hara who is lovesick for Ashley Wilkes, who is engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. At a barbeque at Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes plantation, Scarlett has to face reality that Ashley will never be her own. Very jealous with Ashley's engagement, Scarlett accepts a wedding proposal from Charles Hamilton, in order to have revenge on Ashley. Scarlett is letting her spite get the best for her when she makes judgment calls. She feels at th...
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...Rhett and Scarlett were together, they represented the New South. They both taught for themselves and did not need a set of rules to follow for society.
In conclusion, we find that Scarlett O'Hara does not fit the mold of the cult of true womanhood. We find this to be true using visual artifact of Gone With the Wind. Scarlett lacks the qualities of the cult of true womanhood. This cult is described to be a mold for the "perfect" woman. Piety is devotion and reverence to parents and family. Domesticity is the quality of home life. Purity is the act of being pure and without blemish. Submission is total surrender of power to one another. We have answered our question on Scarlett being a feminist character in this picture. We proved that she is not a feminist character by using the historical context, her character traits and her relationship with Rhett Butler.
In the movie Gone With the Wind, Scarlett, the main character was a woman with many struggles in her life. She lived on a farm with her father, her mother, and her slaves but when she left to go help the wounded, the Yankees came to her house and used it as a base camp. The Yankees took all of Scarlett?s family?s food, crops, and animals. Also while Scarlett was gone her mother got sick. Once Scarlett came back to her farm (Terra) her mother was dead. When the war ended her family was too poor to pay the taxes so she married Frank, a rich businessman, so she could pay the taxes. After her husband died she remarried a richer man named Rhett and they had a child named Bonnie.
When examining Beauty and the Beast by Andrew Lang, from a feminist perspective, it is evident that the portrayal and treatment of women is dreadful. The story was written in 1889 where women were seen as objects that were solely there for men’s pleasure and although, for once, the woman is portrayed as the heroine and not a damsel in distress, the story still includes misogynistic elements. For instance, when the beast threatens the father, the two characters treat Beauty as if she is an object that can be traded. On top of that, a father, who is supposed to love their children and protect them, decides it is okay give away his daughter, so he could stay alive. To add, later on in the story, Beauty seeks advice from her father about her dreams and he says, "You tell me yourself that the Beast, frightful as he is, loves you dearly, and deserves
Gone with the Wind is a novel that is set during the civil war. During the second part, the protagonist Scarlett reads a letter that was sent by a confederate soldier named Ashley. The letter talks about his opinion on the war and the reason he fights. Ashley joined the war with the hopes of fighting for States’ Rights and preserving the old ways. However, once the fighting started he realized that the old ways are not going to come back, “And I belong in those old times. I do not belong in this mad present of killing and I fear I will not fit into any future, try though I may.” He is not happy about fighting in the war, and he does not have confidence
Feminism is the conviction that members of both the male and female gender should be treated equally in all situations in political, economic and socio-cultural settings. It involves activities put in place in support of the interests and just treatment of females. One major way through which feminism manifests itself in the society today is through books and movies. Authors and movie directors depict feminist in their works by using events and characters to bring out how women are looked at and treated in the society. Over the years, Feminism has gradually changed in terms of its nature and the characteristics of the people who took up the belief of feminism (Lyman, 264). Feminists have gradually changed from being about equal rights for men and women to a whole range of complex issues, with the emergence of issues such as radical feminism and the improvements in the amount of knowledge and power that feminists hold (Harnois, 122). This paper takes a look at aspects of feminism present in America and in Britain by analyzing selected situations from two books, The Maltese Falcon and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The movie revolves around the sometimes love hate relationship between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara and how she will do whatever it takes to survive. It over romanticizes the old south and how the plantations were run and deals with topics such as slavery, reconstruction of the south and has a strong feminist survival theme to it.
Feminists usually do not vary in the views that they have. The feminist wants equal rights for both sexes, and wants all women to be treated just like men. The short story and the play suggest something different. Within the story there are many instances that suggest that Susan Gla...
Until recently we haven’t really known or focused on the behavior of southern women during the war. From what we know they faced food shortages, crime, and an increased death toll. These women had to drop everything they’ve known to become the head of the household. There’s little that’s known about the enslaved and poor women during this time. These women did what they could to survive during a time that was dangerous because of the war. These women became more vulnerable, where the women were victimized by the males in the war. The Confederacy begins to try to control these enslaved and poor females rather than trying to earn their support. Women began being charged with new crimes including larceny, forcible entry, and rioting. This opposition of the Confederate seems to be women’s most successful form of disorderly conduct. Bynum claims that women “significantly alter the balance of power between warring men” (p. 149). Many poor white women went to the streets. There were mobs of women in each North Carolina County. These attacks were focused on merchants and Confederate agents; who were both extremely obnoxious towards these poor women. The poor people began to fear starvation more than the law, in the months leading up to the end of the war a mob of mostly women descended upon Granville
Did things necessarily change after the Civil War? According to “Ain’t I a Women” she states that she still wasn’t treated like a woman. Then again she wasn’t one of the rich people who gets help for everything. In other words all she wants is to be treated like she is, an actual woman. Furthermore in the story “The Sullivan Ballou Letter” he states his love in a matter a factly way because he knows that he is going to die because he is going to war for lincoln but he doesn’t want to see his wife and kids cry so he tries to make it in the happiest way. Equally important in the story “Chasing Lincoln’s Killer” they are trying to recreate by words how his death was occurred and how he may not have had his death on that day if he wouldn’t have
Eliza's assaults against True Womanhood are violations of the virtues submissiveness and purity. When Eliza refuses to ignore the gallantry of Major Sanford in favor of the proposals of Reverend Boyer despite the warnings of her friends and mother, she disregards submissiveness in favor of her own fanc...
There is a sense that the women have been thrust into an environment that is not complimentary to their quality. Rosa Coldfield is “strong with forty-three years of hate,” against a world that has wronged her (the world of the South) with its male insistence that “if you haven’t got honor and pride, then nothing matters” (Faulkner 279). What Rosa has is emotion, true reaction, feelings, instinct. In the realm of the South, the instinct of emotion and truth is something that runs behind honor and pride, its presence fully realized and known but not given credibility over hierarchy: “Only there is something in you that doesn’t care about honor and pride yet that lives, that even walks backward for a whole year just to live” (279). The inner struggle of the South sets forth a destructive trap that derives from the arbitrarily enforced systems of male creation, especially honor and pride, that are not only based in domination but also in a false sense of hierarchy.
Gibson’s Man Without a Face is a cry out at injustice and discrimination in the modern era, while The Scarlet Letter shows us the hypocrisy and judgmental character of the Puritan society in early American.
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, may not be the best story to read and it may be confusing to some people, but it teaches the reader a great deal about how women were treated and how women were viewed during the early 1900’s. When analyzing the play from a feminist standpoint, Mrs. Wright’s motive for killing her husband becomes more clear and understandable to why she did it. Susan Glaspell gives the reader an idea of how men and women were treated during that time. In the next few paragraphs, I will use Susan Glaspell’s feminist approach to demonstrate how Mrs. Wrights murdering of her husband is completely justified.
In the first scene that depicts slaves working, the two men argue over who is in charge of calling “quits” for the day. While this may appear insignificant, it illustrates the notion that the slaves are both enjoying, and taking pride in their work. When the slave yells “quitting time” he does so with a sense of accomplishment, as if completing an honest days work, one that was “graciously” given to him by his master. The convention of nostalgia is deeply embedded in the film, and as a result, acts as its greatest racial vice. Gone With the Wind is a heavily distorted view of the past. Its narrative takes the Americanized spirit of plantation lifestyle and uses it as fuel to the characterization of Scarlett as being a strong, independent, woman, rather than an instigator of slavery and age-old lifestyles that have truly “gone with the wind,” as the film poetically expresses. But the film’s deeper fallacies lie within the ignorance towards slavery as a whole. The backdrop of the film is the civil war, and the fight for emancipation, but the narrative very seldom makes implications on the moral nature of
The feeling of not being heard or not being allowed to do what you want is placed upon women in the 1930s. Harper Lee’s depiction of women, in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird, is they should be able to have an important voice in society, make changes they feel are important, and do certain actions without conforming to gender normalities.
Jonathan Swift growing up, born in Ireland suffered very much. Both his parents exited his life after his birth. Jonathans father Jonathan Swift Sr. died four months after his son’s birth. His mother Abigail Erick tried to care for the young sick Jonathan with his nurse. Eventually his mother gave in and sent Jonathan to England with his nurse to be cared for in a better manner. Jonathan was barely raised by a female figure once his mother and nurse were not by his side as he grew past infancy. When he came back to Ireland, Jonathan lived with his uncle who gave Jonathan the best education possible which he funded for Jonathan.