...Male Dominance in Tess of the D’urbervilles The Victorian era, as described by Professor of History and Women's & Gender Studies Nancy Reagin in her essay “Victorian Women: the Gender of Oppression”, witnessed the ideology of separate spheres in which society viewed men as independent and reasonable while viewing women as passive, dependent on men, emotional, and submissive. Men were given the governing role in which they would dominate society due to their ability to make rational decisions while women were expected to unquestionably fill the social roles that men decided for them, and those roles usually revolved around a woman’s duties as a mother and a wife. In marriage, a woman was expected to abide by the orders and views of her husband, and man and wife became one in terms of a woman’s rights, property, and identity. In Tess of the D’urbervilles, a book written in the Victorian Era, Hardy conveys this ideology of separate spheres in his portrayal of men and their dominance over women in society, primarily Tess. Their dominance is shown in how the men act as the masters of society, but it is also seen in how the women in Tess unquestionably view the men as the dominant gender. Often, the women are blindly influenced and act passively when interacting with male characters such as Alec and Angel. They are also seen to be very dependent on the men, and the men acknowledge that, for that is expected of a woman in that age to not be able to make a living for herself. The...
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...Jordan Koch Sociology 101 Research Paper Patriarchy What is Patriarchy? The basic definition is control by men and literally means “the rule of the father”. The term was used to refer to autocratic rule by the male head of a family, however; in modern times it typically refers to social systems where adult men primarily hold power. Males hold primary roles such as political leadership, moral authority, and property control, and fathers hold control over wives and children. Matriarchy is when women have control. Many countries including America are mainly a patriarchy. Throughout the history patriarchy has wiggled its way into the social, political, legal, and economic organization of a range of different cultures throughout the world. Evidence suggests that prehistoric hunter and gatherer societies favored equality for all people and that patriarchy social structures didn’t develop until years after the end of the Pleistocene era. One researcher, Robert M. Strozier, says historically there is no evidence found yet that there was a specific event that triggered patriarchy. Others think that the beginning of the spread of patriarchy had started six thousand years ago when the concept of fatherhood took place. The geographical record shows that there was climate change around 4000 BCE that had led to famines in the Sahara, Arabian Peninsula and the Central Asian deserts. James DeMeo argues that this is the event that occurred and led to patriarchy. This resulted in warlike...
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...Fine Arts & the Creative Process: Theatre Emphasis April 26, 2012 Cloud 9 Critical Response The play Cloud Nine examines questions of gender identity, sexuality and individual freedom, as they exist within two traditional, oppressive ideological models: colonial imperialism and masculine supremacy. By contrasting these worlds of political and sexual dominance, the play draws a parallel between the paralysis exacted by both frameworks upon the development and expression of unique, authentic personhood. The play dramatizes the argument in startling fashion by challenging the touchstones of theatrical convention. Specifically, it defies usual methods of depiction, for some of the main characters in Cloud 9 are portrayed by actors who do not, in any physical or obvious way, resemble those characters. Because the play distorts and uproots the standards of dramatic characterization in such a bold way, the staging of Cloud 9 can potentially border on the ludicrous. So thrown is the audience, that members might start to disengage from the activity of the play and dismiss its theatrical experimentation as too obvious to be regarded seriously, too overdone to be clever or provocative. However, if such an impression of Cloud 9 is registered, I believe this is a failing not of the play but of an audience conditioned to assign fixed attributes to characters in order to render them intelligible. Cloud 9 is not interested in offering satisfaction in this rather simple manner, or of treating...
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...whole world was experiencing revolutions due to social discontent, this increased the desire, of women, in the late 1960’s to ‘confront existing structures of oppression,’ giving the impetus for the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Caine argues the emergence of the movement bought a ‘new tone,’ when discussing women’s oppression. Rather than focusing directly on women’s suffrage, this was a political movement demanding ‘rapid and radical change,’ in an ever increasing ambience of liberalisation. Upon inception, it is vital to highlight one can account different reasons for the emergence of the movement in Britain and America, as different domestic situations led to different reasons for the emergence of a more radical form of feminism. This essay, together with a multiplicity of historians, will consider the importance of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, and the impact they had on the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Linked to this is the ever apparent discrimination women faced and increasing desires to change this, coupled with developments of new opportunities, demonstrated by the aforementioned world events. Additionally, the impact of literature such as Betty Friedan’s, The Feminine Mystique, needs to be considered. Whilst all the factors play an important role in contributing to the emergence, it will be concluded that the increased confidence especially politically, demonstrated by the factors mentioned, by women was ultimately responsible...
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...In this modern, westerly-fixated era, issues regarding gender are seen, by vast proportions of the population, as antiquated. Carol Ann Duffy serves to tackle this notion by using poetry as a window into the deeply personal experience of the contemporary woman. Throughout her texts, strains emerge of futility, depression and disempowerment felt by much of the female demographic during day-to-day existence. Duffy looks into aspects of motherhood, what it means to be a ‘woman’ and ultimately the consequences that gender expectations have on the psychological health of women in order to paint a picture of female marginalisation in the world today. By first examining the titles of each of the three poems, we may gain a more comprehensive understanding of what Carol Ann Duffy is attempting to convey before examining the full textual body. ‘Whoever She Was’ captures the solemn echo of the narrators plight. The past tense acts to separate her current being from ‘Whoever’ she was when her children were young and she had motherly duties to tend to. The blasé use of ‘Whoever’ may at first convey to us that she does not show remorse to the changes she has undergone since her children left. When considered with the context of the poem and her fixation on the past, however, it becomes evident that ‘whoever’ and indeed the third person, ‘she’ is used to accent the gulf between her present state and that of her motherly role. ‘Recognition’, as a title, serves to place the unattainable...
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...Bargaining with Patriarchy Deniz Kandiyoti Gender and Society, Vol. 2, No. 3, Special Issue to Honor Jessie Bernard. (Sep., 1988), pp. 274-290. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0891-2432%28198809%292%3A3%3C274%3ABWP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W Gender and Society is currently published by Sage Publications, Inc.. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/sage.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Fri Jun 15 11:56:33 2007 BARGAINING W I T H PATRIARCHY DENIZ K A N D I Y O T I Richmond College, United Kingdom T h i s article argues that systematic comparative analyses of women's strategies and coping mechanisms lead to a...
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...to the Aztec culture. You will find how gender played in these two cultures. They both have social classes and what role men and women played. Let’s start with Pohnpei, there is a strong coherence to this vital society due to increasing modernization, areas of gender. In social and political structures contain aspects of both order and freedom. There’s harmony between tradition (males running politics and woman determining clan ranking) and freedom. Some men achieve status in both the traditional and modern political systems (Ward 57). Elders draw young people into marriage, titles, even land ownership (Ward 57). The political aspect of society is run by men. Each district is headed by a man called Nahnwarski or king or also Paramount Chief, then High Chief, high ranked citizens, and the commoners (Ward 14). Ambition is a respected, even an ancient idea, one not tied to job status and education. Dedicated work for the Paramount Chiefs and loyalties to a geographic section and district are signs of worthy ambition (Ward 76). A man advancing through title ranks pulls his hard-working relatives, male and female, up with him, just as his older relatives lifted him (Ward 77). Titles are the correct and preferred form of address and change at any time (Ward 90). Women hold important positions throughout the hierarchy, though their title is in most cases dependent on their spouse's (Keating). The tides are gender marked; a woman's title is the feminine counterpart of her husband's...
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...break that handicap in society as well as the political sphere. Modern times have shown greater acceptance and tolerance towards groups that do not meet requirements of circumscribed circles. In this essay, the issue addressed is the lack of equality in this particular circumscribed circle called politics on an international level. There is still the need to define discrimination, stereotyping and prejudice among groups and race. In modern times, psychologists and scholars have focused their attention to human behaviour, the human mind as well as gender based issues within the political sphere and even within that area, issues of discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice especially gender do not cease to exist. Sexism has, in the modern era, gained much academic and social legitimacy. Scholars and feminists have thoroughly examined the politics of identification as follows: (a) Gender shapes not only who we are but the world(s) we live in (b) Resistance to changing our personal (gender) identities obstructs feminist movement (c) The identity of the modern subject is not gender neutral but masculine (and typically European) (d) Feminist identity is itself problematic given the diversity (non-identity) among women. (e) Identity groups most closely associated with political power have also been historically based on gender inequality. (f) As members of these groups, women have interests in their success, including the group's acquisition of political power...
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...sexuality by exposing the incoherencies that occur within the varying relationships of sex, gender, and sexuality (1996: 3). By having an analytical framework which includes numerous modes of sex/gender/sexuality combinations, such as cross-dressing, sadomasochism, and androgyny, Queer Theory acts in critical relation to the hegemonic social norms through which traditional sexual identities are governed and accepted (Weed and Schor, 1997: vii). Theorist David Halperin (1997) suggests that numerous varying degrees of difference and interpretation exist within any given from of sexuality - for example, there exist both feminine male homosexuals and masculine male homosexuals, and so on. Related to this is one Queer Theory’s central claims, which wishes to state that femininity/masculinity have no necessarily explicit link to biologically sexed females/males. Corber and Valocchi suggest that the belief that this link is anything other than arbitrary serves to legitimate social patriarchy, and that stigmatisations occur when such sex/gender/sexuality combinations step outside these social norms (2003:7). Another central claim of Queer Theory is that...
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...The Hunger Games: Action-film feminism is catching fire Lisa Schwarzbaum Burning up Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen is both strong and vulnerable – a new kind of action heroine who has powered The Hunger Games: Catching fire to a $158m US debut. (Lionsgate) Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen is a new type of female action film icon, and moviegoers should be very excited about that, writes Lisa Schwarzbaum. As Catching Fire ignites on movie screens around the world, this is what we know about the 21st Century heroine called Katniss Everdeen: she is strong but also soft. She is brave but she has doubts. She is a phenomenal fictional creation, yet is real enough that moviegoers can draw inspiration from her values, her resourcefulness, and her very human inner conflicts. And she is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who appears not only to be handling her current duties as Hollywood’s finest model of well-adjusted millennial female stardom but doing so with charm. Everdeen and Lawrence: golden girls both. Personified in Lawrence’s lithe movements and cool, focused gaze, Katniss is a brave, resourceful and independent-minded fighter; but she is also a troubled and vulnerably guilt-ridden human being. Nina Jacobson, the producer of the Hunger Games film franchise, puts it this way: “She is a singular heroine in that the burden of survival weighs on her. She has a ton of survivor’s guilt. And she keeps surviving.” Girl on fire It is strange that behaving like a well-adjusted...
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...shall give considerable to WID, WAD and GAD and give their contributions to development as well as their strengths and weaknesses. One of the most famous approaches to development was the feminist Women in development (WID). This was adopted in the 1970s in response to women movement in the west. The women in the west advocated for inclusion of women who have been excluded from development policies and programs. Baserup (1979) point out that the primary goal of WID was to include women into existing initiatives cited in Schech and Haggis (2000). Women were marginalized and excluded from the benefits of development. In so doing, the WID approach pointed out that the major problem to women’s unequal representation and participation is the male biased and patriarch cal development policies (Beneria and Sen 1982:161 c.f Schech and Haggis 2000). In short, the WID approach blamed patriarchy which did not consider women’s productive and reproductive work. In fact, women were tied to domestic work hence were almost invisible...
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...The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. 1.2 State of Problem The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its narrative. That era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other economy struggle that was the result of the materialism and capitalism damaging on social behavior, led to the widespread social distress. 1.3 Theoretical Framework Using literary criticism to interpret what is the ideal life of America in 19th century and what is the dream of American people after World War I. as a Marxist interpretation of the novel makes especially clear, reveals its dark underbelly instead. Through its unflattering characterization of those at the top of the economic heap and its horrifying examination of the ways in which American dream not only fails to fulfill its promise, but also contributes...
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...25-27 DOI:10.3968/j.sll.1923156320110302.215 ISSN 1923-1555[Print] ISSN 1923-1563[Online] www.cscanada.net www.cscanada.org Female Consciousness in Wuthering Heights ZHAO Juan1,* 1 Institute of Foreign languages, Beijing Technology and Business University, China * Corresponding author. Email: zhaoj@th.btbu.edu.cn Received 16 May 2011; accepted 18 August 2011 Wuthering heights , a representative work in Victorian Era by Emily Bronte, a famous female writer of the 19th century in Britain, has greatly influenced readers for generations. This article investigates the female consciousness in Withering Heights and analyses how Catherine rebels against the male-dominated society and pursues her love. The female consciousness includes the sense of independence and the pursuit of her true self. The spiritual equality is the foundation of happiness between lovers, and although women dace lots of obstacles in their struggle and fight against the society, a wonderful future to women is to be ushered in if they keep fighting. Key words: Feminism; Female consciousness; Rebellion; Spiritual pursuit Z H A O J u a n ( 2 0 11 ) . F e m a l e C o n s c i o u s n e s s i n Wu t h e r i n g Heights . Studies in Literature and Language, 3 (2), 252 7 . Av a i l a b l e f r o m : U R L : h t t p : / / w w w . c s c a n a d a . n e t / i n d e x . p h p / s l l / a r t i c l e / v i e w / j . s l l . 1 9 2 3 1 5 6 3 2 0 11 0 3 0 2 . 2 1 5 DOI: 10.3968/j.sll.1923156320110302.215 Abstract ...
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...When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.” The central theme of gender roles in the film adaption and the play is the largest cultural difference evident in these two mediums. America at the beginning of the 20th century was immensely different from 16th century England, not to mention the second wave of feminism encouraging women to break through the inequality barriers that were about to surge. As opposed to this, in the play the men are the decision makers, the head-hunters and the most important people in society. This is in contrast to Shakespeare’s other strong female characters like Juliet, Beatrice, Cordelia, Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth; who are all brave, powerful, wonderfully complicated, and all perfect examples of Shakespeare being way ahead of his time in terms of gender equality. As mentioned, ‘The Taming’ is Shakespeare's odd play out, kind of like John Hughes making Die Hard. The women are considered weak objects to be controlled by men. For instance, when Petruchio plans to ‘tame’ Katherina like a falcon he says: “This is the way to kill a wife with kindness. And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.” This is an example of male dominance and gender roles as Petruchio believes he has full right to change her personality, and is not judged for it as long as she is the ‘proper wife’. Another illustration of a similar gender stereotype is Shakespeare's use of objective language like ‘it, she and wife’, which symbolise how women were seen as objects...
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...Sociological Theories A sociological theory is a set of ideas that provides an explanation for human society. Theories are selective in terms of their priorities and perspectives and the data they define as significant. As a result they provide a particular and partial view of reality. Sociological theories can be grouped together according to a variety of criteria. The most important of these is the distinction between Structural and Social action theories. Structural or macro perspectives analyses the way society as a whole fits together. Structural theory sees society as a system of relationships that creates the structure of the society in which we live. It is this structure that determines our lives and characters. Structured sets of social relationships are the 'reality' that lie below the appearance of 'the free individual' of western individualism. Structuralism focuses on the particular set of 'structural laws' that apply in any one society. Despite their differences, both functionalism and Marxism use a model of how society as a whole works. Many functionalists base their model of society around the assumption of basic needs and go to explain how different parts of society help to meet those needs. Marxists, on the other hand, see society as resting upon an economic base or infrastructure, with a superstructure above it. They see society as divided into social classes which have the potential to be in conflict with each other. However, the main differences...
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