...rose-tinted glasses. Essentially and realistically, marriage is but a contract or a traditional bargain which is drawn up between men and women. As defined by the World Book Encyclopedia. ‘It is the relationship between a man and a woman who have made legal agreement to live together. When a man and a woman marry, they become husband and wife’. Almost every society has certain traditional ideas about marriage and many roles and duties of the husband and wife are based on religious codes. Most marriage laws that are based on religious edicts favor men. Genesis, the story of creation reveals how God created Man and Woman and placed them in the Garden of Eden. There, they dwelt as equals as both were created in the image of God and thus had undifferentiated roles, duties, shared the same status and their relationship was a ‘partnership of equals’. It was only after the deception of the serpent and their subsequent banishment from the Garden did a disparity in their relationship arise. “And the Lord God said unto the woman, ‘…and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’ (Genesis 4:16-18) “The man named his wife ‘Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who lived.” (Genesis 8:20) Here we have the original charter, which serves as the...
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...Study Guides and Literature Essays Editing Services College Application Essays Writing Help Q & A Lesson Plans Home : The Handmaid's Tale : Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of V: Nap - VI: Household The Handmaid's Tale Summary and Analysis by Margaret Atwood Buy PDFBuy Paperback V: Nap - VI: Household Summary This section begins with Offred simply sitting alone, waiting. She had not been prepared for all this stillness, all of this boredom. She thinks about experiments they used to do on animals, how they would give them something to distract them. She wishes she had something to distract her. She lies down on the floor and begins to do her exercises, tilting her pelvis back. She remembers how at the training center they had rest time every day from three to four. Now she thinks it was practice for all of the waiting. She remembers how Moira showed up, after she'd been there for about three weeks. They couldn't talk for a few days, but finally during a walk they were able to plan a meeting in the washroom. The first time was during Testifying, which Aunt Helena came for specially. That day, Janine was talking about how she was gang raped when she was fourteen and had to get an abortion, and the other women respond as they have learned to, chanting that it was her fault. Despite the surroundings, Offred was extremely happy to see Moira. Now Offred thinks about her body. She used to see it as an instrument of her will, but now she sees it only as a container...
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...A prelude introduces us to the hero. Gilgamesh’s mother was the Lady Wildcow Ninsun, a minor goddess noted for her wisdom, and Lugulbanda was his father. Gilgamesh built the great city of Uruk and surrounded it with magnificent, intricately constructed outer and inner walls. He erected beautiful temples for Anu, the god of the heavens, and for Anu’s daughter Ishtar, the goddess of war and love. He laid out orchards and ponds and irrigated fields. A dauntless explorer, Gilgamesh opened passes through the mountains and dug wells in the wilderness. He traveled to the ends of the Earth and beyond, where he met Utnapishtim, the sole survivor of the great flood that almost ended the world. When he returned from his travels he wrote everything down on a tablet of lapis lazuli and locked it in a copper chest. As the story begins, Gilgamesh is terrifying and all-powerful. He sacrifices warriors whenever he feels like fighting, rapes his nobles’ wives, takes whatever he wants from his people, and tramples anyone who gets in his way. The old men of Uruk complain, saying that a king is supposed to protect his subjects like a shepherd, not harass them like a wild ox. The gods listen. They tell Aruru, the goddess of creation, that since she made Gilgamesh, she must now make someone strong enough to stand up to him. Aruru takes some clay, moistens it with her spit, and forms another man, named Enkidu. Shunning the cultivated lands and the cities, he lives in the wilderness with the animals...
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..."The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (1917) Summary: This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife who has not seen her husband in five months. She begins by reminiscing about meeting him during childhood. She was pulling flowers at the front gate and he came by on stilts, playing horse. The next two lines, "And we went on living in the village of Chokan/Two small people, without dislike or suspicion," imply that the pair did not grow close right away following that encounter; they continued to grow up separately. In the next stanza, the wife describes marrying her husband at age fourteen. After that, she was continuously shy, either out of respect, sub-ordinance, or just because of her introverted personality. According to the next stanza, she became more comfortable with the marriage by age fifteen and "stopped scowling." A year later, her husband (a merchant) departed for another village, which is where he has been for the past five months. The monkeys' sorrowful noise mirrors her loneliness. She writes that her husband "dragged [his] feet" when he left - indicating that he did not want to leave her. She ends her letter by writing that if he comes back along the river, he should send word ahead, and she will come out to meet him. The poem is signed "by Rihaku." Analysis: Pound was not the creator of this poem; he translated it from the original Chinese version by Li Po. The Chinese original likely had a specific form and identifiable meter, but Pound...
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...and themes such as violence, possession and patriarchal society are present. However these all differ in nature and theme despite the resounding attitude towards women. THCM is written in 17th Century and the poem depicts a man's urges to will a woman into bed with him. The poem has a light tone and humorous aspects throughout. In contrast MLD which is written in 19th Century has a much darker and menacing tone; it is about a controlling Duke and his previous duchess and unravels the dark story behind them. PL is a Victorian poem, the poem is gothic, crude and perverted in parrts with a man's strange insane intentions. However all these poems are linked by the idea of the male possessing and controlling a woman. H on the other hand is a woman's interpretation of a 19th century fictional character and how this character is left with feelings of violent hatred after being let down in marriage by her fiancé who has wed her to gain some of her riches. The theme of the poem is violent and confrontation but does compare and contrast with PL with the gothic nature. These four dramatic monologues do vary in storyline and tone however he same themes are made apparent in all of them and is what gives these poems a link and comparisons. Desire, death, domination and obsession as well as the balance of control between men and women over the past four hundred years are all explores. In Shakespeare's play "Much Ado about Nothing" we are also resented with these evident themes through two...
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...With the mounting concerns of researchers and women activists, a plethora of literature is coming out on the nature, extent and reminiscent strategies of violence within public as well as private domain. The physical and sexual abuse of women in public domain and children has become widely recognized. Laws have been changed, shelters and treatment programs have been launched, and documentaries/movies have been made on the issue, yet sexual relations within married couples are less discussed and scantily researched issues in India. There is a curious silence surrounding sexual violence towards wives as wife, family and children are considered as private issues and moreover notion of family rest on the peace and security of women. Though widespread, sexual violence or marital rape is still regarded as a tabooed issue. Marriage has always been known as a sacred institution but, wonder how much of it exists today. Marriage is no more a ‘sacrosanct institution’, for, there are issues within it that have sort of shaken the ground basis of the entire union of a man and a woman and this idea of the “sacrosanct” institution of marriage is dished out by the mainstream Indian cinema is a myth and is contrary to women’s perceptions of reality. Marriage now, is just not limited to being with the man you love, respect and want to spend your entire life with but, on the contrary, it can also come with its own set of problems, including the biggest- that of ‘Marital Rape’ which has become...
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...About Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe's college work sharpened his interest in indigenous Nigerian cultures. He had grown up in Ogidi, a large village in Nigeria. His father taught at the missionary school, and Achebe witnessed firsthand the complex mix of benefit and catastrophe that the Christian religion had brought to the Igbo people. In the 1950s, an exciting new literary movement grew in strength. Drawing on indigenous Nigerian oral traditions, this movement enriched European literary forms in hopes of creating a new literature, in English but unmistakably African. Published in 1958, Things Fall Apart is one of the masterpieces of 20th century African fiction. Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s, during the coming of the white man to Nigeria. In part, the novel is a response and antidote to a large tradition of European literature in which Africans are depicted as primitive and mindless savages. The attitudes present in colonial literature are so ingrained into our perception of Africa that the District Commissioner, who appears at the end of the novel, strikes a chord of familiarity with most readers. He is arrogant, dismissive of African "savages," and totally ignorant of the complexity and richness of Igbo life. Yet his attitude echoes so much of the depiction of Africa; this attitude, following Achebe's depiction of the Igbo, seems hollow and savage. Digression is one of Achebe's most important tools. Although the novel's central story is the tragedy of Okonkwo...
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...Elements of fiction “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker The Color Purple is an epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name. This novel is making arguments on the topic “racism and sexism”. The Color Purple is an extraordinary novel that’s full of surprises. Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on female black life in the 1930s in the southern United States, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. Alice Walker’s biography [pic] Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1994, in Eatonton, Georgia. Living in the racially divided South, Walker attended segregated schools. She graduated from her high school as the valedictorian of her class. With the help of a scholarship, she was able to go to Spelman College in Atlanta. Later, she switched to Sarah Lawrence College in New York City. While at Sarah Lawrence, Walker visited Africa as part of a study-abroad program. She graduated in 1965—the same year that she published her first short story. After college, Walker worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer. She became active in the Civil Rights Movement, fighting for equality for all African Americans. Her experiences informed her first collection of poetry, Once, which was published in 1968. Better known now as a novelist, Walker...
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...Introduction Ever wonder why snakes migrate after laying eggs? The truth behind this is the alleged cannibalism that happens when snakes keep their young. In a greater sense, the mistreatment of family members, usually wives, in a domestic scene is the same as keeping a snake and eating it after a few days. It is selfish. It is blameworthy. It is immoral. What is this monstrous thing beheld as it is not to be? The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) defines domestic violence as, “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation, whether occurring in public and private life (Mallorca-Bernabe 1-2).” In simpler terms, domestic violence refers to the abusive treatment one evokes another in the family context. Fifty years ago, domestic violence was not even recognized as a significant study or as a legal problem. It was not until the time when feminist activism developed concerning domestic violence that this issue surfaced publicly. From then on, domestic violence has been understood as abuse not confined to the criterion of being physical but as an act involving emotional abuse and sexual assault (Schneider 353-363). Physical violence, being the most evident of the three, involves acts that somewhat suffuse physical torment upon the victim. This encompasses slapping, hitting, kicking, burning...
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...The Problem of Faith in 'Young Goodman Brown' Author(s): Leo B. Levy Publication Details: JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 74.3 (July 1975): p375-387. Source: Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Juliet Byington. Vol. 95. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. p375-387. From Literature Resource Center. Document Type: Critical essay Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning [In the following essay, Levy examines Faith as a character, an allegorical figure, and a symbol.] Few of Hawthorne's tales have elicited a wider range of interpretations than “Young Goodman Brown.” The critics have been victimized by the notorious ambiguity of a tale composed of a mixture of allegory and the psychological analysis of consciousness. Many of them find the key to its meaning in a neurotic predisposition to evil; one goes so far as to compare Goodman Brown to Henry James's governess in The Turn of the Screw [Darrel Abel, in “Black Glove and Pink Ribbon: Hawthorne's Metonymic Symbols,” in NEQ 42, 1969]. The psychological aspect is undeniably important, since we cannot be certain whether “Young Goodman Brown” is a dream-allegory that takes place in the mind and imagination of the protagonist, an allegory with fixed referents in the external world, or a combination of these that eludes our ordinary understanding of the genre itself. The story is all three: a dream vision, a conventional allegory, and finally an inquiry into the problem of faith that undermines...
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...Engineer Patricia Galloway believes that serving as the first woman president of the 151-year-old American Society of Civil Engineers — a historically male bastion if there ever was one — makes her a role model to women in the industry. It's high times for women leading construction-related engineering groups, with three others currently in high office. The same goes for construction organizations. Nova Group's Carole L Bionda is chairelect of Associated Builders and Contractors. Meanwhile, the US House Education and Workforce Committee last month passed the Family Time Flexibility Act (H.R. 1119) which could undermine workers' most basic rights by altering the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which currently requires employers to pay overtime to certain employees when they are required to work beyond the normal 40 hour work week.( Peterson 98) At home, we're aware (perhaps painfully so) that men and women often have different communication styles. But it's easy to forget that such differences can show up at work, too. To do an effective job of communicating, keep in mind gender-related communication styles. Young boys are socialized to give an immediate answer or solution to a problem. Young girls want answers, too, but tend to talk things over to solve problems. So while a man might prefer to work things out for himself, a woman is more likely to want to discuss them. According to researcher Deborah Tanhen, author of Talking from 9 to 5, when a woman starts to discuss an...
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...Women in our society Engineer Patricia Galloway believes that serving as the first woman president of the 151-year-old American Society of Civil Engineers - a historically male bastion if there ever was one - makes her a role model to women in the industry. It's high times for women leading construction-related engineering groups, with three others currently in high office. The same goes for construction organizations. Nova Group's Carole L Bionda is chairelect of Associated Builders and Contractors. Meanwhile, the US House Education and Workforce Committee last month passed the Family Time Flexibility Act (H.R. 1119) which could undermine workers' most basic rights by altering the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which currently requires employers to pay overtime to certain employees when they are required to work beyond the normal 40 hour work week.( Peterson 98) At home, we're aware (perhaps painfully so) that men and women often have different communication styles. But it's easy to forget that such differences can show up at work, too. To do an effective job of communicating, keep in mind gender-related communication styles. Young boys are socialized to give an immediate answer or solution to a problem. Young girls want answers, too, but tend to talk things over to solve problems. So while a man might prefer to work things out for himself, a woman is more likely to want to discuss them. According to researcher Deborah Tanhen, author of Talking from 9 to...
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...T H E WAY O F THE S U P E R I O R MAN A Spiritual Guide to Mastering and the Challenges of Women, Work, Sexual Desire DAVID DEIDA P L E X U S 1997 IMPORTANT CAUTION - PLEASE READ THIS Although anyone may find the practices, disciplines and understandings in this book to be useful, it is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher are engaged in presenting specific medical, psychological, emotional, sexual, or spiritual advice. Nor is anything in this book intended to be a diagnosis, prescription, recommendation, or cure for any specific kind of medical, psychological, emotional, sexual, or spiritual problem. Each person has unique needs and this book cannot take these individual differences into account. Each person should engage in a program of treatment, prevention, cure, or general health only in consultation with a licensed, qualified physician, therapist, or other competent professional. Any person suffering from venereal disease or any local illness of his or her sexual organs or prostate gland should consult a medical doctor and a qualified instructor of sexual yoga before practicing the sexual methods described in this book. PLEXUS 815-A Brazos, Suite 445-B Austin, TX 78701 © 1997 by David Deida All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the...
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...Beteckning: Humanities and Social Sciences Double Oppression in the Color Purple and Wide Sargasso Sea. A Comparison between the main characters Celie and Antoinette/Bertha. Ingela Lundin 2008 C-essay English Literature Supervisor: Dr Maria Mårdberg Examinator: Dr Helena Wahlström Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose and main questions ............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Method and material......................................................................................................... 1 1.3 Theoretical approach ........................................................................................................ 2 1.4 Previous research – an overview ...................................................................................... 3 1.5 Introducing the novels ...................................................................................................... 4 2. A comparison of the double oppression in the two protagonists’ marriages.................. 6 2.1 The diminishing and isolation of Celie and Antoinette/Bertha........................................ 6 2.2 The upholding of the white man’s norm ........................................................................ 14 Conclusion..........................................................
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...Contents: Introduction _________________________________________________________________ i Chapter 1: Men Are from Mars Women Are from Venus Chapter 2: Mr. Fix-It and the Home-Improvement Committee Chapter 3: Men Go to Their Caves and Women Talk Chapter 4: How to Motivate the Opposite Sex Chapter 5: Speaking Different Languages Chapter 6: Men Are Like Rubber Bands Chapter 7: Women Are Like Waves Chapter 8: Discovering Our Different Emotional Needs Chapter 9: How to Avoid Arguments Chapter 10: Scoring Points with the Opposite Sex Chapter 11: How to Communicate Difficult Feelings Chapter 12: How to Ask for Support and Get It Chapter 13: Keeping the Magic of Love Alive 1 4 12 18 26 40 50 59 67 78 92 110 122 2 Acknowledgments I thank my wife, Bonnie, for sharing the journey of developing this book with me. I thank her for allowing me to share our stories and especially for expanding my understanding and ability to honor the female point of view. I thank our three daughters, Shannon, Julie, and Lauren, for their continued love and appreciation. The challenge of being a parent has allowed me to understand the struggles my parents had and love them even more. Being a father has especially assisted me in understanding and loving my father. I thank my father and mother for their loving efforts to raise a family of seven...
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