Edward Albee’s one of the probable intentions in writing this play is an attack on the existing ideals and roles that were assigned to each gender during the 50’s and 60’s.The characters in the play are distinguished from each other on the basis of the kind of personality and behavior they reflect during the action of the play. All the four major characters in the play namely George, Martha, Nick and Honey, show a feeble contrast to some extent for the standard or acceptable gender norms at that point of time in the society. While the play was written a year before the publication of feminist Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking The Feminine Mystique, the play explores the same issues Friedan railed against. Friedan writes about the “feminine mystique,” …show more content…
It was a real slap-in-the-face to her intelligence and identity when her father had her marriage annulled because it was not proper for a woman to be sexual or to make her own decisions. George himself comments on how Martha’s sexual expression is improper with lines like “your skirt up over your head.” (Albee17) This very well shows her as a female of independent thinking who believes in living her life according to her own terms and conditions. She is just opposite of the ideal notion of a perfect lady by being plump and fat instead of having a lean and thin feminine physique like Honey. On the other hand the twenty-six year old “thin-hipped…simp” Honey is the incredibly stifling, unfulfilled result of what happens if a woman conforms to what 1962 society told her to be. In order to quickly show that Honey, the pre feminist-era ideal woman, is a farce, Albee makes her uninteresting, remarkably unintelligent and absolutely loathsome. She characteristically says boring, solicitous, giggly things like “Oh, isn’t this lovely” (Albee21) and “Well I certainly had fun…it was a wonderful party” (21), even “put some powder on my nose.” (28). She is inoffensive, always agreeable, and, as Friedan points out, devoted to her husband, the ideal of femininity: “Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands.” …show more content…
Martha tells George he is “a blank, you’re a cipher…a zero” (17) because of his lack of manly attributes, such as a commanding nature, athletic ability, good looks and ability to control his emotions. She berates him for sulking early on: “are you sulking? Is that what you’re doing?” (12) Men should not sulk; they must be stoic. Years prior, George refused to box his taunting father-in-law and was made to feel like less of a man because of it (56). Enter Nick, the macho-man, everything George is not. Instantly, he is commanding: “I told you we shouldn’t have come.” (21); he is also stoic– he dryly responds “I am aware of that” (22) when Honey tells him he’s being “joshed.” Most of all, Nick is far more attractive and athletic than old, pudgy George, described often as “about thirty, blond, and…good-looking” (9) and once as “quarterback.” (151) He was even a middleweight boxing champion (51). Martha has physical competition issues, too, with the young, skinny Honey: “I’m six years younger than you are,” (15) George says to Martha, implying that she is old and useless because she’s no longer young and pretty. Martha then foreshadows George’s inability to measure up against Nick: “Well…you’re going bald.” (15) Thus, George is ugly, unmanly and no longer virile. He feels threatened: “I said I was impressed, Martha. I’m beside myself with jealousy.”
George felt as though he did not speak well enough and was looked down upon
Martha was a symbol to the patriot public. As well as a blessing during times of peril for soldiers at camp and for her own husband. Through times of hardships she still prevailed as said in her own words, “I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned the greater part of our misery or unhappiness
According to Helen Lawrenson, “If a woman is sufficiently ambitious, determined and gifted - there is practically nothing she can't do.” Women in history have been limited and bound in different aspects of their lives in the past. They are confined to meet certain and precise standards for marriage, to raise a family, and also in the work field. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson, all women living during the flapper 1920’s style that embodied the real women of the time which F. Scott Fitzgerald (got?) his characteristics from.
George wasn't in the movie as much as he was in the short story. In the short story it shows how smart George is and the way he feels about his equality world. “ “Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway.
“And I hope she 'll be a fool – that 's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). This quote was said by Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. Throughout the novel, women are very present and Fitzgerald created mesmerising and contradicting personalities for each character to draw in the readers. During the flapper movement, many women were cutting their hair, raising the hemlines on their skirts, smoking, drinking, and even driving (Kennedy, Cohen, Bailey 745). Nevertheless, many women were still afraid to speak their minds, even if they followed the fashion and social trends.
Although being written centuries apart, the limited expectations of women presented in ‘Othello’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ differ little from each other. The female characters are confined by society’s expectations of male dominance, female purity and virginity, and the many passive roles of women. Despite the differing legalities surrounding the position of women between the centuries in which the plays were written, both plays explore the impact of how societal conventions confine women and the ways they must comply to be safe in a patriarchal society. The behaviours and treatments of Desdemona, Blanche and Stella illustrate the attitudes enforced on and the behaviours of women throughout both periods in time and it is these attitudes and behaviours that impact the plays to the greatest extent. When characters in either plays defy their norms, or demonstrate a lack of compliance they induce negative consequences, such as the murder of Desdemona and the institutionalisation of Blanche.
She establishes Martha’s character with God’s
The new perspective he holds about the people around him indicates Nick’s, “transformation.” Once longing to be a part of the East, he states, “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” (176). Nick’s “transformation” exemplifies how his journey refined his views about those around him. He also transformed his view about Gatsby, declaring that, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
George has no money and no control over his wife. Everyone seems to walk all over his, as if he isn’t even there. I think George knows that his wife is not happy, but he chooses to ignore it. However, when he finds the dog collar and figures out Myrtle is cheating on him, part of his anger shows. He thinks he can fix his marriage by locking his wife up and taking his wife to leave town.
The characters in the play reveal some of the gender stereotypes through the way they are presented in the beginning of the play, “The sheriff and Hale are men in the middle life… They are followed
The Great Gatsby Women in the 1920s “Inevitably, the daring clothes, the scandalous dances and sensual jazz, the late-night parties and cynical opinions of the young drew the wrath of many members of the older generation” (Britten 28). This is how women in The Great Gatsby attempt to live every day. Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle strive for a life of luxury. They embody various stereotypes in the 1920s through pleasure, desire, and greed.
He is a hard worker and a great friend to Lennie Small; the man whom George travels with. He is an unintelligent man who is as strong as a bull. George and Lennie travel alone from farm to farm. George often gets angry with him because he is like a child, always gets into trouble, asks idiotic questions frequently, forgets everything, and cries over anything. George became plagued with loneliness and alienation because he only had Lennie.
The 1920s is a time of technological, economical, and social exploration. Myrtle, Daisy, and Jordan display the full image of what it is like to be a women in New York during the 1920s. They each have a personal struggle with society and the fight between what they want and what is expected of them. Each of these women wants to experience the glamor of the 1920s but has to maintain some of the traditional elegance of a woman. If the neglect to do so, they are treated harshly by society.
George lives in the depressing part of town, the Valley of Ashes, anlong with all of the other poor people in town. He was a mechanic and owned a gas station. George is a member of the working class. He works his butt off to make ends meet for him and his wife, Myrtle. On page 130, George says to Tom “‘I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch,’ he said.
As showcased by Amanda’s regimented beliefs, The Glass Menagerie demonstrates how society’s gender roles objectify women. The mother and widow of the play, Mrs. Wingfield is no pushover, yet her parenting is a product of gender roles preset by society . The first scene of the play features her at the dinner table nagging the narrator, Tom, to not “push with his fingers... And chew — chew!... A well cooked meal has lots of delicate flavors