Gender Roles In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

To give one example of manipulation, Flannery O'Connor, Georgia State author of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", writes that "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?"(421). The grandmother is trying to make the misfit vulnerable, even though he has already killed everyone but her. She's begging the misfit for her life. Every one of those people would still be alive if it was not for the grandmother. She did not have much hope left anyways for her life because she annoyed the misfit with her ugly and selfish ways.

In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O 'Connor, demonstrates how a short story can contain many aspects of feminism without one even noticing. Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the old school gender roles from the very beginning of the short story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the male characters in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act. With the title stating that a good man is hard to find, it reinforces the idea that women need a man in their lives.

This should make the audience really despise Romeo along with the rest of the characters in the play, but this really is not the case. As a matter of fact, these actions make Romeo more appealing as a character and are important to the overall theme of the play. Romeo kills Paris because he stands in Romeo’s way of getting to Juliet, and being Juliet is the only true love his life he will stop at nothing for her. Even though Romeo murders Tybalt the audience is still able to sympathize with him because it was

The author also shows the readers how Connie’s obsession with her beauty, her dreaminess and carelessness of the world made her more ignorant and lack awareness. That also made her become more vulnerable to the real dangers and the evilness that exists in the world. That danger was represented by an old man who pretends to be an eighteen year old boy that seduced and kidnaped Connie. The end of the story Joyce Carol Oates leaves it open to the readers, because that way it makes the reader think of what might have happened, whether she got raped or whether she is killed, after the main character leaves with the antagonist of the story. Oates shows that ignorance, narcissism and the lack of

This Misfit is held accountable for the murder of the family, the grandmother however is the one responsible for leading the family to this situation. The author has written this story to offer the reader’s an inside look into the grandmother’s self-centered and selfish mindset. Bluntly speaking, it is believed that the reader’s should have seen the outcome coming after realizing the grandmother’s mentality. O’ Conner’s skill as a short story writer enables her to express subtle use of foreshadowing helps depict the family and grandmother’s demise by evoking feeling of inevitability. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” O’ Conner tends to portray her work through the characters within the story, the grandmother.

However, the Misfit finds her moral justification superficial, ultimately murdering the grandmother for her lack of moral fortitude during her face with death. Through O’Connor’s employment of foreshadowing, situational irony, and

First of all, Cole’s mother had to accept that her husband was violent and cruel towards Cole. As she must have loved her husband, this has to have been a major hindrance for her to surpass. After she accepts this fact, she can almost be free of her guilt, but not completely. Proceeding this realization, the greatest obstacle she had to face was the fact that Cole’s mother has to file abuse charges against her husband. In her eyes, this is a difficult impediment in her path, but it is necessary for her to conquer it to be free of her guilt and fear.

She was aware of the mistreatment by her husband, which ultimately compelled her to get revenge against him by making him faint, as Gilman writes “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! (10). Jane in the end breaks, and can no longer tolerate her husbands dominance, she revolts, and manages to get him to faint. Both women had differences in tolerance towards their husbands, as Georgiana was tolerant, and Jane was

Furthermore, Feminist Criticism provides a better view of literature because it shows that women can be powerful. When Emilia finds out that her husband has been plotting an evil plan she says,” Tis proper I obey him, but not now”(Othello V.2.195). Emilia refuses to help her husband after she finds the cruel intentions he has despite the expectation of women always being submissive to their husbands. Women also have a voice and feelings, they are capable of defying their husbands commands when they know what he expects is simply wrong. In a literary article,The Role of Women in Othello: A Feminist Reading states that,” Society weighs heavily on the shoulders of women; they feel that they must support the men and defer to them, even if the actions of the men are questionable” (Literary Articles).

O 'Connor presents both the view of the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain, and the feeling of love for him, as a gift from God. The grandmother as a human being, is prone towards evil and selfishness, so she could never have come to feel such love without God 's help, as this man was going to kill her. This moment of grace is incredibly important in the story. The Misfit kills the grandmother, withdrawing from her and what seems foreign to him (human compassion), but the grandmother already had her moment of redemption. The grandmother grew in that moment of death more than she ever did in the little parts that we read about her life, and she dies in peace.

The grandmothers moment of grace causes a terrible reaction from The Misfit. After The Misfit kills the grandmother he says “It’s no real pleasure in life,” which I think shows that the grandmother may have had some kind of impact on him in there discussion. In the final moments of life, redemption could always be reached. In the last moments of her life, the grandmother was a good woman, she showed compassion and care in a time of danger and

Fern or herself. She is painted as a very restless and willful woman who is appalled by the laws that were set for her by men. Her confusion is seen in the beginning of the article when she reads about Emma Wilson, a member of her town being arrested for wearing men’s clothing, “Now, why this should be an actionable offense is past my finding out, or where’s the harm in it, I am as much at a loss to see” (Parton 1750). The reader is able to see how uncomfortable she is with the fact that this happened to Wilson and that she does not stand for the oppression of herself or the women around her. It is seen very early on that Mrs. Fern is a very non-conservative member of her community and that she yearns to make a change.

He skewed Georgiana’s views by making it seem that if she wasn’t perfect then he could not love her. Throughout the process Georgiana was scared of her husband’s actions but she was made to believe that what he was doing was normal so she went along with it. Aylmer was an evil human being who did not really care about his wife. He only cared about whether she was the perfect women and that led him into committing the murder of his so called “beloved