House On Mango Street Gender Roles Essay

These two sisters have grown together all through their life’s, creating a strong bound, and the fact that her family and a “old guy” is taking away her sister is something she can’t stand. In the end Nea believes that she is saving Sourdi from Mr.Chhay and her mother. However what Nea does not understand in all her youth and idealism , is that sourdi does not want to be saved: She willfully accepts her fate and her marriage to Mr.Chhay because she finds financial stability and a secure future.

Mariam was a simple girl who loved both her parents. In spite of her mother warnings she trusted her father and gets shocked when he gets her married to an aged man and sends her to Kabul with him. One can imagine how her heart ached when she says, “Don’t come. I won’t see you. Don’t you come?

It is this male dominance that deems women as second class citizens who do not need an education. In ‘Alicia who sees mice’, Alicia attends university , due to her mother dying she has ‘inherited her mother’s rolling pin and sleepiness’ although she has the opportunity to study , it is not as important as looking after her family. Esperanza’s mother is not as lucky , she is a typical women in Latin America. Her life revolves around her marriage, family and children. Due to being a woman , Esperanza’s mother was not able to complete her education , instead she was forced to stay at home and look after Esperanza and her siblings while her husband provided for them, she strongly resents this ‘“I could have been somebody, you know?

The most prominent point of The Second Sex is to illustrate how women are segregated from society by men, something which happens a lot in Heart of Darkness. De Beauvoir explains to the audience that men and women often do not understand one other and because men hold a higher social status in a patriarchal society, they have made women the ‘Other’ group in society. This is made evident by De Beauvoir’s following quote: “To pose Woman is to pose the absolute Other, without reciprocity, denying against all experience that she is a subject, a fellow human being.” (De Beauvoir 1266). As a consequence of not understanding women, De Beauvoir explains, men use this false sense of mystery as an excuse not to understand women or their problems.

Mama deals with many forms of gender stereotyping throughout the play, both from society and from her own family. In this time period, women were paid a lot less than men and were still seen as lower-ranking and submissive humans even though they endured difficult tasks during wartime (Gardiner). Women in the 1950s were treated as inferior than men; therefore, men were taught to be the head of the house over a woman. Throughout the book, Walter and Mama fight over the head of the house.

The main character is a strong and passionate little girl who is not affected by seeing the deaths of farm animals which are given humane names but cries out her because of her inability to do the things she wants because of the expectations of her gender. Her father and mother are traditional in their outlooks and in their portrayal of farmhouse life. The family represents typically working class american family that is built on their faith, work ethic, place in the world. They have possibly conservative closed minded views that may cause them to believe the things they do about gender

Serena Joy barely even leaves her house as a wife’s duty consists of staying home. She is a very unhappy character. Her life before this new government was a celebrity in television singing gospels and making speeches fighting for the life she has now which she hates. The only attention she receives is from when she fakes ill and all the other wives come visit and nurture her. However, if she were to get “pregnant” it will bless her ,the household,and wives will envy her.

Women are still considered delicate and must be taken care of by men and for southern women that is even truer because Southerners value tradition and traditional ideologies. However, women are now able to be more independent, though they are basically second class and don’t bring much importance to society other than the obvious repopulation. Miss Emily is a southern woman which means that she is taken care of by her father and then eventually her husband but because she never married she is taken care of by the town when her father dies. Now because of the slight changes in how women are treated Miss Emily is able to say no when the new town heads come in and try to get her to pay taxes and it is rude to oppose a southern lady, in the past that would not have been allowed because women weren’t able to have a real voice or disobey/ disagree with a man. Faulkner shows many times in the story how much he thinks women don’t bring much importance to society.

However, his wife continue to write, stating that each time she does, she gets extremely tired. The narrator kept sleeping during the day and staying all night awake looking, smelling, hearing and touching the yellow wallpaper that once disturbed her, now fascinated her. Soon, the narrator begun to write smaller sentences and little pieces instead of the big chunks of writing that she did the first day she arrived at the house, further showing her descent to madness. At the end of the novel, she peels off the wallpaper, to release the woman that had been trapped behind those bars and realising her into society. This symbolizes her realization of being trapped for so long, and her desire now to free herself.

Kingston has rarely seen independent woman and they seem to be very happy every time she’s encountered one. Kingston dreams of one day being able to be like the happy independent woman in the pictures. “A job and a room” seems so simple, but in a life where Kingston is told she can be a wife or a slave this seems like quite the luxury. In another example Kingston, through Fa Mu Lan, reveals how one’s life is more fulfilling if he or she defies the gender norms. In “White Tigers,” Fa Mu Lan is preparing to leave to war as she “[puts] on my men’s clothes and armor and tied [her] hair in a man’s fashion.

He counters the concept of “separate spheres” which was a “social construction of gender”, where the idea of proper womanhood was used to constrict women, while proper manhood empowered men (Johnson Lewis). The obstacles that divided men and women were gender stereotypical roles, as women as subservient “soft, irrational, emotional, self-sacrificing and loving” and men as “tough, rational, self-advancing, competitive, and harsh” (O 'Malley). The typical feminine roles were thought of as the private sphere, and masculine ones were public. This male dominance is shown by the fact that the “contribution of women in the society was limited and solely controlled under patriarchal authority”; men dictated the terms of everyday life for women leading to limited roles for women in political, legal, and economic matters

In the book “Violence and Hope in a U.S. – Mexico Border Town” they use Symbolic Theory, because they explain how men just for being men should have the authoritarian role and women should have a submissive role. The symbol of being men or women means that they should act as society wants them to act based on their gender. First, machismo is well known in Mexican families because they assumed that all men should have the power over his family. For example, “the man in the streets, and the woman in the house.” It means that men have more privilege of going anywhere, whenever they want because of just being a man, and woman has the obligation to stay at home, because is not well see for a wife to be out of her house for too long.

In the novel Fahrenheit 451, firehouse captain Beatty remarks, “ Someone’s writing a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping ? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag.

West High School’s softball team has opened a new chapter in my life. If I could go back to my freshman year I would have played for West. All the rumors people have heard about Coach Saladino are not true, he is honestly such an inspiring person. Playing softball for West has given me friendships I will never forget, the ability to play with the most robust players, and the new skills I have learned from such an amazing coach. Playing for West High School’s softball team was one of the best decision I have ever made.