Beauvoir The Lesbian Analysis

Aristophanes and Sappho share parallels when speaking about the importance of erotic love. They both describe love as powerful, and speak about the influence it has on our happiness. Furthermore, Aristophanes and Sappho highlight how natural love is and that it should be sought after because of the happiness associated with being in a relationship. One could argue that Aristophanes and Sappho’s shared similar ideologies when it comes to sexuality. Sappho promotes homosexuality through her love of women, while through his speech Aristophanes identifies it as being a form of natural love.

The Song of Songs and Sappho’s lyrics/fragments are both texts from the ancient world. Each works touches subjects like love, passion or even desire. There are couple of similarities between Sappho’s fragments and The Song of Songs yet there are also couple of disparities. Both expresses either love or desire towards someone. Although in Fragments 130 and 31, Sappho doesn’t directly tell the person who she’s admiring but instead keeps her feelings to herself. Meanwhile the Shulamite and her lover are both aware of each other feelings.

In our present generation, the idea of a separation between men and women really is not considered. We live in a culture where a person gets to choose sexual orientation, sexual preference, and even alter sex chromosomes. Due to of the advancement in our science, sociology, and psychology, sexism is arguably obsolete. I say all of that and an educated reader may be thinking “This girl is so wrong and has no clue what she is talking about because sexism does exist.” Well, it does, but not in the same way that it existed in medieval times. Medieval literature and outlets that interpret medieval literature depict sexism in a completely different, extremely radical way. Gerald of Wales’ The History and Topography of Ireland follows historian Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) on his journey exploring Ireland and Whales. The travel journal consists of personal experiences during his time there accompanied by his outstanding observations

In society many find that males hold dominance and make all of the major choices. This is just a stereotype that many people seem to believe. There are many stereotypes for a variety of concepts but that does not mean they are true. There are few females that stand up against sexist stereotypes, but for the few people who have spoken out against them literature has been an effective way of getting their message out. Feminism has impacted literature in several ways; it allows people to share their messages about stereotypes. In the book In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez there are many times when feminism is present, along with the many stereotypes found in the Dominican culture.

Although it may be hard to recognize at first, works of poetry almost always have a gender assigned to them. It was often thought that imagism should be considered a feminine form of poetry, and that haikus were more or less masculine. Amy Lowell is able to combine these two while keeping their original forms in tact. She created a new form of a lesbian-feminist haiku. An example of this is her piece Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds. This piece details Lowell’s interaction with Ada Russell, and how she felt about her in an emotional way. (Iadonisi 123-124) Lowell’s translations of Oriental pieces in her Fir-Flower Tablets often had a female narrator who was longing for her husband.

Another influential factor expressed in Sappho’s writing was her sexuality. Disregarding the fact that she was married to a man for a brief period of time, Sappho found a great interest in women (Poetry Foundation). As an illustration, the poem “In My Eyes He Matches the Gods” is enthusiastic towards Sappho’s sexuality. This poem is about a women Sappho sees sitting across the room and with a man. Sappho is envious of said man and states it does not matter who the man is with this women, any guy would be like the gods getting to be with her, hence the name of the poem. This poem appeals well to the senses of the reader as for it goes into a plethora of detail surrounding how this woman makes Sappho feel. For example she states “then all at

Me: Hello Dr. Butler, I would like to interview you on your views towards Antigione for my research into classical representations of queer individuals.

Margret Atwood’s short story “Lusus Naturae” is known as a work of fiction in which a monster uncommonly plays the role of the protagonist. Discussing character dynamics, it is interesting to examine the symbolic meaning behind the girl as a monster in this story. Is this text simply a fantasy created with the goal to serve solely as a horror story with a typical ending, or does this tale have a deeper meaning encompassing the treatment of women and their sexuality throughout history. Through close reading of “Lusus Naturae,” I plan to use evidence from the text to illustrate symbolic parallels between the unusual protagonist and the known historical role women held in society.

The genre of blues exploded into the blues craze during the 1920’s. During this time, white record producers saw the untapped goldmine that was blues music performed by people of color. Ma Rainey was one of them, and to some, one of the first, giving her the title, ‘The Mother of Blues’. The 1920’s was not only an era of continuing homophobia from the past (although that would change, briefly, into a mild form of acceptance until the more conservative 1930’s), but also of harsh racism. And yet, one singer, Ma Rainey’s, broke these restrictions. Her audience and shows flourished with both whites and blacks, peacefully mingling together to behold Ma’s performances. In this era taut with fear over race, both whites and black adored her.

Initially it was allied to gay men’s theatre, Gay Sweatshop founded in 1975. It produced its first lesbian piece Any Woman Can by Jill Posner in 1976. It was a ‘coming out story’. Gradually lesbian theatre companies came in to existence. Care and Control scripted by Michelene Wandor was the Gay sweatshop women’s first production. It brought into public notice the problems faced by lesbian mothers in child custody cases, a concern typical of feminist theatre practice. Thus it inaugurated the feminist phase of lesbian theatre. Later lesbian theatre discussed a number of such concerns that affected the lives of lesbian women as well as women in general like male violence, patriarchal control of women’s bodies and sexuality and plays celebrating lesbian continuumplays like Aid Thy neighbour by Michelene Wandor, Neaptide bySara Daniels, Curfew by Siren Theatre, Basin by Jaquiline Rudet and The Fires of Bride by Jackie Kay are a few major milestones in the development of lesbian theatre practice (213). During the 1970s’ and 1980s’a number of lesbian theatre companies came into being like Hormone Imbalance, Siren, Hard Corps and a number of lesbian writers were commissioned by other theatre companies like The Women’s Theatre Group, Royal court Theatre and the National Theatre. All these lesbian theatre companies worked by conceiving a heterosexual spectator

The queer historical past has been characterized positively, with aspects such as identification, desire, longing, and love highlighted (31). In contrast, Heather Love seeks to focus on the negative aspects that characterize the relationship of queer history amid the past and present, in her work, “Emotional Rescue: The demands of Queer History,” the first chapter in her book, “Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History” (31-32). According to Love, some queer critics have failed to include the harsher accounts when studying queer cross-historical relations. The negative aspects of the past that queer figures can relate to makes it relevant. In her article, Love critiques various works to identify the negative aspects present within the queer history.

Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out the rolls of lint from under wardrobes—all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper” (Beauvoir 380). "The Married Woman" is a chapter in Simone de Beauvoir’s book, The Second Sex, which demonstrates her negative thoughts about marriage and the overall treatment of a married woman. I agree with Beauvoir’s argument concerning the inequalities between spouses and the exaggeration of house work because of the time the book was written.

The most noticeable liberty that Walhouse took with Sappho’s poem was when he changed the pronoun “she” to “he” in the sixth stanza. I suspect this is due to the historical norms of the Victorian Era where women are not supposed to educate themselves on current events and that those educational magazines such as this one would be read by men only so Walhouse changed the pronoun to suite his audience during this time.

The language in Plato’s symposium and the expression of Sappho’s poetry are similar in that they both deal with homoerotic love. Sappho, the only ancient Greek female author whose work survived, talks from the female point of observation, where as Plato’s work concentrates on the idea of love among males. In spite of the fact that both of their points of view are comparative in courses, for example, their thoughts of physical fascination and want, Plato’s work creates a better understanding of the nature of love then Sappho’s ideas. This understanding will be shown with three arguments and counter- arguments in order to demonstrate the dominance of Plato over Sappho. It will than be concluded with an overview of the main idea and a recap of the three arguments made for Plato.

There was a deliberate voluptuousness... as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips…”, the quote clearly shows the intent of the girl. The author also uses phrases such as ‘went on her knees’, ‘bent over me’ and ‘arched her neck she actually licker her lips’ these phrases only add to the hyper-sexuality of the text. The images the author presents show that women in fact do contain sexuality, even though it is when they are vampires they do seem to possess sexuality. This simple statement changes how society today views women, people of that era began embracing the reality of female sexuality allowing the women of today to be themselves. The authors of these pieces deserve most of the credit for the progressive society today, their writing and their ability to present female sexuality permitted society to mold and accept the basic fact of the existence of female